Public agency resilience in times of democratic backsliding: structure, collaboration and professional standards
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Author (Corporation)
Publication date
2024
Type of student thesis
Course of study
Type
01A - Journal article
Editors
Editor (Corporation)
Supervisor
Parent work
Governance
Special issue
Street‐level bureaucracy, populism, and democratic backsliding
DOI of the original publication
Link
Series
Series number
Volume
37
Issue / Number
S1
Pages / Duration
21-40
Patent number
Publisher / Publishing institution
Wiley
Place of publication / Event location
Edition
Version
Programming language
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Abstract
This article investigates how organizational structure, collaboration, and professional standards influence the resilience of public agencies facing adversity. It links organizational reputation and blame avoidance literature with resilience and collaboration literature. We use the case of the Swiss Child and Adult Protection Agencies (CAPA), which faced massive media attacks. We apply a qualitative research design analyzing data from interviews and participatory observations. Our findings show that professional organizational structure, collaboration and standards are three interrelated factors that increase resilience against adversity. In particular, these factors reduce “blame-avoiding policy implementation” (BAPI), which is a coping strategy where street-level bureaucrats (SLB) exploit their discretion to make policy implementation less blameworthy. In their interplay, professional organizational structure, collaboration and standards increase the knowledge of a public agency about a particular situation because they enable better-informed decisions through collective deliberation practices, and strengthens the collective ownership as well as the individual SLB's confidence that the right decision is being made.
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ISBN
ISSN
1468-0491
0952-1895
0952-1895
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
No
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
Hybrid
License
Citation
Stauffer, B., Sager, F., & Künzler, J. (2024). Public agency resilience in times of democratic backsliding: structure, collaboration and professional standards. Governance, 37(S1), 21–40. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12802