ABSTRACT

The influence of senior civil servants’ (SCS) tasks on their role perceptions has been widely ignored in the past research on the administrative élite. This paper presents new survey data on SCS in German federal ministries to test this relation by categorizing SCS into three task-related groups: strategists, policy specialists and administrators. Regression analyses reveal that SCS’s tasks do not influence their (strong) identification with reactive (supportive) roles but have a significant impact on their identification with active, more politically entrepreneurial roles. This entails two important findings: First, SCS’s tasks matter for their appreciation of different roles. Second, active and reactive role models are not irreconcilable (as it is often argued in the literature on bureaucratic politicization), but complementary.

摘要

过去对行政精英的研究普遍忽视了高级公务员（SCS）任务对其角色认知的影响。本文介绍了德国联邦部委有关 SCS 的新调查数据，通过将 SCS 分为三个与任务相关的组：战略家、政策专家和行政人员来测试这种关系。回归分析表明，SCS 的任务不会影响他们对反应性（支持性）角色的（强烈）认同，但对他们对积极的、更具政治性的企业家角色的认同有显着影响。这需要两个重要的发现：首先，SCS 的任务对于他们对不同角色的理解很重要。其次，主动和被动的榜样不是不可调和的（正如在关于官僚政治化的文献中经常争论的那样），而是互补的。