Reconnecting citizens to the administrative state? (ReConnect)
The importance of the topic
The current age of political turbulence – expressed through citizen dissatisfaction and populist politics – represents a fundamental challenge to the authority of the institutions of the administrative state. As public administration is central to democratic governance, as it connects citizens to the state, it is central to explore sources of citizen disconnection and administrative efforts to reconnect citizens with the state.
Project focus
ReConnect investigates how calls for more ‘responsive’ administrative state institutions have developed – both among citizens and politicians – and how the administrative state has sought to become more responsive, especially when simultaneously faced with expectations of neutrality and impartiality.
Methodology
ReConnect explores, across European states, five distinct citizen-focused dimensions of the administrative state: constitutional, regulatory, enabling, consumer-protecting, and consulting dimensions. Using a mixed-methods approach, including attitudinal, media, document, and interview analysis, ReConnect generates new knowledge to compare and explain variation across both European jurisdictions and dimensions of the administrative state. In the process, the project contributes to academic and practitioner debates regarding the future of the administrative state and to a better understanding of how citizens can be reconnected to broader democratic governance and the administrative state in particular.
Team
Project Leader:
Professor Dr. Martin Lodge, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
Prof. Dr. Martin Lodge has been a member of the Department of Government since 2002. Before that appointment, he was Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown and Senior Research Officer at the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR). He is currently Director of CARR. His research interests are:
- Comparative regulatory regimes and policies
- Institutional analysis
- German, British, and EU public policy
Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Nick Sitter, Norwegian Business School (Norway)
Prof. Dr. Nick Sitter (b. 1969) is a Professor of Political Economy. He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Government, on developing competitive party systems in post-communist East-Central Europe, and an M.Sc. and B.Sc. (econ) from the same institution. He is also a Professor of Public Policy at the Central European University and a Research Associate at the LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation. Previous academic positions include lectureships at the American University, Florida State University, and Reading University and a part-time teaching position at the LSE. Before completing his Ph.D. Nick Sitter worked as a political consultant in London’s oil and gas sector. His research areas are:
- Comparative European Politics
- European Integration
- Public Policy and Political Economy
- Political Violence and Strategic Studies
Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Christel Koop, University of London (UK)
Prof. Dr. Christel Koop is a Reader in Political Economy. Her research focuses on regulation, central banking, and other areas of economic policy-making, both at the national and EU-level. She is particularly interested in technocratic decision-making’s independence, accountability, and legitimacy. Christel holds a BA and MPhil degree in political science from Leiden University in the Netherlands and obtained her Ph.D. degree in political and social sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Before joining the department, she was a Fellow in Public Policy and Administration at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also co-organizer of the inter-university London Public Policy Seminars.
Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Jacint Jordana, Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (Spain)
Prof. Dr. Jacint Jordana (Granollers, 1962) is professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He has a Ph.D. in Economics (Universitat de Barcelona, 1992). He has been visiting fellow at the Copenhagen Business School, Australian National University, Wissenschafts Zentrum Berlin, University of California (San Diego), and Konstanz University. From 2005 to 2010, he was co-chair (together with David Levi-Faur) of the ECPR standing group on Regulatory Governance. Currently, he is the director of the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). His main research area is focused on analyzing public policies, emphasizing regulatory policy and regulatory governance. Recent publications include articles, among others, on the diffusion of regulatory institutions, the comparative development of domestic public policies, and policymaking in policy networks. His publications include the edited books "Accountability and Regulatory Governance" (Palgrave, 2014), edited with Andrea Bianculli and Xavier Fernandez-Marín, and together with David Lavi-Faur, "The politics of Regulation" (Edward Elgar, 2004) and "The rise of Regulatory Capitalism: The Global Diffusion of a New Order" (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 598, 2005). He has also worked on topics related to collective action, policy diffusion, and social capital, which he has published extensively. Between 2005 and 2010, he was co-responsible for the ECPR standing group on regulatory governance.
