Abstract

This paper addresses the politicization of public institutions through the case of national ombudspersons. While there is an established literature on the politicization of top public officials, we lack research on the politicization and / or de-facto independence of supreme or supervisory bodies, including ombuds institutions. In this paper, we combine the insights of three bodies of literature in order to build a framework for the empirical study of national ombuds institutions: Literature (1) on the independence of public institutions, in particular ombuds and regulatory agencies, (2) on politicization and party patronage in state institutions, and (3) on career patterns and selection criteria of top public officials and the administrative elite. We then discuss these issues on the basis of an empirical field study of the Austrian om-buds institution: First, drawing on a socio-demographic analysis of ombudspersons we identify common features of their profiles and career paths. We find that overall the ombudspersons represent a relatively homogenous group, but the political party represents an explanatory variable for some of the ombudspersons’ characteristics. The second set of empirical results, drawing primarily on qualitative interviews with case-handling staff, demonstrates that despite the institution’s public efforts and many interviewees’ reassurances that the AOB is independent and acts as such, there are several areas in which party-related positions become visible in the AOB’s work. These results are integrated into a typology on the effects of political appointment modes of ombudspersons, which should enable further research in this field.

中文翻译：

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尽管政治任命也有独立性？奥地利监察专员委员会的奇怪案例

摘要

本文通过国家监察员的案例解决了公共机构的政治化问题。尽管有关于高级公职人员政治化的成熟文献，但我们缺乏有关最高监察机构或监察机构（包括监察员机构）的政治化和/或事实上的独立性的研究。在本文中，我们结合了三个文献机构的见识，以便为国家监察机构的实证研究建立一个框架：关于公共机构（特别是监察机构和监管机构）独立性的文献（1），（2）关于公共机构独立性的文献。国家机构的政治化和政党赞助，以及（3）有关高级公职人员和行政精英的职业模式和选拔标准。然后，我们将在奥地利om-buds机构的实地研究的基础上讨论这些问题：首先，基于对监察员的社会人口统计学分析，我们确定了他们的概况和职业道路。我们发现，总体而言，监察员代表一个相对同质的群体，但政党代表了某些监察员特征的解释变量。第二组实证结果主要基于对案件处理人员的定性访谈，表明尽管该机构做出了公共努力，并且许多受访者保证AOB是独立的并且如此行事，但在一些领域中，与党派有关的立场仍然存在。在AOB的工作中变得可见。