Jostein Askim

University of Oslo · Department of Political Science

Amalgamation of local governments is an incentive for pre-merger overspending as the costs are transferred to the merged unit of the future. The article updates application of the common pool theory to such opportunistic pre-merger behavior. It studies Norway’s reform of the 2010s and paints a uniquely nuanced picture of pre-merger overspending, co...

A change of government or minister constitutes a stress test for the relationship between ministers and bureaucrats. The new political masters may question the loyalty of incumbent bureaucrats and seek to replace them. However, the relationship between political changes and administrative turnover is poorly understood in meritocratic systems. This...

The article explains how the unprecedented pandemic management decision to lock down the country came about, using the case of Norway and drawing on unique interview material from political and administrative executives. Urgency and precaution were the government’s primary considerations in March 2020, with proportionality and due process only peri...

This book presents 23 in-depth case studies of successful public policies and programmes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. Each chapter tells the story of the policy’s origins, aims, design, decision-making and implementation processes, and assesses in which respects—programmatically, process-wise, politically and over time—and to wh...

This book presents 23 in-depth case studies of successful public policies and programmes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. Each chapter tells the story of the policy’s origins, aims, design, decision-making and implementation processes, and assesses in which respects—programmatically, process-wise, politically and over time—and to wh...

The proposition that amalgamation reforms lead to a common-pool problem is strongly supported; governments are incentivized to overspend before the merger is implemented. However, existing literature helps little in understanding why some governments do not overspend in the pre-merger period, and why hoarders do not overspend more than they do. One...

The chapter draws on 50 élite interviews with ministers, chiefs of staff, permanent secretaries and heads of communication, as well as three rounds of surveys to state secretaries and political advisers. It paints a picture of the Norwegian core executive in which ministers and departments are strong, and the prime minister and his/her office is co...

Artikkelen studerer instrumenter for koalisjonskontroll i Norge, saerlig regjeringsavtaler og partikryssende statssekretaerer. Den spør hvordan bruken av disse instrumentene har utviklet seg mellom 1963 og 2020, og bruker blant annet regjeringsavtaler, forhandlingsprotokoller fra regjeringsforhandlinger, politiske biografier og intervjuer med tidli...

Mergers incentivize local governments to ease their fiscal policies before the merger is implemented. This incentive is powerful: it is known that local governments start easing fiscal policies even before they know for sure that a merger will occur and even if merging is what they want. Based on a study of Norwegian municipalities, this article sh...

The paper opens the “black box” of decision-making in the center of the core executive; it is a close-up study of political, bureaucratic, and expert actors’ interaction leading up to the Norwegian government’s decision in March 2020 to enforce a lockdown in response to COVID-19. The study shows that uncertainty, urgency and precaution were the fac...

Artikkelen studerer tilsetting av norske toppbyråkrater i et politiseringsperspektiv og ser på sammenhengen mellom politisk bakgrunn og kompetanse. Forskningsspørsmålene er (1) om toppbyråkrater med politisk bakgrunn er bedre eller dårligere kvalifisert enn andre toppbyråkrater når det gjelder fagkunnskap og ledererfaring og (2) om de som er tilkny...

The growth of ministerial advisors is often seen as a mean to increase control over the bureaucracy. However, to fully understand politicization it is important to focus not only on the actual number of ministerial advisors, but also on their type of party-political background and their actual role within the ministry. The article presents results...

This article studies the difference in the government response to COVID-19 in Norway and Sweden drawing upon theories of agenda setting, crisis management and multi-level governance. Despite having virtually identical systems of government and, initially, facing similar infection threats, Sweden opted for far less strict countermeasures than Norway...

This article analyses the Norwegian government's evaluation practice over the 25-year period 1994-2018. Evaluations are mandatory for governmental ministries and agencies in Norway, and the government conducts about 100 evaluations annually. This article utilises data from a unique database to describe the development in the evaluation industry, fo...

How is government affected by including populists in a governing coalition? We investigate if populist political parties behave "normally" when they attain power, or if they govern differently from mainstream political parties. Empirically, we use survey data from 282 ministerial advisers from three cabinets in Norway. Our conclusion is that populi...

