Geert Bouckaert on the Neo-Weberian State

This event is open to IIPP’s students and faculty only

Hosted at UCL IIPP on Wednesday 6th March 2024 from 12:00 - 13:30 (GMT) for a talk by Geert Bouckaert.

Geert Bouckaert will talk about ‘The neo-Weberian state: From ideal type model to reality?‘ Public sector reforms have been a feature of past decades. Many of these reforms reacted against hierarchy and bureaucracy to shift to markets and networks. Next to New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG), the neo-Weberian state (NWS) also remained a crucial ideal type, certainly for the Western European practice which is embedded in Weberian public administration (PA). A theoretical and empirical question is whether NWS is sustainable and resilient in re-inventing and re-appraising ‘bureaucracy’ in the 21st century. This contribution claims that initially there was an empirical observation, certainly in continental Europe, of neo-Weberian public administration derived from the dynamics of public sector reforms in the second half of the 20th century. It was then ‘upgraded’ as an NWS ideal type model for theoretical reasons. NWS is a hierarchy-driven system within a hierarchy-market-network space. This NWS (based and driven by hierarchy) then moved to one of the normative reform models. It is also claimed and assumed that NWS, contrary to NPM (market-driven) and NPG (network-driven), will ensure the three core functions of a ‘whole of government’ strategy within a ‘whole of society’ context: inclusive and equitable service delivery, resilient crises governance, and effective innovation for government and society. 

This brown bag lecture is part of Creative Bureaucracy brown bags on Wednesdays throughout Term 2.
 
The talk is being organised as an enrichment event as part of an IIPP MPA module led by Prof Rainer Kattel. Students who would like to be notified of other events in the future can sign up by emailing IIPPComms@ucl.ac.uk.

Read more about Creative Bureaucracy brown bag lectures here