Showing papers on "Ideal type published in 2023"

The neo-Weberian state: From ideal type model to reality?

Abstract: Abstract:Public sector reforms have been a feature of past decades. Many of these reforms reacted against hierarchy and bureaucracy to shift to markets and networks. Next to New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG), the neo-Weberian state (NWS) also remained a crucial ideal type, certainly for the Western European practice which is embedded in Weberian public administration (PA). A theoretical and empirical question is whether NWS is sustainable and resilient in re-inventing and re-appraising ‘bureaucracy’ in the 21st century. This contribution claims that initially there was an empirical observation, certainly in continental Europe, of neo-Weberian public administration derived from the dynamics of public sector reforms in the second half of the 20th century. It was then ‘upgraded’ as an NWS ideal type model for theoretical reasons. NWS is a hierarchy-driven system within a hierarchy-market-network space. This NWS (based and driven by hierarchy) then moved to one of the normative reform models.It is also claimed and assumed that NWS, contrary to NPM (market-driven) and NPG (network-driven), will ensure the three core functions of a ‘whole of government’ strategy within a ‘whole of society’ context: inclusive and equitable service delivery, resilient crises governance, and effective innovation for government and society.

‘Sorry, we’re closed’: a fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis of pandemic childcare-policy responses in 28 European countries

Abstract: Based on an original data set of early childhood education and care/school closures and reopenings, this article presents a fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis of pandemic childcare-policy responses in 28 European countries and explores the complex empirical variety of these policies across Europe. The analysis shows that European countries cluster into five models, comprising not only the opposite poles of strict closures (public-health approach) or absence of closures (high-risk approach) but also more ‘mixed’ approaches prioritising early childhood education and care/schools’ educational (educational approach) or work–care functions (lenient work–care approach or strict work–care approach). A few countries’ poor fit within these approaches indicates struggles in balancing different, often contradictory, policy goals during COVID-19. The findings reflect how (continued) provision of early childhood education and care/schools became a highly contested issue, especially as the pandemic evolved and public-health concerns were increasingly weighted against the implications for work–care balance and educational outcomes.

Riding the Eurosceptic tiger vs taming it by technocracy: the UK and France as two ideal types of how to manage hard Euroscepticism

Abstract: ABSTRACT This article provides a Weberian ideal-type framework to capture elite strategies for managing hard Euroscepticism and their consequences for EU disintegration. It does so by drawing on policy evolution theory to conceptualise two ideal types representing contrasting strategies: taming Euroscepticism by technocratic adaptation or embracing it. This framework is used to analyse empirical examples that match these two ideal-type approaches respectively: France and the UK between 2004 and 17. The use of this framework is a novel way of explaining the evolution and differences between elite French and UK responses to hard Euroscepticism by showing how and why French EU policy remained intra-paradigmatic as compared to the paradigm shift of Brexit. This approach allows for a better understanding of the process and probability of EU disintegration by linking the latter to strategic policy choices. In a UK context, it also offers a way to anticipate the signals leading to a reversal of disintegration.

11 Citizens’ assemblies: Top-down or bottom-up? – both, please!

Abstract: This chapter provides a critical reflection on conceptualizations of top-down and bottom-up citizens’ assemblies (CAs). Through a review of the literature and analysis of paradigmatic examples we identify main characteristics of each ideal type. Ideal-type top-down assemblies are opened by state institutions to address a predefined policy issue and strengthen the legitimacy of the commissioning body. Idealtype bottom-up assemblies are led by civil society, provide space for citizen agenda-setting and might have ambitions for more radical reform projects but struggle to have tangible impact because of looser or no links with centres of power. However, the practice of CAs is less clear-cut: bottom-up approaches are not always better at ensuring more inclusive processes, and top-down CAs do not seem to have such a good record in terms of impact just because they work closely with state institutions. Our assessment of four different dimensions of the top-down/bottom-up heuristic allows for a more differentiated assessment of types of CAs that may also flexibly combine bottom- up and top-down elements.

From Adventurers to Companies

Abstract: Chapter 5 turns to the economic sphere, with special attention to the emergence of the modern economic corporation, as a competitor par excellence. I examine its origins in medieval antecedents, how post-revolutionary US was the ideal environment for its initial cultivation and elaboration, and its subsequent development in Europe and beyond. The economic firm is in many ways the ‘ideal type’ of the modern corporate actor, but I am concerned to show in the next two chapters that new corporate actors in the political and ideological/cultural spheres are also crucial to the general domestication of competition in liberal societies.

Anticharismatic Authority: Joe Biden's Approximation of the Ideal Type

Abstract: Sociologists have productively theorized power and politics via typologies and genealogies. This article combines these theorizing modalities to analyze the election of Joseph Biden in the 2020 US presidential election. Thinking about presidential genealogy, the semiotics of sequence and succession favored humility over hubris in the victory of Biden after Donald Trump. As well, drawing on Weber's three types of authority (traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational) and Fred Block's elaboration of a flexible but constrained and accountable missing fourth type, this article terms that fourth type anticharisma and reads Joe Biden as an anticharismatic aspirant. Whereas charisma draws its strength from the monopolization of attention by the leader, rupture, and crisis, anticharisma aspires to domestic tranquility, competence, familiarity, and empathy. The elaborated typology of authority presented here provides important angles into both the election of Joe Biden as the anticharismatic candidate and the constraints on democratic leadership in the United States.

The Spacialization Revisited: Extensive Type’s Characterization and Contradictions in Theodor W. Adorno

Abstract: As Adorno’s posthumous writings were released, a notable turn in his philosophy of music became noteworthy: by revealing an ambitious project on Beethoven, a quasi-axiomatic theory of musical time emerged, which seems to guide adornian thought at very significant works and texts, as Philosophy of New Music. Sketched in three configuration types of musical time, this theory surprises with the so-called “extensive type”. Adorno would then admit kinds of formal consistency (Stimmigkeit) that are not restricted to the ideal of development (Entwicklung) and assumes the possibility of a non-regressive spatialization, which contrasts with his own ontological definition of the medium. This paper discusses the contradictions of extensive type by presenting an analysis of the Archduke Trio op. 97, in the light of the well-known originary affinity between Beethoven and Hegel. At last, the text presents by which means and for what reasons the extensive type would lead Adorno to the last and most decisive modality of musical time’s configuration, the late style.

Legitimizing Bureaucracy and the Challenge of Caesarism

Abstract: Abstract:Part One of the article re-examines Weber’s famous chapter (as presented in the Gerth and Mills anthology) on bureaucracy in the light of the historical-critical edition of the text in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. A contrast emerges between the ideal type treatment of bureaucracy and actual, country specific, cases of bureaucracy where the determinants of state, economy and culture impact the bureaucracy. Weber insisted on the legitimacy of modern bureaucracy, which he analysed through his theory of social action. He offered broad legal grounds for its validity. This becomes the subject of detailed and critical examination in relation to neoliberalism, New Public Management and Neo-Weberian state theory.