Public agency resilience in times of democratic backsliding: structure, collaboration and professional standards

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.