Existing conceptualizations and measures of transformational and transactional leadership have unclear theoretical bases, confound leadership and its effects, and are not necessarily suitable for public organizations. Overcoming these problems is necessary to test how leadership affects performance. Many public administration scholars apply the concepts, emphasizing the need to ensure that the concepts are applicable in both public and private organizations. The article reconceptualizes transformational and transactional leadership and develops and tests revised measures that can be employed on employees and leaders, are robust in terms of repeated use by the same respondents, and are applicable to public and private organizations alike.

Although politicization is a perennial research topic in public administration to investigate relationships between ministers and civil servants, the concept still lacks clarification. This article contributes to this literature by systematically identifying different conceptualizations of politicization and suggests a typology including three politicization mechanisms to strengthen the political responsiveness of the ministerial bureaucracy: formal, functional and administrative politicization. The typology is empirically validated through a comparative case analysis of politicization mechanisms in Germany, Belgium, the UK and Denmark. The empirical analysis further refines the general idea of Western democracies becoming 'simply' more politicized, by illustrating how some politicization mechanisms do not continue to increase, but stabilize -at least for the time being. Points for practitionersThe claim of increasing politicization of the interaction between ministers and civil servants is often made in research and government practice. As the completely neutral bureaucracy is a myth rather than empirical reality, all democracies have to balance demands for both neutral expertise and political responsiveness. The latter often involves the introduction of politicization mechanisms. Politicization comes in a variety of forms, and the article develops a typology covering formal, functional and administrative politicization. Further it empirically demonstrates how politicization mechanisms not only increase, but how they develop and interact, altering balances of neutrality and responsiveness in potentially conflicting ways.

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For public managers facing political and structural constraints, transformational leadership promises to meaningfully improve outcomes by communicating an inspiring vision of the organization. But this promise rests to a great degree on the communication skills and behaviors of the leader. A better understanding of how transformational leadership functions in organizations therefore requires a deeper application of theory from the field of communications. This article explores the question of what communication behaviors facilitate transformational leadership. A media richness framework is applied to propose that transformational leaders will be most effective when employing a face‐to‐face dialogue approach to communication. Using a multisource longitudinal research design, the authors find support for this proposition in an empirical test of 256 Danish tax units, lower and upper secondary schools, child care centers, and bank branches. The findings also show that size matters, with diminishing effectiveness of face‐to‐face dialogue in larger organizations.

The concept of public service bargain (PSB) has been reintroduced in recent times to the study of public administration to analyse the division of roles between ministers and the civil service in the context of public service reforms (Hood 2000, 2001, 2002; Hood and Lodge 2006). The empirical investigation of the concept of PSB in general and changes in PSBs in particular is, however, limited. This article addresses this limitation by investigating what causes changes in public service bargains, particularly with respect to the provision of advice. As argued by Hood, we demonstrate how changes in PSBs can be explained by a combination of changes in the environments of ministries as well as the interests of the political actors. Furthermore, we point to the professional qualifications of civil servants as well as their interests as causes of change which, until now, have not received sufficient attention in the PSB literature. The article is based on a longitudinal case study of PSB between ministers and the permanent civil service in Denmark.

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Ministers increasingly rely on advisers for support and advice.In many countries, these political aides are labelled differently.Generally, they serve as close confidants to their political masters and operate in the 'shadowland' between politics and bureaucracy.Scholarship has dragged the ministerial advisers out of the dark and described their background and functions. Still, the field of scholarship has a Westminster bias, is characterized by single case studies, and remains under-theorized. The lack of comparative focus and theoretical underpinnings can be explained by the complex nature of ministerial advisers. This introductory article suggests a definition for ministerial advisers and reviews the extant literature on these important actors. The main argument is that the extent and relevance of ministerial advisers in executive government merits integration into mainstream public administration and political science theory and research.

While special advisers play an important role in most Western governments, the research on the subject is limited. This article aims to explain variations in the ménage à trois relationships between ministers, senior civil servants and special advisers in two different politico-administrative systems. The theoretical starting point is to conceptualize and explain such trilateral relationships as multiple Public Service Bargains. We find that the differences in Public Service Bargains generate differences in these ménages à trois relationships, resulting in different types of functional differentiation as well as differences in the degree of cooperation vis-à-vis conflict. These differences are primarily the result of differences in the interests as well as formal, institutional rules and the competencies of the actors involved. The empirical data include documents as well as interviews with and questionnaires completed by senior civil servants. The countries compared are Belgium and Denmark. Points for practitioners Our study confirms that it is important for a ‘ménage à trois’ (ministers, special advisers, SCSs) ‘… to spell out the terms of the bargain applying to political advisers (…)’ ( Hood and Lodge, 2006 : 128) in order to regulate the relationship between special advisers and SCSs and avoid potential conflicts among them. In addition, the study shows that the number of political appointments plays a role in the relationship. Finally, the study shows that clear differences in the competencies brought to the bargain by the two types of agent may ensure cooperation and mutual respect, whereas an overlapping of competencies may cause rivalry.