Politicized bureaucrats in and beyond Europe. Conflicting loyalties,
professionalism and the law in the making of public services
« Looking at the way public services were delivered on a daily basis
within street-level bureaucracies, social scientists have been
increasingly focusing on the daily lives of civil servants, exploring
their interaction with users, their discretion in implementing public
policies, and the way they ultimately contributed to the making of
statehood in different contexts. This panel focuses on civil servants
protesting or acting ’against’ the state while working for, and within
its institutions.
Over the last couple of years, civil servants from various areas of
the world have indeed been engaging in political protests against
their government, or the specific policies that were imposed on them.
Beninese magistrates fought for their independence, Belgian judges for more staff to be hired. This panel invites contributors to think about why and how bureaucrats participate to such protests, despite
professional norms often prescribing restraint and withdrawal from
political life. What kind of norms and discourses do they mobilize,
and what kind of effects do such mobilizations produce? Papers can
also reflect on more subtle ways of acting ’against the state’, such
as disobeying administrative orders or resisting political pressure.
Looking at how bureaucrats critically engage against their own
administration will allow us to delve into conflicting loyalties,
current understandings of professionalism, and engagement with law –
all of which can contribute to new understandings of street-level
bureaucracies, beyond Weber (1956) or Lipsky (1980). »
More information about the conference on the following link:
▻https://easaonline.org/conferences/easa2020/cfp
Paper proposals should be submitted before the 20/01/2020, via