Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory最新文献

{"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}

{"title":"Striking multiple balances in cross-sector collaborations: How leaders navigate institutional complexity with interdependent leadership behaviors","authors":"Sandra Henninger, Rick Vogel","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag022","url":null,"abstract":"In cross-sector collaborations (CSCs), leaders must navigate the complex and often conflicting demands of the public, business, and nonprofit sectors. This study explores how leaders manage this institutional complexity through a multi-level framework, drawing on a case study of a tri-sector partnership developing technology for disaster management. Based on evidence from 27 interviews, observations, and documentary material, we identify the leadership repertoire and, as our core contribution, uncover four distinct types of interdependencies between these behaviors: enabling, substituting, stabilizing, and inhibiting. Our findings reveal that leadership in CSCs goes beyond adopting a single style; rather, it requires a strategic orchestration of how different behaviors interact. We identify two overarching strategies (selective targeting and sequential switching) that leaders use to combine complementary behaviors while preventing them from undermining each other. By focusing on leaders’ micro-level agency in response to macro-level sector differences, this study provides a clearer understanding of how interdependent leadership behaviors converge into what we theorize as institutional leadership in CSCs.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148522567","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":"The Voice of the Voiceless: Refugees’ Perceptions of Participation Under Constraint","authors":"Khaldoun AbouAssi, Corbin M Walls","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag019","url":null,"abstract":"Refugee camps have evolved into durable governance sites characterized by centralized authority and monopolistic service environments where residents lack ‘exit’ options. While public administration scholarship extensively theorizes the benefits of participation, research often assumes a baseline of stable, democratic institutions, leaving ‘participation under constraint’ underdeveloped. This study examines whether ‘thin’ participation—awareness of feedback mechanisms and consultative outreach—is associated with refugees’ perceived outcomes at individual, community, and institutional levels. Using household-level survey data from 876 households across 33 refugee sites Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, we find that both latent awareness and consultation are significantly associated with improved subjective well-being. Our findings reveal a tiered impact: passive awareness correlates with community and institutional gains, while the relational intensity of consultation is required for individual-level improvements. These results suggest that even minimal engagement functions as a vital generative mechanism for institutional legitimacy in high-dependency, non-democratic environments.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148401018","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":"Representative Bureaucracy and Administrative Burdens: Exploring the Intersection of Lived Experience, Gender, and Professional Qualities","authors":"Ryan J Lofaro, Elizabeth Bell, Colt Jensen","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag018","url":null,"abstract":"Lived experience representative bureaucracy theory has expanded the scope of representative bureaucracy by exploring traits beyond race, ethnicity, and gender. However, scholars have yet to focus on the intersection of symbolic representation, intersectionality, and professional qualities. In this article, we employ lived experience representative bureaucracy theory and intersectionality theory to understand which identities (veteran status, gender, and disability status) and professional qualities shape client preferences on which bureaucrat they want to help them navigate administrative burdens. We analyze data from a conjoint experiment of 964 military veterans, showing that lived experience, intersectionality, and professional qualities matter, with the strongest preferences for employees who are responsive and competent. Regarding identity-based characteristics, veteran status and disability status representation were more salient than gender representation in helping veterans navigate healthcare-related administrative burdens. In line with our expectations grounded in intersectionality theory, we find that veterans with a disability prefer to be served by VA employees with a disability, demonstrating the importance of this combination of lived experiences and intersecting identities. We find further evidence that intersectionality matters among male respondents; the positive effects of veteran status were nullified in cases where the VA employee was transgender, revealing the importance of anti-transgender bias in shaping male veterans’ preferences. Exploratory analyses suggest that weak professional qualities can nullify or reverse the positive effects of shared identity, whereas strong professional qualities can compensate for the absence of representation. This study contributes to the literature by exploring the symbolic representative effects of various forms of lived experience representation alongside gender representation and professional qualities, as well as by examining representative bureaucracy through an intersectional lens. Additionally, our research provides a novel examination of disability status as an important and understudied identity with symbolic representative effects.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148394061","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":"Organizational Strategies for System Robustness: How Managers Navigate the Institutional Architecture of Complex Systems","authors":"Adam Wiechman, Aaron Deslatte, Elizabeth A Koebele, Margaret Garcia, John M Anderies","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag014","url":null,"abstract":"Many public managers oversee complex systems that require them to navigate multifaceted organizational decision-making processes. While there is general recognition that institutions constrain information processing, rigorous study of how particular institutional designs influence the strategies used by organizations to process information and act on the systems they oversee is limited by existing theory and methodological approaches. We propose a theoretical approach that integrates established understanding of institutions as choice architectures and disproportionate information processing in organizations with new understanding of collective inference from cognitive science. The approach addresses three limitations in existing theory: (i) the relationship between detailed institutional designs and organizational strategies, (ii) the role of flexibility in information processing, and (iii) the relationship between organizational strategies and system robustness. We demonstrate its application empirically using a mixed methods approach that combines institutional analysis and process tracing with a dynamic model to analyze how the City of Phoenix Water Services Department responded to environmental change through investment and ratemaking actions. Our findings highlight how institutional designs that require managers to account for multiple objectives benefit from added flexibility, allowing managers to explore new approaches that address competing objectives and increase system robustness. Conversely, designs exhibiting high costs without high flexibility may create rigidity traps that hinder action and reduce system robustness in the face of uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"267 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148384639","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":"Mapping the Temporal Evolution of Causal Effects in Public Administration and Policy Research","authors":"L Jason Anastasopoulos, Inkyu Kang","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag015","url":null,"abstract":"Recent growth in the use of randomized and quasi-experiments in public administration and policy research has advanced the ability to establish cause-and-effect relationships. However, many studies adopt static conceptions of causality, focusing on snapshots or time-averaged effects while overlooking how the effects change over time. This oversight is problematic, as interventions of scholarly interest, such as leadership training or the adoption of new technologies, are likely to produce impacts that unfold in various ways. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for understanding the temporal dynamics of causal effects and their implications for research hypotheses and design. We then introduce Bayesian Changepoint Models (BCMs) as a methodological tool for detecting shifts in the average, variance, or trend of causal effect series, providing a more rigorous yet accessible alternative to visually inspecting graphs. Next, we demonstrate the application of BCMs with an illustrative example derived from simulation data as well as a real-world case examining the effect of body-worn cameras on police officers’ use of force. Finally, we discuss how examining temporal changes in effects can advance theoretical understanding of why and how they occur, as well as inform the design and implementation of policies and strategies in practice.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286640","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}