Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory最新文献

{"title":"Balancing risk communication and accountability concerns in risk management: A study of major public project investments","authors":"Sof Thrane, Ulrik Christiansen, Torben Juul Andersen, Giulio Zichella","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag031","url":null,"abstract":"Effective administration of public organizations requires timely responses to emerging risks, yet communicating those risks up the hierarchy can expose operational managers to blame in politicized accountability environments. This study examines how public managers navigated that tension in an analysis of 130 risk reports filed over a seven-year period associated with two major procurement and maintenance projects in the Danish Defence. Using an abductive qualitative approach, we develop a dynamic model of risk management with four phases: (1) risk as an operational concern, (2) turning risk into an organizational problem, (3) assigning blame and accountability, and (4) initiating mitigation and response. We find that risk and accountability communication are interdependent processes rather than independent sequential processes. Operational managers attempt to raise awareness of emerging risks while simultaneously deflecting potential blame and catering to higher-level concerns about public scrutiny. This tension generates pressure to only report when it is absolutely necessary, while higher-level managers often postpone action to avoid political exposure. These practices contribute to delays, projects not meeting specifications, and significant budget overruns. The study advances a dynamic theory of public sector risk management and explains how hierarchical communication practices influence whether, when, and how emerging risks are addressed.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149218354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Routinized Deference: Predictive Screening and Bureaucratic Capacity in Child Protective Services","authors":"Jiaen Wu","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Predictive algorithms are increasingly used to support frontline decision-making in public administration, but evidence remains limited on how they affect bureaucratic capacity. This study examines county-level adoption of predictive screening tools in U.S. Child Protective Services using NCANDS data (2010–2023) and a stacked difference-in-differences design. Leveraging staggered adoption, I find no change in the total number of investigations opened and a sizable decline (about 15%) in the share of investigations that are substantiated. These results are inconsistent with operational capacity gains and more consistent with misclassification that erodes analytical capacity. These findings are consistent with a mechanism of routinized deference: under workload and accountability pressures, algorithmic recommendations can become procedurally defensible defaults. Overall, this study argues that predictive screening is not capacity-enhancing by default, as routinized deference can undermine the professional judgment central to bureaucratic work.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149210679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Generative Spaces: Collaboration, Learning and Innovation in a Regulatory Sandbox","authors":"Carl Macrae,Christopher K Ansell","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Public administrators are increasingly called upon to create “generative spaces” that foster emergent processes of collaboration, learning and innovation. This article presents an inductive and ethnographically grounded study of one relatively novel but increasingly popular generative space—a regulatory sandbox. A regulatory sandbox is a controlled and defined space and set of processes that are established by regulators to work with innovators to collaboratively explore, test and learn about early-stage products and innovations and understand emerging regulatory implications. Investigating a sandbox to explore the regulation of new artificial intelligence technologies conducted by a national healthcare regulator, we identify the organizing practices of the sandbox that make it “generative” of collaboration, learning and innovation. An inductive analysis identified three key organizing practices: providing distinct and varied social spaces separated from normal regulatory demands (protection); enabling participants to collaboratively examine innovations and iteratively develop new knowledge and regulation (adaptation); and supporting focused and immersive examination of innovations from a diverse range of perspectives (participation). A theoretically-driven secondary analysis suggests that generative spaces can be understood as liminal experiences that foster detachment, equivalence and reconstruction.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149092558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Institutional Conversion and Digital Transformation in Local Governments: A Longitudinal Analysis of Trajectories","authors":"Adalmir de Oliveira Gomes","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag029","url":null,"abstract":"This article asks a central question in digital government research: why do local governments operating under similar institutional conditions follow sharply different digital transformation trajectories over time? Drawing on theories of gradual institutional change, the study conceptualizes digital transformation not as a discrete adoption outcome, but as a process of institutional conversion through which technological capacity is translated into sustained digital service provision. Information governance is theorized as the key conditioning mechanism linking technological resources