IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erp/arenax/p0285.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Democratic government, institutional autonomy and the dynamics of change

Author

Listed:
  • Johan P. Olsen

Abstract

Against the backdrop of decades of public sector reforms in Europe, this essay aims to make sense of the processes through which institutions, democratic government included, achieve and lose autonomy or primacy and why it is difficult to find a state of equilibrium between democratic government and institutional autonomy. The analytical value of ‘autonomy’ as detachment-from-politics and the apolitical dynamics of change assumed by NPM reformers are challenged. In contrast, the interplay between democratic government and institutional autonomy is interpreted as an artifact of partly de-coupled inter-institutional processes involving struggle for power and status among interdependent and co-evolving institutions that are carriers of competing yet legitimate values, interests and behavioral logics. The problem of finding a stable equilibrium between democratic government, autonomous agencies and non-majoritarian institutions, is illustrated by the cases of public administration and the public university. This article has later been published in West European Politics Vol.32, No.3, pp.439-465

Suggested Citation

  • Johan P. Olsen, 2009. "Democratic government, institutional autonomy and the dynamics of change," ARENA Working Papers 1, ARENA.
    • Handle: RePEc:erp:arenax:p0285
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sv.uio.no/arena/english/research/publications/arena-publications/workingpapers/working-papers2009/WP09_01.xml
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tayyeb Ali Khan & Tom Christensen, 2021. "Challenges of Implementing a Performance and Reward System in Higher Education Institutions in Pakistan: Perceptions of Top Leaders in Contending Regulatory Bodies," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 243-262, June.
    2. Christoph Ossege, 2015. "Driven by Expertise and Insulation? The Autonomy of European Regulatory Agencies," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(1), pages 101-113.
    3. Chris Hanretty & Christel Koop, 2013. "Shall the law set them free? The formal and actual independence of regulatory agencies," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(2), pages 195-214, June.
    4. Erik Jones, 2009. "Output Legitimacy and the Global Financial Crisis: Perceptions Matter," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47, pages 1085-1105, November.
    5. Muiris MacCarthaigh, 2011. "Politics, policy preferences and the evolution of Irish bureaucracy: A framework for analysis," Working Papers 201128, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    6. Ole Danielsen & Kutsal Yesilkagit, 2014. "The Effects of European Regulatory Networks on the Bureaucratic Autonomy of National Regulatory Authorities," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 353-371, September.
    7. Erik Jones, 2009. "Output Legitimacy and the Global Financial Crisis: Perceptions Matter," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(5), pages 1085-1105, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erp:arenax:p0285. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sindre Eikrem Hervig (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.arena.uio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.