Ministerial advisors have become an essential aspect of executive branches worldwide, thus making the ministerial advisor office a potential route for young politicians aspiring to an expanding political class. The article studies which professions ministerial advisors migrate to following their ministerial careers, how ministerial advisors’ post-m...

Much research following Kaufman’s classic study Are Government Organizations Immortal? has investigated the claim that government agencies enjoy great security and long life. Less attention has been paid to Kaufman’s thesis that government agencies facing a termination threat have strong incentives to react. In a study of the on-going Norwegian loc...

In a decentralized welfare state, central and local governments need each other to settle refugees. Using the case of Norway, the article studies how these interdependencies have been governed over time, including through the 2015–2016 refugee crisis. Norway's refugee settlement programme is a conscious hybrid of market and network governance and i...

The article compares the careers ministerial advisors before and after politics. Under study is a cohort of 139 ministerial advisors that served in Norwegian governments 2001 to 2009. The results show a post-ministerial migration out of politics, decreases in the shares working in central and subnational government, and increases in the shares work...

Public sector reforms often take place in heterogeneous reform environments. Key political, administrative and societal actors often advocate different definitions of problems and solutions. A major leadership challenge is to choose a reform strategy that ensures the requisite level of support, even when the initial conflict structure is highly com...

Scholars have argued that government agencies face a complex web of reputational concerns regarding how they are perceived by multiple audiences who prioritise different dimensions of their work. Drawing on social identity theory, we argue that civil servants are concerned about the reputation of the agency for which they work, but also about other...

This article demonstrates the value of conceptualizing four ideal types when studying ministries’ contract steering of state agencies—relational, double-whammy, performance, and behavioral steering—each defined by its combination of input- and output-oriented steering. In the system under study—Norway—about half of all agencies are subjected to ste...

Van Dooren, Askim and Van de Walle describe the orientation of research on public sector performance since 1988, and especially the last 15 years, using Study Group 2’s call for papers and the European Group of Public Administration (EGPA) conference venues as lieux de memoires. Changes in orientation over time show how performance research connect...

There is a great need for innovation in the public sector and for improved understanding of how innovation can be turned into evidence‐based public policy. This article discusses potential contributions from 30 years of experience in the Nordic countries with a reform programme called ‘Free Commune Experiments’ (FCEs). Here, local authorities are g...

Political appointees from different parties from that of their minister—cross-partisan appointees (CPAs)—are increasingly found in the core executive. Ministerial advisory scholarship has overlooked CPAs, while the coalition governance literature sees them as ‘spies’ and ‘coalition watchdogs’. This article argues theoretically and demonstrates empi...

Decentralisation of political and administrative functions from national to regional levels of government has been a major governance trend in Europe over the past decades. Although science policy has generally been an exception from this, parts of science policy have been decentralised to regional levels in several countries. This article studies...

Local government systems change at varying speeds. While some countries have dramatically reduced the number of local governments during a short period of time, other countries have seen only incremental change or relative inertia. A number of explanations for structural change have been put forward in the comparative local government literature, b...

The chapter develops a theoretical model consisting of factors that exert pressure to undertake amalgamation reforms (fiscal stress, urbanization, decentralization, reform history), and factors that mediate the causal relationship between pressure to reform and decisions to implement amalgamation reform (e.g., political system characteristics). The...

Political appointees in executive government have received increased scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies have covered non-Westminster systems, and apart from classifications that systemize variation in assignments, theorizing about appointees has been limited. Using large-N survey data, the article finds three distinct roles a...

NIBR-rapport. Rapporten beskriver og vurderer det statlige tilsynets virkninger på kommunene og det lokale selvstyret. Disse virkningene vurderes i lys av regionale tilsynsmyndigheters praksis, styringen av tilsynet fra sentrale statlige sektormyndigheter og gjennom lovgivningen og forskriftsverket. Det gis anbefalinger om endringer av dagens ordni...

This article addresses the following questions: How are administrative and managerial accountability combined, and to what extent does it depend on agency characteristics? We study the performance management between parent ministries and five state agencies in Norway in the area of hospital administration, welfare administration, and immigration. F...

