Public Bureaucracy and Climate Change Adaptation

Abstract

Despite recognizing the importance of public bureaucracies in governing climate change, our knowledge of how their behavioral and structural characteristics influence climate change adaptation policy is limited. This article provides an introduction to a collection of studies that seeks to explore the link between climate change adaptation and public bureaucracies, and to distill lessons for the scholarship on adaptation as well as the persistent debates on the role of administrative traditions in public policy. The articles in the special issue demonstrate that how state and social actors are organized, the ways in which scientific advice enters bureaucracies, and uniformity in the making and implementing of policy matter for adaptation policy. We conclude that the concept of administrative traditions is still necessary for understanding the choices made by public actors, but contend that other factors such as economic motives and political willingness should be considered more critically in the literature on administrative traditions. KEY WORDS: administrative traditions; behavior; climate change adaptation; public bureaucracies; public policy 公共官僚和气候变化适应 尽管大众认可公共官僚在治理气候变化中产生的作用，但关于前者的行为特征和架构特征是如何 影响气候变化适应政策的认识还很局限。本文引入了一系列研究，这些研究试图探索气候变化适 应和公共官僚机构之间的联系。同时本文提取出相关学术经验，用于研究适应和对行政传统在公 共政策中产生的作用而进行的持续辩论。本期特刊收录的文章展示了国家行为者和社会行为者如 何进行相应组织，从而使科学建议进入官僚机构，并且让用于适应政策的政策事务在制定和实施 时达到统一。本文结论认为，行政传统这一概念对理解公共行为者做出的选择而言依然是必要 的，但结论同时主张，例如经济动机和政治意愿等其他因素应在行政传统文献中受到更具批判性 的考量。 关键词：行政传统,行为,气候变化适应,公共官僚,公共政策 Burocracia pública y adaptación al cambio climático A pesar de reconocer la importancia de las burocracias públicas al gobernar el cambio climático, es limitado nuestro conocimiento de cómo sus características estructurales y de comportamiento tienen una influencia sobre las políticas de adaptación al cambio climático. Este artículo proporciona una introducción a una colección de estudios que busca explorar el vínculo entre la adaptación al cambio climático y las burocracias públicas, y extraer lecciones para la investigación sobre la adaptación, así como para los debates persistentes sobre el papel de las tradiciones administrativas en las políticas públicas. Los artículos en elPublic Bureaucracy and Climate Change Adaptation 777 número especial demuestran que la forma en que se organizan los actores estatales y sociales, las formas en que el asesoramiento científico ingresa en las burocracias y la uniformidad en la elaboración y la implementación de políticas son importantes para la política de adaptación. Llegamos a la conclusión de que el concepto de tradiciones administrativas sigue siendo necesario para comprender las decisiones tomadas por los actores públicos, pero sostenemos que otros factores, como los motivos económicos y la voluntad política, deberían considerarse de manera más crítica en la literatura sobre tradiciones administrativas. PALABRAS CLAVE: tradiciones administrativas; comportamiento; adaptación al cambio climático; burocracias públicas; políticas públicas

State Bureaucracy and the Management of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh

“…As explained in the previous section, the state bureaucracy in Bangladesh is remarkably autonomous (see e.g., Q. Alam & Teicher, ; Ahmed et al, ; Huque, ; Huque & Rahman, ; Jamil & Haque, ; Zafarullah, ). Following Biesbroek and others (), autonomous bureaucracies tend to keep social actors more at an arm’s length and find hierarchical styles of policy making and implementation preferable. Under which circumstances, if any, is a state bureaucracy that possesses such characteristics willing to accept changes to its organizational setup?…”

“…With regard to the four dimensions outlined by Biesbroek and others (), the state bureaucracy in Bangladesh can be categorized as follows: Law and management : The state bureaucracy of Bangladesh follows codified rules and procedures regarding the allocation of tasks among bureaucrats concerned with policy implementation (Zafarullah, ). Linkage between state and social actors : The scope for non‐state actors such as interest groups and civil society organizations to contribute to policy making and implementation has increased in the last few years, but it remains limited (K. Alam et al, ; Zafarullah, ). Uniformity in the creation and implementation of policy : Members of the administrative cadre develop, implement, and administer policies and are in charge of carrying out policy evaluation and impact assessments (Zafarullah, ). Organization of scientific advice : Policy advice, in general, comes from the upper echelons of state bureaucracy: the generalists. The generalists, however, lack technical expertise (Huque, )—we will return to this point in the subsequent paragraphs. …”

“…The work of Peters and collaborators put forth the argument that state bureaucracies function according to distinct rules (Painter & Peters, ; Peters, ). From this premise, the research area that pertains to administrative traditions has emerged (e.g., Jamil, Askvik, & Hossain, ), which live through the thoughts and actions of contemporary actors as well as inherited structures (Biesbroek, Peters, & Tosun, ). The long‐term structuring effect of administrative traditions is the point of departure of our analysis, in which we strive to combine it with the question of how the need to adapt to climate change affects state bureaucratic structures and procedures.…”

Foreign‐Funded Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa: Mirroring Administrative Traditions or Traditions of Administrative Blueprinting?

“…The large scale of many adaptation interventions—such as introducing new crop varieties or building robust infrastructure and the collective action required to adapt systems like water management—is likely to require the involvement of public administration systems (Bisaro & Hinkel, ; Jordan et al, ). As hypothesized in the Introduction to this special issue, this could indicate that administrative traditions play an important role in how adaptation to climate change plays out (Biesbroek, Lesnikowski, Berrang‐Ford, Vink, & Ford, ; Biesbroek, Peters, & Tosun, ; Vink et al, ). Differences in administrative traditions (e.g., differences in state structure, state–society relations, accountability, openness of bureaucracy, knowledge organization) can have consequences for how policies are made, how policy reform plays out, and the pace and form of public bureaucracies' attention to new issues (Biesbroek, Lesnikowski, et al, ; Hyden, ; Painter & Peters, ; Peters & Pierre, ).…”

“…Given this complication, the aim of this article is to investigate whether the ideas elaborated in the Introduction to this special issue (Biesbroek, Peters, et al, ) hold for Africa, and whether adaptation on the African continent mirrors African administrative traditions or, rather, (foreign) aid regimes and discourse. To do so, this article takes an explorative approach.…”