to durable organizational outcomes. The analysis combines longitudinal panel models, fixed-effects estimators, and trajectory-based clustering using a panel of all Brazilian municipalities (MUNIC/IBGE; N = 5,569) across seven waves between 2004 and 2024. Results show that increases in technological capacity are associated with subsequent gains in digital services, but these effects are gradual and conditional. Information governance significantly shapes how municipalities mobilize and stabilize technological resources over time, while interaction models reveal non-linear and diminishing returns consistent with institutional coordination limits. Trajectory analyses identify four distinct patterns of digital transformation, ranging from ‘institutionalized pioneers’ to ‘persistent stagnation’, demonstrating that digital development unfolds through path-dependent and institutionally anchored trajectories rather than through simple convergence. The article contributes to public administration research in three ways: provides rare longitudinal evidence on local digital transformation over two decades; integrates institutional change theory into digital government research by conceptualizing governance as a mechanism of institutional conversion; and advances a trajectory-based explanation of digital transformation that shifts attention from episodic technological adoption to cumulative institutional processes shaping long-run administrative performance.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148922656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Model of Agency Behavior in Participatory Budgeting: A Resource Dependence Perspective","authors":"Seunghyun Kim","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag028","url":null,"abstract":"Based on resource dependence theory, this article theorizes why government agencies adopt citizen proposals in participatory budgeting. Agencies depend on the executive budget office and the legislature for budget approval, which makes them face uncertainty in securing budgets from these political principals. In this context, agencies can adopt citizen proposals to present their requests as reflecting citizen demands, thereby increasing the probability of approval. Building on this logic, this study argues that the greater the uncertainty agencies face in their dependencies on principals, the more likely they are to depend on proposals. This argument is tested using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression based on citizen proposals (N = 3,609) submitted through Korea’s national participatory budgeting initiative from 2020 through 2023. The results show that agencies with less financial support from the legislature or those with smaller budgets are more likely to adopt proposals, as they face greater uncertainty due to unstable budgetary flows or fewer response options to manage resource instability. Agencies are also more likely to adopt proposals when they previously secured greater funding through proposal adoption, but this effect weakens for larger-budget agencies or those receiving greater legislative support. These findings emphasize the strategic nature of proposal adoption and the role of resource dependence in agency responses to proposals.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148922825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Civil Servants and Democratic Backsliding: The Role of Managerial Signals","authors":"Mads Pieter van Luttervelt, Mathias Rask Østergaard-Nielsen, Martin Bækgaard, Zuzana Murdoch, Benny Geys","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag027","url":null,"abstract":"Political efforts to weaken democratic institutions place civil servants in a dilemma between political responsiveness and protecting democratic values. As civil servants are embedded in the political-administrative hierarchy, we argue that signals from their direct hierarchical superiors are critical to understand how civil servants address this dilemma. Using a randomized survey experiment among Norwegian national-level civil servants (N = 1,446) and ordered logistic regression models, we find that democratic backsliding increases opposition to government wishes, internal and external voice, and consideration of exit from the organization. Managerial signals moderate these effects: civil servants are more inclined to voice concerns or consider exit when managers signal responsiveness to government wishes. In a conceptual replication and extension among US federal, state and local civil servants (N = 504) using ordered logistic regression models, we likewise find a greater inclination to exit if the manager signals responsiveness to government wishes, but also that respondents are less inclined to voice concerns to the manager. Overall, our findings imply that managerial signals within the political-administrative hierarchy are shaping civil servants’ immediate reactions to democratic backsliding.