This article systematically examines how access of business groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the executive branch of the European Union varies across political heads, civil servants, and an understudied yet critical intermediary figure of the executive branch: political advisers. Building upon exchange theory, we argue that the occurrence of a meeting between public officials and interest groups depends on information and legitimacy sought and offered by both types of actors, the public officials’ public exposure, and the interest groups’ lobbying strategies. The empirical analysis is focused on the executive body of the European Union (i.e., the European Commission). Our results show that, while political advisers and civil servants are more likely to meet with business groups than with NGOs, political heads are not biased in favor of any of these two groups.

This study analyses the intricate relationship between sanction-based accountability and bureaucratic shirking. Drawing on an original survey conducted among Chinese civil servants, it addresses the question of whether sanction-based accountability can effectively regulate the conduct of public officials and provide a cure for bureaucratic shirking. The study identifies the characteristics of shirking behaviour in the Chinese bureaucracy and distinguishes three major patterns: evading responsibility, shifting responsibility and reframing responsibility. The findings indicate that sanction-based accountability may contain some obvious and notorious slacking types of behaviour, such as stalling and inaction, but government officials may distort or reframe their responsibilities to cope with accountability pressure. Empirical evidence suggests that owing to some “strategic” adjustments in bureaucratic behaviour, flagrant shirking is replaced by more subtle ways of blame avoidance, such as playing it safe or fabricating performance information. Sanction-based accountability therefore does not offer a panacea for bureaucratic shirking.

This policy analysis reviews three popular proposals with significant political endorsement to enhance long-term care (LTC), here defined broadly to include residential care facilities, home care, and community care, in the wake of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis: national standards, provincial autonomy, and de-privatization. The proposals are summarized succinctly followed by a neo-institutionalist analysis of the obstacles to enact them based upon a series of interviews conducted prior to COVID-19 with senior civil servants in Canadian provinces for a newly published book (Marier, 2021) and political considerations. While the federal government has pursued the avenue of instituting national standards, the provinces have clearly expressed a desire to secure higher federal health transfers and pursue LTC reforms on their own. Considering the diversity of LTC arrangements across the provinces, which impact the politics of LTC within each jurisdiction, and the presence of many Conservative governments in provincial capitals, Ottawa faces an uphill battle to transform profoundly the LTC landscape.

How are civil servants and politically appointed advisers likely to respond to policy proposals that they believe will harm their countries severely even if they are legal? Based on the different loyalties and roles of political advisors (PA) and civil servants (CS), we hypothesise that (1) PAs are more likely to voice internally, (2) CSs are more likely to voice externally and (3) CSs in functionally politicised systems are more likely to stay silent. These hypotheses are tested on – and partially supported by – data collected through two surveys directed to the ministerial staffs in Denmark and Sweden. PAs are more likely to voice internally, but none of the two groups is particularly keen to voice externally. The propensity to voice concerns in case of perceived harmful policy proposals depends on the kind as well as the level of politicisation.