TY - JOUR A1 - Wegrich, Kai T1 - Is the turtle still plodding along? Public management reform in Germany JF - Public Management Review N2 - Public management reforms in Germany have long been characterized by slow-moving incrementalism and maintenance of its administrative system’s central characteristics. This article reviews recent developments in administrative reforms against the background of the traditional German reform style. More ambitious reform efforts in the field of digitalization raise conceptual puzzles related to the conditions under which incrementalism can generate substantive change – and at what point incremental reforms give way to more rapid patterns of change. The article also discusses the implications of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on public management reforms. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2020.1771011 N1 - Published online: 28 May 2020 VL - 23 IS - 8 SP - 1107 EP - 1116 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bach, Tobias A1 - Jugl, Marlene A1 - Köhler, Dustin A1 - Wegrich, Kai T1 - Reputational threats and democratic responsiveness of regulatory agencies T2 - The Accountability of Expertise N2 - This chapter studies decision-making behaviour of independent regulatory agencies. Theoretical accounts of delegation to regulatory agencies emphasise that losses of political accountability of regulators are traded off against potential gains in regulatory efficiency. The theory of credible commitment suggests that independent (non-majoritarian) regulatory agencies are more effective in regulating markets than organisations under direct political control. However, independent regulatory agencies operate in a political context and need to demonstrate their benefit to a diverse set of stakeholders, including elected politicians. We are hence confronted with a ‘paradox of autonomisation’ according to which more autonomous public organisations have to take into consideration external demands to a greater degree than less autonomous organisations. Independent regulatory agencies will thus be subjected to high … Y1 - 2021 SN - 9781003175490 SP - 81 EP - 98 PB - Routledge CY - London, New York ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Geissler, René A1 - Wegrich, Kai ED - Geissler, Réne ED - Hammerschmid, Gerhard ED - Raffer, Christian T1 - Fiscal Rules at the Local Level: the Challenge of Enforcement T2 - Local Public Finance: An International Comparative Regulatory Perspective N2 - Despite the growing significance of fiscal rules, there is little research about tools and practices of enforcement at the local level. Addressing this knowledge gap, this chapter makes three contributions: first, we review the literature on regulatory enforcement in the ‘public-to-private’ context and discuss six key insights. Second, we provide an empirical overview of enforcement instruments across 21 European countries and discuss them in light of those key insights. Third, we present findings from an in-depth over-time analysis of enforcement practices in Germany’s largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. We find that European supervisory bodies have a range of instruments that broadly follow the logic of the ‘enforcement pyramid’ at their disposal, but there is substantial cross-national variation in the instruments used. The case study reveals a ‘back and forth’ enforcement style alternating between strengthening and loosening rules and enforcement measures. We find political logics, regulators’ capacities and economic contexts as key drivers. Finally, we conclude that the idea of enforcement as a rational application of legal norms is unrealistic. In order to increase compliance, regulators should make more of an effort to understand the underlying rationale for compliance and violations; they need to secure political support and a credible strategy for escalating sanctions in case of non-compliance. Y1 - 2021 SN - 9783030674656 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67466-3_3 SP - 39 EP - 56 PB - Springer ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Wegrich, Kai ED - Thompson, William R. T1 - Policy Instruments and Administrative Capacities T2 - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics N2 - Administrative capacities are required to give effect to policy instruments. While seemingly obvious, policy research has, as yet, not systematically linked these two perspectives. The policy instrument perspective emerged in the context of implementation research and the wider debate about changing modes of governance. Administrative capacities and resources always played a role in this research, but cumulative empirical exploration or theory building has remained underdeveloped. A stronger integration of administrative capacity perspectives into research on policy instruments is essential so as to progress our understanding regarding the choice, design, and operation of policy instruments. A stronger policy orientation in research on administrative capacities can help to address limitations of indicator-based studies of capacity, which currently dominate empirical research on administrative capacities. The design and choice of policy instruments has an effect on administrative capacities: Capacity-reinforcing policies can be distinguished from capacity-undermining ones. A challenge for future research is under which conditions will politicians invest in administrative capacities, an investment that will only yield (uncertain) positive outcomes in the medium term. Y1 - 2021 SN - 9780190228637 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1370 PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Wegrich, Kai ED - Howlett, Michael ED - Tosun, Jale T1 - Varieties of executive styles T2 - The Routledge Handbook of Policy Styles N2 - This chapter situates ‘executive styles’ within the wider ‘family of styles’ approaches and discusses some of the challenges for advancing comparative research in this field. To this end, it introduces two key institutional dimensions of executive politics that shape executive styles. Subsequently, it reviews and discusses empirical research on executive styles and elaborates on two analytical dimensions for the comparison of national and sectoral executive styles. In a next step, the chapter moves to comparisons over time and reviews studies that analyse the change of executive styles in individual country cases. While a range of (country) examples are used, the chapter draws in particular on European examples and quite specifically on Germany and the UK. The chapter concludes that exploring the varieties of executive styles requires combining national accounts that engage with the institutional and political complexities of single countries, or families of nations, in detail with focussed comparisons zooming in on specific dimensions. Y1 - 2021 SN - 9780367251437 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429286322 PB - Routledge CY - Abingdon ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Wegrich, Kai ED - Goetz, Klaus H. T1 - Incrementalism and its Alternatives T2 - The Oxford Handbook of Time and Politics N2 - This chapter discusses how a classic perspective of public policy and public administration, incrementalism, contributes to questions of the politics of time. It argues that the contribution of incrementalism is not limited to emphasizing the advantages of small-scale and stepwise policy or institutional changes compared to comprehensive reform strategies. Beyond this, the chapter shows how contributions from diverse fields, ranging from comparative politics and behavioral insights to urban planning, develop the concept of incrementalism, and how these approaches can enrich debates on policy and institutional change. In particular, the common image of incrementalism as subservient to existing power structures is challenged. Linking the varieties of incrementalism to questions of politics of time helps to develop these insights. Y1 - 2021 SN - 9780190862084 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190862084.013.9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bach, Tobias A1 - Jugl, Marlene A1 - Köhler, Dustin A1 - Wegrich, Kai T1 - Regulatory agencies, reputational threats, and communicative responses JF - Regulation & Governance N2 - A key claim in bureaucratic reputation literature is that reputation has several dimensions. This presents agencies with a difficult choice concerning which dimension(s) they should emphasize in the management of their reputation. This paper analyzes how regulatory agencies manage their reputation through communicative responses to public judgments, based on a singlecase study of the German financial regulator BaFin. Our theoretical argument underscores the importance of different reputational dimensions for regulatory agencies that simultaneously considers their distinct reputation reserves. Our main finding was that BaFin prioritizes responses to public judgments targeting reputational dimensions that are central to its mission and for which the agency has a weak reputation, as opposed to judgments targeting dimensions that are central to its mission and for which it has a strong reputation, or judgments targeting peripheral dimensions. The paper demonstrates the importance of agency missions for reputation management and suggests directions for further research. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12421 SP - 1 EP - 16 ER -