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"219 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148821168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Conditional Compliance: The Role of Sector and Policy Design in State Sexual Misconduct Policy","authors":"Jaeyeong Nam, Daniel L Fay, Emily Boykin, Elizabeth Bell","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag026","url":null,"abstract":"The role of principal-agent dynamics in performance and accountability reforms has been a recurring theme in public administration research. Yet, less attention has been dedicated to how the intersection of sector and policy design shapes principal-agent dynamics and subsequent policy outcomes. This study theoretically explores and empirically tests how sector and policy design shape the effects of state legislation that seeks to prevent shirking (mismanagement and underreporting) in the context of sexual misconduct outcomes in U.S. colleges and universities. We code every state policy designed to regulate higher education institutions’ management of sexual misconduct from 2007 to 2018 in the U.S. and leverage a Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood with a staggered difference-in-differences design to identify the effects. Our findings suggest that both sector and policy design matter: public institutions increase reporting in response to prevention policies that promote education and awareness, but prevention policies have no effect on private institutions. Other policies regulating enforcement and infrastructure produce null effects across both sectors. These findings have important implications for principal-agent theory and policy design research on effective methods for reducing shirking in social equity, accountability, and performance reporting.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148768006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Institutional Amnesia and Public Administration: Does History Repeat?","authors":"Alastair Stark, Hridesh Gajural, Jack Corbett, Dennis C Grube, Heather Lovell, Rodney Scott","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag025","url":null,"abstract":"Existing research suggests that a lack of institutional memory causes history to repeat in problematic ways within public administration agencies. However, this claim has not been well supported by theory or data that illuminates the process and effects of history repeating. To remedy this, the nascent concept of institutional amnesia is presented here as a means of theorizing repetitions of public administrative history. A sequential explanatory mixed method research design uses quantitative survey data (n=1608) and qualitative interview data (n=75) generated in the public services of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to show how institutional amnesia can lead to the recycling of ideas and practices, the inefficient relearning of information seeking processes and the delivery of conducive decision-making environments that can help address historical problems. These findings draw attention to the fact that administrative history does indeed repeat in public agencies because of institutional amnesia, but that it does so in positive as well as negative ways.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148727904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Large Language Models and Conversational Counter-Arguments to Anti-Public Sector Bias","authors":"John D Marvel, Sheeling Neo, Rachel Cho, Sangwon Ju","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag020","url":null,"abstract":"Can a good argument change an individual’s mind? In three pre-registered experiments, we explore this question in the domain of public sector organizational performance. We observe human subjects as they engage in conversations with a generative artificial intelligence (AI) programmed to argue in one of seven distinct “styles,” including a confrontational challenger style, a didactic style, and a sycophantic style. We develop a theory of effective argumentation predicting that conversational styles which are pleasant and engaging will be more persuasive than styles which are unpleasant or unstimulating. Contrary to this prediction, we find that conversational styles which challenge subjects’ negative views of government agencies produce significant positive attitude change, while sycophantic styles that indulge those views do not. Troublingly, subjects find the sycophantic styles more enjoyable, less frustrating, and more credible than the challenger styles. This dissociation between user experience and persuasive outcome—what we call “grudging persuasion”—suggests that attitude change does not require a pleasant conversational experience, and that the styles subjects enjoy most may be precisely the ones least likely to move them. Our findings point to a potentially dark side of LLM-based persuasion: sycophantic styles that users find most appealing are the least effective at correcting misinformed views.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148693382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Institutionalized Enforcement of Administrative Compliance: State Regulator Use of Noncompliance Burdens","authors":"Mingxu (Emma) Li, Daniel L Fay","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag023","url":null,"abstract":"Administrative burden scholarship typically examines rules and regulations affecting access to public benefits during initial citizen-state interactions. Scholars agree that individual burdens function as “hidden politics” because policy changes during implementation through bureaucratic discretion. Less is known about bureaucratic behavior or hidden politics enforced on third-party service providers maintaining compliance. In this article we address this by examining noncompliance burdens imposed on abortion providers to understand if regulators emulate peers’ behavior. Using an institutional theoretical framework and administrative records from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (FAHCA) on abortion provider oversight, we construct a directed dyadic event history model using 1540 dyad-year observations to predict isomorphism or divergence of sanction activities across regulatory field offices. We find that regulatory field offices emulate behavior of others based on peer’s previous sanction behavior and oversight workload. We also find that regulators diverge from peers based on the regulatory conditions of their own jurisdiction.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148596375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}