GOV 39/3 2026-06-25
Original When Compromise Becomes Standoff: Joint Implementation and the Case of the European Public Prosecutor's Office
Adina Akbik, Ana Bobic, Christian Freudlsperger, Marta Migliorati
PMR — pp. 1-37 2026-06-25 Original Understanding co-production with vulnerable populations: challenges, enablers and outcomes
Angelica Zazzera, Denita Cepiku
Abstract
Co-production emerged to engage users in public services as an intrinsic source of value and a democratic right, generating empowerment and social capital. This normative promise is undermined by an equity problem: vulnerable populations face barriers to full participation and are systematically excluded from co-productive processes despite having the greatest need for public services. Although attention to this issue has grown, the literature lacks a comprehensive cross-sector, cross-population analysis. A systematic literature review combining bibliometric mapping with qualitative narrative synthesis is conducted, placing vulnerability and its consequences for the co-production process at the centre of inquiry. This article contributes to co-production theory by highlighting the limits of standard assumptions for vulnerable populations, and offers practical implications for designing inclusive co-production processes.
PMR — pp. 1-35 2026-06-25 Original Pathways to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The Role of Organizational Learning in Enhancing Racial Minority Leadership
Ivy Liu, Hongtao Yi
PAR — 2026-06-23
Original Stimulating Pro‐Environmental Behavior Using Management Control: Survey Evidence From a City Government
PAR — 2026-06-23
Original Does Size Matter for the Relationship Between Politics and Administration?
Hilde Bjørnå, Troy Saghaug Broderstad
APSR — pp. 1-22 2026-06-22 Original Portraits of Power: Facial Appearance and the Tacit Domain of Political Selection in China
JUNYAN JIANG, SONGPO YANG
Abstract
As the epitome of modern, rational organizations, bureaucracies are often believed to select candidates based on rules and reason. We argue that intuitive—and even instinctive—assessments of candidates’ external appearances sometimes underpin seemingly rational and calculated decisions. Using a novel, AI-based algorithm that learns and reproduces human assessments of facial appearances at scale, we examine how perceived facial traits influence the careers of over four thousand mid- and senior-level Chinese officials. We find that officials who look more competent, trustworthy, and less aggressive enjoy significantly better promotion prospects and lower purge risk than their peers. Warmth-related traits (e.g., trustworthiness and non-aggressiveness) are especially valued at higher-level promotions and for male candidates. Additional analyses, including conjoint experiments with real officials, demonstrate that appearances’ influence over selection preferences is comparable to performance or political connections. These findings challenge the prevailing meritocratic and relation-based theories of bureaucratic selection and highlight the role of impressions in the workings of government institutions.
PA — 2026-06-21
Original The Disconnection of Advocacy and Analysis in Public Administration: A Critique of Robust Governance
Gerry Stoker, Brenton Prosser, B. Guy Peters
PAR 86/5 pp. 1213-1224 2026-06-21 Original Reclaiming Weber: Bureaucracy as Democracy's Last Line of Defense
Patricia Nemeth
Abstract
ABSTRACT Max Weber's rational–legal bureaucracy remains a vital safeguard amid populist backlash, civil service politicization, and democratic backsliding. This article reframes bureaucracy as a conditional democratic safeguard—one that depends on ethical orientation and professional integrity, not technical capacity alone. When legality is hollowed out through obedience or anticipatory compliance, institutions corrode from within. Evidence from recent cases of executive politicization illustrates how ethical substance erodes behind formally intact institutions. By integrating Weber's structural rationality with Waldo's claim that democracy is fundamentally an ethic requiring value‐laden judgment, the article develops the notion of a “compliance trap” and recasts public servants as ethical constitutional agents rather than passive implementers. It also advances a framework for bureaucratic renewal grounded in ethical discipline, participatory design, and professional autonomy, arguing that administrators must be prepared to exercise principled judgment when other democratic safeguards weaken.
PSJ — 2026-06-21
Original Policy Learning: Mapping the Conceptual Minefield
Bishoy Zaki
Abstract
ABSTRACT Policy learning has become a central and widely deployed lens in public policy and administration research. Yet policy learning's success has also produced paradoxical effects. Decades of scholarship have generated a dense conceptual terrain populated by numerous constructs and learning descriptors that are often unclearly positioned and frequently collapsed into the broad label of “learning types.” The result is persistent conceptual ambiguity that limits comparability and hinders cumulative knowledge production, leaving policy learning widely experienced as a “minefield” of overlapping constructs. This article addresses that problem by mapping the policy learning terrain through building an Archimedean device that develops four construct categories, forms , modes , mechanisms , and types of learning , anchored in two reference points: the occurrence of learning, defined as the deliberate pursuit and processing of policy‐relevant knowledge by policy actors, and learning outcomes, meaning what learning produces, ranging from stability to varying degrees of change. It maps a selected set of prominent constructs into these categories to provide a construct‐identity crosswalk and shared analytic grammar that support clearer specification, more defensible operationalization, and the space for more consistent cross‐study synthesis without erasing theoretical pluralism, and that can be layered onto existing learning frameworks for additional analytical leverage and theory development.
GOV 39/3 2026-06-19
Original The Safety Tether: How China Manages Civil Society Through Lawfare
Timothy Hildebrandt, Blake Miller
Abstract
ABSTRACT How do authoritarian regimes benefit from civil society organizations' expertise and capacity while mitigating the potential risks they pose? Using machine learning and interrupted time series modeling of an original custom‐annotated dataset of all historical NGO registrations in China, we find that NGO policy is unevenly implemented. This unevenness, however, is not random. China uses NGO registration policies to facilitate local risk utility tradeoffs in line with threat perceptions and governance needs. This, we argue, is a form of lawfare—using legal means to achieve political or repressive ends. Examining a 2013 policy shift, we find local governments relax sponsorship requirements more in policy domains with low state capacity and less where civil society poses a threat, tailoring national mandates to shape local conditions. We show how lawfare is a complex instrument providing local flexibility in repression and cooptation of civil society, under the guise of routine legal and administrative procedures.