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Transnational Administration in a Globalized World (STG-MA-ECR-TAD)

STG-MA-ECR-TAD

Description

Bureaucracies are powerful organizations. No public policy can be conceived, implemented or monitored without them. Our idea of bureaucratic organization has been shaped however by an ideal of functionality within the nation state. With the rise of interdependence and international organizations to cope with it a new debate emerged about the role, power and influence of international bureaucracies in transnational policymaking. 

Before this background, the seminar will revisit major positions in the debate on the role of international and transnational public administration. Two major concerns shall guide the discussion. First, analytically, what is the empirical impact of bureaucratic structure and action upon policymaking outputs. Second, practically, how can students relate to questions of international and transnational bureaucracy with view to conducting their own research projects or case studies. A central element of the course consists of students presenting crucial arguments from the ongoing academic debate as well as examples of transnational administration cases in a globalizing world.

The seminar will cover topics like international bureaucratic behavior, autonomy, expert authority, normative power, agenda control—focusing issues about what can be called international public administration in global policymaking. In addition, horizontal and vertical interlinkages between international, transnational and national administrations are studied together with the question what the transnationalization of bureaucratic interaction does change “back home” in national domestic bureaucracies. In other words, the seminar will stretch beyond an exclusive view to “international bureaucracies” and broaden the perspective towards a transnational administrative space with focus on administrative interaction in multilevel political configurations. The seminar attempts to introduce the students to the state of the art of empirical-analytical works in the field and to help them develop individual research questions.

In addition, the course wants to make students familiar with the complexity of working inside multinational institutions. Students shall gain analytical and practical insights in current challenges of bureaucratic leadership and public management in transnational contexts. Students will thus not only learn new perspectives on international bureaucracy but they will be encouraged to apply a systematic analytical perspective on their own case or topic of their own choice. By introducing students to the state of the art in empirical-analytical works, it wants to encourage them to adopt and further develop existing theoretical and analytical tools.
 

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