Structure and Organisation of Government Project

这项研究提出的问题是，为什么有些行政组织会被创建，然后进行重组、合并或终止，而其他行政组织似乎是“不朽的”，甚至可以变得比创建和控制它们的民选政客更有权势？这个问题已经变得切中要害，特别是在过去30年里，在欧洲议会民主国家内部。到20世纪70年代末，福利国家扩张和国家增长的黄金时代结束时，美国总统罗纳德·里根和英国首相玛格丽特·撒切尔等新一代政治领导人发起了一系列行政改革轨迹-私有化、放松管制、代理化、自由化、分权化和新公共管理-旨在从根本上改变中央政府的范围和规模，并在发达和发展中经济体引发了几个改革轨迹。然而，走上这些轨道的西方政客很快就发现，改变中央政府的结构和组织是一件很难解决的事情。当改革取得成功时，其后果往往是增加分散和提高协调成本。政界人士在走上行政改革之路时遇到的困难意味着，驯服和改变政府的结构和组织，使其设计成使政府为公众的利益服务，并不是一个容易达到的目标。这个项目开发并应用了一个新的框架，将系统地绘制和解释过去30年来，在联合王国和其他发达经济体启动新公共管理改革之后的过去30年里，法国、德国、荷兰和联合王国这四个欧洲议会民主国家跨国中央政府的组织变化。该框架确定了各部和各机构内部和之间的变化模式。它不仅比较了国家之间和国家之间的组织变化，而且也比较了具体政策部门内部和之间的组织变化。该框架是纵向的，因为它跟踪组织随时间的变化。这个项目建立在最有影响力的中央政府结构和组织理论的基础上，这是结构选择政治理论。这一理论是在美国总统制的背景下发展和应用的，它声称中央政府的结构和组织是主要政治行为者之间就行政组织的制度设计进行政治谈判的结果。更准确地说，该理论认为，中央政府的结构是政客们对制度设计的偏好的函数，这些制度设计将行政组织与直接的政治控制隔离开来。这一理论在美国得到了检验，但这个项目分析了议会民主背景下存在的中央政府的机制。我们问：欧洲议会民主国家内中央政府结构和组织的变化在多大程度上遵循了刘易斯在美国总统分权制度中发现的民族国家的政治逻辑？政治隔离在多大程度上是行政设计的驱动逻辑？如果不是，议会民主国家的行政设计的决定因素是什么？机构发挥的作用是什么？结构选择理论一旦适用于议会民主政体，能否解释议会民主政体的制度背景下的变化--或缺乏变化？

The research asks why some administrative organizations are created then reorganized, merged, or terminated, whereas others are seemingly 'immortal' and even can become more powerful than the elected politicians that created and control them? This question has become pertinent, especially in the past three decades, within European parliamentary democracies. By the end of the 1970s, when the golden era of welfare state expansion and state growth came to an end, a new generation of political leaders such as President Ronald Reagan of the United States and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom initiated a series of administrative reform trajectories - privatization, deregulation, agencification, liberalization, decentralization, and New Public Management - with the aim to fundamentally alter the scope and scale of central government and sparked off several reform trajectories across the developed and developing economies. However, Western politicians who embarked on these trajectories soon found out that changing the structure and organization of their central governments was a hard nut to crack. When successful, the consequences of succeeding in reforms were often increasing fragmentation and rising coordination costs. The difficulties encountered by politicians when embarking on the road of administrative change mean that taming and changing the structure and organization of government, designing it so as to have government serve the interests of the public, is not an easy goal to reach.This project develops and applies a novel framework that will systematically map and explain organizational changes within central government cross-nationally in four European parliamentary democracies, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, over the last three decades, the period following the initiation of New Public Management reforms in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in advanced economies. The framework identifies patterns of change in and between ministries and agencies. It compares the organizational change not only between and across countries, but also within and across specific policy sectors. The framework is longitudinal as it traces organizational changes across time. This project builds upon the most influential theory of the structure and organization of central governments, which is the theory of the politics of structural choice. This theory, developed and applied within the context of the United States presidential system, claims that the structure and organization of central government is the resultant of political negotiations on the institutional design of administrative organizations between the main political actors. To be more precise, the theory argues that the structure of central government is a function of politicians' preferences for institutional designs that insulate administrative organizations from direct political control. The theory has been tested in the United States but this project analyses the machineries of central government that exist within the context of parliamentary democracies. We ask: To what extent do changes to the structure and organization of central government within European parliamentary democracies follow the same political logic as Lewis has found for the national state in the US presidential separation-of-power system? To what extent is political insulation a driving logic of administrative design? If not, what are the determinants of administrative design in parliamentary democracies and what is the role that institutions play? Can the theory of structural choice, once adapted to parliamentary democracies, explain changes - or the lack thereof - within the institutional context of parliamentary democracies?