Conference Agenda

Research on political and administrative relationships in coalition-led governments has mainly been restricted to Western Europe (Global North), with little focus on developing countries (Global South). Kadima (2014), Klüver and Bäck (2019) and Oikonomou (2019) further observe that most studies dealing with coalition-led governments have been concentrated in the European Union, while Khumalo and Netswera (2020, p. 176) confirm that countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have a rich history of coalition-led governments. Limited comparative analysis between developing and developed countries appears to be detrimental to uncovering “new” insights in the development of the political-administrative interface in coalition-led governments. Sing, Slack and Sharma (2021:1) corroborate this by arguing that the knowledge gap is compounded in “that best practice governance approaches in developed countries are suggested by donors and developmental organisations and transferred to developing countries, with simplistic prescriptive intentions aimed at addressing public sector improvement failures.” Thus, what to borrow and what to leave are a central in creating an effective and efficient political-administrative interface in coalition-led governments. Therefore, scholars (Svara, 2006; and Cedras, 2021) have argued that there is a need to rethink or reconsider the value of the political-administrative dichotomy in the contemporary epoch. Static assumptions and normative or theoretical assumptions of the political-administrative dichotomy, including the complementarity approach, appear unable to deal with complex and dynamic interactions between political principals and administrative officials in coalition-led governments. Reconsidering the political-administrative interface in coalition-led governments necessitates policy learning across developed and developing countries. Consequently, micro, meso and macro approaches to policy learning are critical to creating dialogue and generating insights, especially in learning from cross-national experiences on the political-administrative interface in coalition-led governments in both developed and developing countries.

This study selected the interpretive research paradigm. The latter is relevant because it seeks to understand participants' meanings and subjective viewpoints in a particular context (Bonache and Festing, 2020:104). For this reason, this study followed a qualitative research approach to describe and gain new insights on the political-administrative interface in coalition-led governments in both developed and developing country context. The target population includes all subject experts or international academics familiar with forming coalition-led governments and their effect on the political-administrative dichotomy. The researcher purposively selected eighteen (n=18) subject experts in Public Administration and Management or closely related disciplines from both developed (n=9) and developing (n=9) countries who have expertise in coalition-led government formation and the political-administrative dichotomy discourse. Subsequently, 11 participants with expertise in Public Administration, Political Science and Public Law responded through semi-structured interviews, giving a 61% response rate. These participants all held doctorates derived from developed (United Kingdom, Belgium and the Czech Republic) and developing countries (South Africa, Lesotho and Brazil). Qualitative data analysis software (DEDOOS) was used to code the data from which the themes and subthemes emerged.

This article revealed significant cross-cutting lessons for uncovering the nexus between the political-administrative dichotomy and coalition-led governments in developed and developing countries. Thus, the empirical differences and similarities across and within developed and developing countries’ realpolitik and administrative realities are crucial for gaining new insight into the political-administrative dichotomy in coalition-led governments.

In a recent article, Bauer and Kassim show that EU cabinets are no longer a national point of entry, no longer only a link between the commissioners and its administration, but mainly a tool to embody the collective dimension of the EU Commission and to create internal coherence within the EU compromises. In other words, they would now represent a tool to inscribe the Commissioners into the EU symphony rather than to boost their political and soloist instinct. Based on the sociography of all heads and deputy heads of cabinets under Junker and VDL European Commission, our study wonders to what extent their profiles confirm the existence of a symphony and even more if they are or are not an asset for it and in which terms. After having described the variables studied, the paper shows the first initial and cross results and ends with two relational methodologies testing the sense, or even the art of balance at stake when staffing EU cabinets. The first methodology consists of a Multiple correspondence analysis representing the space of top cabinet members; the second proposes an original methodology aiming at determining the structuring power that représents the form of the triad composed by the Commissioners and their two first collaborators.