Administrative coordination capacity; does the wickedness of policy areas matter?

Abstract

Based on a survey of civil servants in the Norwegian central government, this article describes perceptions of coordination capacity and examines to what degree the variations in perceived coordinating capacity can be explained by structural and cultural features. In particular, it focuses on the significance of wicked policy areas. Overall the coordination capacity is weaker in wicked policy areas than in other policy areas. Controlling for other features the coordination capacity is primarily related to cultural factors, such as mutual trust, level of conflict, and identification with the central government. Some structural features, such as administrative level, also have an effect.

Patterns of Policy Integration and Administrative Coordination Reforms: A Comparative Empirical Analysis

“…We witness more overall reform intensity in environmental policy-a technically complex, wide-ranging field-than in the other areas, and specifically more administrative coordination reforms in the early years, a result that may stem from the fact that this is a more recent policy field compared with the others. These results suggest that policy makers pursue integration coordination reforms especially in policy fields presenting complex policy problems (Christensen, Laegreid, and Laegreid 2019). The concentrated or dispersed distribution of reform targets and their strength or weakness in terms of resources and capacity resulting from differences in complexity may help explain these variations; further research, however, is required to explore the impact of these factors.…”

“…The second element that guides our analysis is the assumption that patterns of policy integration and administrative coordination reforms vary according to the complexity of the policy problem (Christensen, Lægreid, and Lægreid ; Head and Alford ; Peters , 392), which, in turn, determines the demand for coordination (Peters and Savoie ). We focus on two dimensions of complexity.…”

A critical assessment of the wicked problem concept: relevance and usefulness for policy science and practice

“…Other articles in the special issue have taken the concept of wicked problems as point of departure and use public policy theories. Christensen, Laegreid and Laegreid (2019) argue that the response of many governments to deal with wicked problems has increased horizontal (and vertical) fragmentation across departments and organizations, therefore requiring coordination to increase problem-solving capacity and effectively tackle wicked problems. To explain how and why coordination challenges emerge, they revert to classic public administration theories on the cultural and structure of bureaucracies.…”

Who are the transnationals? Institutional categories beyond “migrants”

“…As Egeberg (2012) points out, the organisational context surrounding a decisionmaker affects the selection of alternatives available. The formal norms for practices and the formal roles of the bureaucrats differ across the administrative levels, and this affects decision-making and how tasks are carried out (Christensen et al 2019). As documented in all the articles in this dissertation, the administrative level appears to be of less importance for establishing perceptions of transnationals and of more importance for the implications of these perceptions.…”