Project Investigator:
Dr. Caelesta Braun, Leiden University (the Netherlands)
Dr. Caelesta Braun’s research expertise includes political advocacy, interest group politics, public decision-making, bureaucratic politics, and regulatory governance. She studies the role of non-state stakeholders in public decision-making and regulation and how we can make sure to involve stakeholders in executive politics in an inclusive and effective way. In addition, she studies how stakeholders can successfully strategize to influence legislative and regulatory decision-making. Caelesta’s main research fields include political advocacy, interest group politics, public decision-making, bureaucratic politics, and regulatory governance. In May 2015, she received a Vidi grant from the Dutch research council (NWO) for a five-year research project: 2-CAPTURE, which examines societal stakeholders' role and impact in regulatory governance. Before joining Leiden University, Caelesta was an assistant professor at the Utrecht University and Vu University. Dr. Braun has held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Antwerp from 2009 to 2013 and obtained her Ph.D. at Leiden University in 2009.
Researcher:
Alice Moore, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
Alice Moore is a Research Officer at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation.
Researcher:
Dr. Alena Pivavarava, University of London (UK)
Dr. Alena Pivavarava is a Post-Doctoral Researcher on the ERC-funded project Global Correspondent Banking 1870-2000. Her role focuses on developing an innovative methodology to analyze a bilateral correspondent banking network. Her research and teaching interests are inter-disciplinary, bringing data science into the fields of firm internationalization and geopolitics. Dr. Pivavarava is particularly keen on developing novel modeling strategies and creating large-scale longitudinal datasets for the social sciences. She is currently working on SNA methodologies to capture the evolution of global innovation networks, corporate structures, and political strategies of MNEs, and constructing cross-country datasets for this research.
Researcher:
Moritz Müller, Leiden University (the Netherlands)
Moritz Müller’s research focuses on the factors that influence actors' decision-making in public organizations when deciding between various policy alternatives. The study is part of project 2-CAPTURE, which examines driving forces of regulatory capture and the role and impact of societal stakeholders on regulatory governance. Moritz holds a Bachelor in "Liberal Arts and Sciences: Global Challenges" with a major in Policy Science (cum laude) from Leiden University (2016) and a Master in "Global Business & Sustainability" from Erasmus University Rotterdam (2017). For his Master Thesis, he has examined the implications of the legal uncertainty around electric rideable, lobbying dynamics, and power relations in the German transport sector.
Researcher:
Dr. Vegard Tørstad, Norwegian Business School (Norway)
Dr. Vegard Tørstad is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at BI Norwegian Business School, after obtaining his Ph.D. from the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the EUI in January 2021. His Ph.D. thesis empirically examines how decision-making procedures matter for the legitimacy of three international institutions: the UNFCCC climate negotiations, the global trading architecture under GATT/WTO, and the UN Security Council. He has also worked extensively on international climate politics, particularly UN climate negotiations and the Paris Agreement. His work has analyzed the effectiveness prospects of the Paris Agreement; the drivers of climate ambition in states’ climate pledges; states’ perceptions of fairness in mitigation burdens; the relationship between fairness and ambition; and the effects of transparency and target ambiguity on climate cooperation and ambition.
Researcher:
Dr. Juan Carlos Triviño Salazar, Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (Spain)
Dr. Juan Carlos Triviño-Salazar is a research fellow at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). He holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra-Barcelona (Grade: Outstanding – Cum Laude). His research engages with the multilevel governance of immigration with a particular focus on urban questions and regulatory governance. His work has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies, The Lancet, Public Administration, American Behavioral Scientist, and Revista de Estudios Políticos, as well as several edited volumes. Currently, he is the principal investigator for the Catalan Government-funded project LocalRef: Refugees welcome? The local integration of refugees is seen through multilevel lenses. He also participates in several EU-funded research projects like TiGRE, TransCrisis, and Globe. He has done academic stays at the Erasmus Migration and Diversity Institute at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. His teaching experience relates to immigration and integration policy-making, research methods, and comparative politics. His research interests are:
- Urban governance
- Immigration and integration
- Public Policy
- Multilevel governance
- Political participation