1. Hva kjennetegner Forsvarsdepartements etatsstyring av sine underliggende virksom- heter? Sammenheng mellom strategisk og operativ styring beskrives og diskuteres. Videre beskrives hovedtrekk ved resultatoppf lgingen, basert p�a tilbakerapportering og etatsstyringsm ter. 2. Hva kjennetegner etatsstyring i forsvarssektoren sammenlignet med hva vi...

This article analyzes the Norwegian state administration’s performance management practices, based on a study of performance contracts between 77 Norwegian executive agencies and their parent ministries. The results show that most performance objectives target agency outputs and outcomes, suggesting that the “right version” of performance managemen...

Kapittelet argumenterer for at det er viktig å gjøre evaluering av offentlig politikk til gjenstand for forskning. De foreslår blant annet at en studerer nærmere hva som gjøres og hva som ikke gjøres til gjenstand for evaluering – og hvorfor, under hvilke rammebetingelser ulike evalueringer gjennomføres, og hva det legges vekt på. Med utgangspunkt...

Rapporten beskriver og vurderer det statlige tilsynets virkninger på kommunene og det lokale selvstyret. Disse virkningene vurderes i lys av regionale tilsynsmyndigheters praksis, styringen av tilsynet fra sentrale statlige sektormyndigheter og gjennom lovgivningen og forskriftsverket. Det gis anbefalinger om endringer av dagens ordning

In recent years welfare services in Western Europe have been criticized for poor coordination. In response, ‘seamlessness’ has emerged as a vision for public administration with ‘one-stop shops' viewed as means to reach this. This article conceptualizes the one-stop shop and presents a three country case study to examine its drivers and its adaptat...

In this article we compare four Norwegian public utilities sectors: the electricity industry, the e-com industry, the railway and the postal service. All sectors have been subject to public policy reforms since the 1980s, though reform content and degree varies. In the electricity industry Norway is a liberalization forerunner - a virtual reform "h...

This article addresses how to assess public-sector reforms using a reform in the Norwegian welfare administration as a case study. This reform represents a complex hybrid organizational form and a challenging combination of political control and local autonomy. We examine first how the reform has addressed its three main goals. These were to get pe...

The article reports a case study of a recent and major reform in the Norwegian welfare sector, involving the employment service, the national insurance administration, and the social services. The reform involves two common joined-up government reform measures, namely partnerships and mergers. The study examines how instrumental problem solving in...

The article's starting point is that the persuasiveness of arguments for and against performance information's usefulness for elected representatives in government is limited by a lack of empirical evidence. Based on survey data from Norwegian local government, the article identifies factors that condition the extent to which councillors search for...

The article expands citizen participation research by tackling participation from the viewpoint of elected officials – the recipients of citizen input. The article studies the role citizen input plays in elected officials’ decision making. Citizen input is defined as information elected officials obtain through direct contact with citizens and repr...

Benchmarking rests on the assumption that it supports organizational learning and innovation, but the empirical knowledge that underpins this perceived means-end relationship is limited. This article draws on existing research to develop a framework for analyzing organizational learning outcomes from municipal benchmarking. The framework incorporat...

Performance management has become a defining feature of public administration, especially in OECD countries (Bouckaert and Halligan, 2006; Radin, 2000). Performance management consists of three routinized activities. The first is measuring the outputs, outcomes and throughputs of organizations, people and programs in government, thereby generating...

This article aims to improve knowledge of performance information's role in political decision-making. Two research questions are addressed, with data from a national survey of councillors in Norway: first, how important is performance information for councillors? The article disaggregates decision-making into three stages and assesses performance...

How Do Politicians Use Performance Information? This article aims to improve knowledge of performance information’s role in political decision-making. Two research questions are addressed, with data from a national survey of councillors in Norway: First, how important is performance information for councillors? The article disaggregates decision-ma...

This article presents a study of how a balanced scorecard was implemented over a period of five years in four very different functional departments within Larvik municipality in Norway. The article narrates and compares the adaptation processes of the four departments, focusing on changes in their management control practices and changes in learnin...

Benchmarking is a managerial technique that is popular among both private and public sector organisations. Its usefulness is contested, however, especially for public sector organisations (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000: 112). Sceptics claim that benchmarking is a time-consuming window-dressing exercise, while optimists see it as a potent driver for im...