IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v11y2010i2p289-308.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bridging bureaucracy and democracy in Europe: A comparative study of perceived managerial excellence, satisfaction with public services, and trust in governance

Author

Listed:
  • Eran Vigoda-Gadot

    (University of Haifa, Israel, eranv@poli.haifa.ac.il)

  • Aviv Shoham

    (University of Haifa, Israel)

  • Dana R Vashdi

    (University of Haifa, Israel)

Abstract

The cross-country study of public administration based on citizens’ surveys in Europe is a relatively novel approach to analyzing the social and political dynamics of the continent. The goal of this study is to examine some aspects of bureaucracy and democracy as perceived by knowledgeable citizens in six countries (Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Norway, Slovakia, and Spain). A rationale is developed to support hypotheses about the relationship between democracy and bureaucracy. The study also proposes hypotheses about differences between the countries in terms of satisfaction with public services, trust in governance and public administration agencies, and a set of managerial-oriented variables of the public sector (i.e. perceived innovation, responsiveness, professionalism, organizational politics, leadership and vision, ethics and morality). The study’s findings indicate that various aspects of bureaucracy and democracy differ across countries and that democratic longevity may be a good explanation for these differences.

Suggested Citation

  • Eran Vigoda-Gadot & Aviv Shoham & Dana R Vashdi, 2010. "Bridging bureaucracy and democracy in Europe: A comparative study of perceived managerial excellence, satisfaction with public services, and trust in governance," European Union Politics, , vol. 11(2), pages 289-308, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:11:y:2010:i:2:p:289-308
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116510363657
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116510363657
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116510363657?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandford Borins, 2000. "What border? Public management innovation in the United States and Canada," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(1), pages 46-74.
    2. Johan P. Olsen, 2005. "Maybe it is time to rediscover bureaucracy?," ARENA Working Papers 10, ARENA.
    3. Stacey G. Ulbig, 2002. "Policies, Procedures, and People: Sources of Support for Government?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 83(3), pages 789-809, September.
    4. Shipan, Charles R., 2004. "Regulatory Regimes, Agency Actions, and the Conditional Nature of Congressional Influence," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(3), pages 467-480, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta, 2013. "Do influential contacts help in receiving fair treatment from public officials?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(15), pages 1407-1412, October.
    2. Judith Clifton & Daniel Díaz-Fuentes & Marcos Fernández-Gutiérrez, 2014. "The impact of socio-economic background on satisfaction: evidence for policy-makers," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 183-206, October.
    3. Gustavo Gouvêa Maciel & Luís de Sousa, 2018. "Legal Corruption and Dissatisfaction with Democracy in the European Union," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 140(2), pages 653-674, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chau-kiu Cheung & Stephen Ma, 2011. "Coupling Social Solidarity and Social Harmony in Hong Kong," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 145-167, August.
    2. Karen Maguire, 2013. "Drill Baby Drill? Political and Market Influences on Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing in the Western United States," Economics Working Paper Series 1401, Oklahoma State University, Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Business, revised Apr 2013.
    3. Andrews, Matthew, 2008. "Are One-Best-Way Models of Effective Government Suitable for Developing Countries?," Working Paper Series rwp08-014, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Adam R. Fremeth & Guy L. F. Holburn & Richard G. Vanden Bergh, 2016. "Corporate Political Strategy in Contested Regulatory Environments," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(4), pages 272-284, December.
    5. Sobiech, Robert, 2016. "Trust in government in times of economic crisis," Studia z Polityki Publicznej / Public Policy Studies, Warsaw School of Economics, vol. 3(1), pages 1-16, January.
    6. Geys, Benny, 2010. "War casualties and US presidential popularity: A comparison of the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq war," Discussion Papers, Research Professorship & Project "The Future of Fiscal Federalism" SP II 2010-05, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    7. Jonathan B Slapin, 2014. "Measurement, model testing, and legislative influence in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(1), pages 24-42, March.
    8. Chau-kiu Cheung & Raymond Chan & Wing-chung Ho, 2014. "Feeling Close to Fellow Citizens in Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 119(1), pages 25-48, October.
    9. Boland, Matthew & Godsell, David, 2021. "Bureaucratic discretion and contracting outcomes," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    10. Ian R Turner, 2017. "Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(1), pages 69-96, January.
    11. Paul S. Adler, 2012. "PERSPECTIVE—The Sociological Ambivalence of Bureaucracy: From Weber via Gouldner to Marx," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 244-266, February.
    12. Christian Almer & Timo Goeschl, 2011. "The political economy of the environmental criminal justice system: a production function approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 611-630, September.
    13. Markus Lederer & Chris Höhne, 2021. "Max Weber in the tropics: How global climate politics facilitates the bureaucratization of forestry in Indonesia," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(1), pages 133-151, January.
    14. Maguire, Karen, 2012. "Prices or politics? The influence of markets and political party changes on oil and gas development in the United States," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 2013-2020.
    15. Yue, Heng & Zhang, Liandong & Zhong, Qinlin, 2022. "The politics of bank opacity," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2).
    16. Shirin Madon, 2006. "IT-based government reform initiatives in the Indian state of Gujarat," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(6), pages 877-888.
    17. Edeltraud Guenther & Anne-Karen Hueske & Sanjay Kumar & Rhama Parthasarathy, 2017. "Sustainable management at Indian Railways: how a self-evaluation tool for barrier analysis facilitates green procurement [Nachhaltige Unternehmensführung bei der Indischen Eisenbahn: Wie ein Selbst," Sustainability Nexus Forum, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 235-246, November.
    18. Fremeth, Adam R. & Holburn, Guy L. F. & Piazza, Alessandro, 2021. "Activist Protest Spillovers into the Regulatory Domain: Theory and Evidence from the U.S. Nuclear Power Generation Industry," OSF Preprints s39h2, Center for Open Science.
    19. Israel Marques II, 2022. "Skipping Out On The Check: Institutional Quality, Tax Evasion, And Individual Preferences For Social Policy," HSE Working papers WP BRP 85/PS/2022, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    20. Matthew E.K. Hall, 2017. "Macro Implementation: Testing the Causal Paths from U.S. Macro Policy to Federal Incarceration," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(2), pages 438-455, April.

    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:sae:eeupol:v:11:y:2010:i:2:p:289-308. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.