Publication
Politicization, Bureaucratic Legalism, and Innovative Attitudes in the Public Sector
Previous studies have identified institutional, organizational, and individual factors that promote innovation in public organizations. Yet they have overlooked how the type of public administration—and the type of administrators—is associated with innovative attitudes.
- Author
- Victor Lapuente and Kohei Suzuki
- Date
- 23 March 2020
In this study, two large, unique comparative data sets on public bureaucracies and public managers were used, to examine how bureaucratic politicization and legalistic features are associated with senior public managers’ attitudes toward innovation in 19 European countries. Results of multilevel analysis indicate that the bureaucratic politicization of an administration and the law background of public managers matter. Public managers working in politicized administrations and those whose education includes a law degree exhibit lower pro‐innovation attitudes (i.e., receptiveness to new ideas and creative solutions and change orientation).
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About the author
Kohei Suzuki is Assistant Professor at Institute of Public Administration, the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs at Leiden University, the Hague, the Netherlands. His research examines how bureaucratic structures and administrative reforms affect policy outcomes, bureaucratic behavior, and broader governance outcomes with a comparative perspective. He obtained his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington in June 2016. He also worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Quality of Government Institute, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He joined the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University in January 2019. Please visit his website for details.