three - Political control or legitimacy deficit? Bureaucracies’ symbolic responses to bottom-up public pressure

Summary

Introduction

A large body of public administration literature focuses on the response of bureaucracies – whether government ministries or separate agencies – to political signalling, pressure and control. Building on principal– agent theory, this literature demonstrates politicians’ direct and indirect control over bureaucratic behaviour (for example, Moe, 1984; Wood and Waterman, 1991; Epstein and O’Halloran, 1999; Huber et al, 2001; West and Raso, 2013). Yet public bureaucracies are exposed not only to top-down political control, but also, increasingly, to direct bottom-up public pressure in the form of public opinion shifts and social protest. Moreover, the media play an important role in mirroring, actively shaping and amplifying such pressure (see Chapter Two). The direct responses of bureaucracies to such bottom-up public pressure and the mechanisms that underlie their responses have received limited theoretical and empirical attention to date. The small body of literature that analyses the direct responses of bureaucracies to public pressure focuses on their distinct reputation as the factor that guides and moderates their response (Rimkutė, 2018; Carpenter, 2002, 2004; Moffitt, 2010; Maor, 2011; Gilad et al, 2015; Maor and Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2013, 2015; Maor et al, 2013).These studies, however, overlook the likely importance of subjection to (or independence from) political control for the response of bureaucracies to bottom-up public pressure. This study contributes to current research by analysing the extent to which political control moderates bureaucracies’ direct response to salient signals from the public. In so doing, it complements other chapters in this book that analyse the implications of governance reforms involving the creation of semi-autonomous and independent agencies, for the public accountability and responsiveness of government (Schillemans, 2016; Jacobs and Schillemans, 2016).

The responses of bureaucracies to public pressure can be crudely divided into substantive responses (in terms of resource allocation, outputs and performance) and symbolic responses (most notably speeches, press releases and advertising campaigns). Symbolic responses, which are the focus of this study, may involve ‘cheap talk’. Yet, even so, they may enhance bureaucracies’ accountability and responsiveness to the public insofar as they shape citizens’ expectations from government and expose bureaucracies to external scrutiny when their performance falls short of expectations (but see Alon-Barkat and Gilad, 2017).