Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 14th Aug 2025, 03:46:12am BST
PSG 17- Sociology of the State: Reforms and Resilience & CoREX
Time:
Thursday, 28/Aug/2025:
2:30pm - 4:00pm
Session Chair: Prof. Thurid HUSTEDT, Hertie School Session Chair: Prof. Marie GORANSSON, Université libre du Bruxelles
Presentations
Politicized yet meritocratic : The development of a bureaucratic appointments system, Norway, 1665-2023
Bjørn Mo Forum, Jostein ASKIM, Marte Mangset
1University of Oslo, Norway; 2University of Oslo, Norway; 3University of Oslo, Norway
Research has demonstrated that bureaucratic recruitment based on merit fosters higher government quality than recruitment based on political loyalty and affiliation. In the context of managerial reforms and populism, it is crucial to deepen our understanding of how meritocratic systems are established and maintained. Excluding politicians from recruitment processes is not necessarily the solution, as several highly meritocratic systems allow significant political involvement in the selection of senior civil servants. Empirically, this raises questions about how a meritocratic system can develop despite political involvement. And conceptually: How should we differentiate between meritocratic and politicized bureaucratic recruitment if it is not simply about avoiding political interference? This paper employs a novel analytical framework and conducts a historical analysis of Norway’s bureaucratic recruitment system from 1660 to 2023, untangling the substantive and procedural components of a meritocratic recruitment system and exploring the interplay between regulation and political culture.
Who Rules the Government? On the power relations between politicians, civil servants and political appointees in the Swedish Core Executive
Göran SUNDSTRÖM, Torbjörn LARSSON
Stockholm University, Sweden
In this paper we discuss the political advisory system of the core executive in Sweden, especially the role and the functioning of political appointees. We elaborate on how various power relations between ministers, political appointees and civil servants play out in the Swedish core executive. Firstly, we describe the formal structure of the core executive and the positions and roles of the actors that we are interested in, i.e. ministers, civil servants, and political appointees. Secondly, we discuss the actual relationship between these actors. We focus on the relation between a) different ministers, b) ministers and civil servants, c) ministers and political advisors, and d) civil servants and political advisors.
We argue that governments of later years have become more dependent on support from political parties in Parliament formally being outside the Government. The question how to incorporate the opinions of these supporting parties has therefore become a high priority. This has changed the machinery inside the core executive, concentrating coordination activities and decision-making power towards the political center – the Prime Minister’s Office.
There has also been an increase in the number of political appointees in each ministry over time. This risks reducing the traditional closeness between the civil servants and the ministers, affecting negatively the informal “Civil Servant Contract” – characterized of mutual trust, openness and frankness on both sides – that has been developed over the years between the political leadership and the civil servants.
This problem is particularly evident in coalition governments that rely on supportive parties in Parliament. The use of political advisors as coordinators not only between the political parties in the coalition-government, but also the supporting parties outside the government means that many issues are being solved in the coordination offices with too little involvement of the relevant ministers. At the same time civil servants end up too far away from the final decision-making procedures, losing control of issues within their area of responsibility and not fully understanding how and why a certain decision has been made. This makes it difficult for them to give political advice based on anticipation.
Roles in the executive triangle: The case of Denmark
Heidi SALOMONSEN, Amalie Trangbæk
Aarhus University, Denmark
This Corex country report analyses the executive triangle in Denmark including ministers, top civil servants and ministerial advisers. The executive triangle is in Denmark situated in a parliamentary democracy in which governments, until recently are coalition and minority governments. Governments are served by a merit-based civil service, which is comparatively rather functionally politicized. In addition, they are served by a limited number of ministerial advisers, suggesting a comparatively limited degree of formal politicization.
The analysis focuses on the executive triangle—ministers, top civil servants, and ministerial —each of whom operates under distinct and rather unformalized role expectations resulting in rather informal bargains between the three types of actors.
The paper explores these bargains based upon extant literature and a first round of interviews with actors from within the executive triangle.
