Observing Government Elites: Up Close and Personal

Observing Government Elites Up Close and Personal

Edited by

R.A.W. Rhodes, Paul ‘t Hart and Mirko Noordegraaf

Observing Government Elites

Also by R. A. W. Rhodes THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS GOVERNANCE STORIES

Also by Paul ‘t Hart THE POLITICS OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT: Public Leadership under Pressure GOVERNING AFTER CRISIS: The Politics of Investigation, Accountability and Learning

Also by Mirko Noordegraaf ATTENTION! WORK AND BEHAVIOR OF PUBLIC MANAGERS AMIDST AMBIGUITY MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC DOMAINS

Observing Government Elites Up Close and Personal Edited by

R. A. W. Rhodes Director, Research School of Social Sciences Distinguished Professor of Political Science Australian National University

Paul ‘t Hart Professor of Political Science, Australian National University and Professor of Public Administration, Utrecht University

and

Mirko Noordegraaf Professor of Public Management Utrecht University

Editorial matter, selection, introduction and conclusion © R. A. W. Rhodes, Paul ‘t Hart and Mirko Noordegraaf 2007 All remaining chapters © respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 9780230008403 hardback ISBN-10: 0230008402 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Boxes, Figures and Tables

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

List of Contributors

ix

1. Being There R. A. W. Rhodes, Paul ‘t Hart and Mirko Noordegraaf

1

Part I: Observing at Home: National and Local Elites 2. The Everyday Life of a Minister: a Confessional and Impressionist Tale R. A. W. Rhodes

21

3. Spies at the Crossroads: Observing Change in the Dutch Intelligence Service Paul ‘t Hart

51

4. Men at Work: How Public Policy Managers Cope Mirko Noordegraaf 5. Governing Karlstad: an Insider’s Story P. O. Norell

78

103

Part II: Observing Across Borders: Eurocratic Elites 6. Dutch Eurocrats at Work: Getting Things Done in Europe Karin Geuijen, Paul ‘t Hart and Kutsal Yesilkagit

131

7. The EU’s Nomads: National Eurocrats in European Policy-Making Renita Thedvall

160

8. European Integration in Anthropological Perspective: Studying the ‘Culture’ of the EU Civil Service Cris Shore

180

v

vi

Contents

9. So What? The Benefits and Pitfalls of Being There R. A. W. Rhodes, Paul ‘t Hart and Mirko Noordegraaf

206

Index

234

List of Boxes, Figures and Tables

Box 6.1 Box 9.1

TISPOL: the European Transport Police Network The rules of thumb for observation

Figure 4.1 Policy ministries’ basic organisational structure Table 2.1 Table 6.1 Table 7.1

The Minister’s engagement diary Dutch Eurocrats: two ideal-types The Commission’s form on entitlements

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148 230 82 26 155 166

Acknowledgements The Utrecht School of Governance, the Netherlands Institute for Government (NIG) and the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom (PSA) funded a Workshop on ‘The ethnography of government elites’ held at the Utrecht School of Governance, University of Utrecht, 23–25 March 2006; and a panel at the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom Annual Conference, University of Reading, 3–5 April 2006. We also thank participants at both these events for the helpful discussions. We would like to thank Jenny Fleming, Mark Bovens and Dvora Yanow for advice and comments; and Bas de Wit for his help in organising the Utrecht workshop and for editorial support. The acknowledgements of individual contributors can be found in their chapters. As ever, any remaining deficiencies are the responsibility of the authors and editors.

viii

List of Contributors Karin Geuijen is a Lecturer in Organisational Culture at the Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University, the Netherlands and a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Culture, Organisation and Management, Free University, the Netherlands. Paul ‘t Hart is Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and Professor of Public Administration at the Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Mirko Noordegraaf is Professor of Public Management at the Utrecht School of Governance, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. P. O. Norell is Associate Professor of Public Administration at Karlstad University, Sweden. R. A. W. Rhodes is Director, Research School of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. Cris Shore is Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Renita Thedvall is postdoctoral researcher at the Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research (SCORE) at Stockholm University, Sweden. Kutsal Yesilkagit is a postdoctoral researcher at the Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

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1 Being There R. A. W. Rhodes, Paul ‘t Hart and Mirko Noordegraaf

Introduction The behaviour of politicians and senior public officials as portrayed in the media often strikes impartial observers as erratic, inconsistent and sometimes foolish. Also, outsiders are often bewildered by the conflicts and coalitions in political and bureaucratic games. They wonder how ‘big’ political decisions come about, particularly seemingly misguided ones. They see leaders rise and fall for no obvious reason. It matters because outsiders worry. Citizens expect their leaders to grasp the bigger picture. They expect clear decisions, reasons and effective problemsolving. Memoirs, ‘diaries’ or autobiographies are self-serving and only go some way in helping us understand the perceptions, motives and ideas underpinning elite actions.1 Traditional political science is only of limited help to those seeking to understand why politicians and top-level bureaucrats do what they do, and how the ‘nitty-gritty’ of elite life adds up to a bigger picture. Studies of bureaucratic behaviour (Downs, 1967; Dunleavy, 1991) and policy-making inside government (Rhodes and Dunleavy, 1995: Part 3; Allison and Zelikov, 1999) impute beliefs and interests to actors, rather than collecting evidence about them. Many of the studies of leadership style and elite behaviour in politics that do try to reconstruct perceptions, beliefs and motives rely on surveys and semi-structured interviews or content analysis of public speeches and media performances. Collecting evidence about elite beliefs using surveys (Aberbach et al., 1981; Mouritzen and Svara, 2002), or about elite behaviour using interviews and documentary analysis (Page and Wright, 1999, 2006) maintains distance between scholarly and administrative practices. There is so much one does not get to see. The same 1

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Observing Government Elites

goes for studies of elites that rely on texts. They self-consciously practise ‘leader assessment at a distance’ (Hermann, 1987). Such analyses may provide striking predictions and portrayals of a leader’s ideology and style but they focus on a small part of the persona. Also, these approaches tell us more about how leaders present themselves in public than about how they think and act off-stage. Nor do they grasp how leaders and other government elites interact in making decisions and managing the public business. That domain is often left to a few daring contemporary historians (such as Peter Hennessy in the UK and Arnulf Baring in Germany) who defy the scorn of their more traditionalist colleagues and write interview-based accounts of incumbent governments. And of course there is the work of investigative journalists, some of whom enjoy impressive access. The best ones among them paint vivid, insightful, revealing yet nearly always contested pictures of ‘big decisions’, ‘clashes’, ‘triumphs’ and ‘fiascos’ (Kelly, 1992; Hersh, 2004; Rawnsley 2001; Woodward, 2004, 2006). They are, understandably, biased towards the high dramas of elite life. They ignore much of what goes on in government. Only mainstream historians and a comparatively small number of dedicated political scientists have the patience to wait for classified documents and private papers to become available. They are able to compose more rounded pictures of what went on in the corridors of power – but it often takes decades to get to that point. There are alternatives. One proven way of understanding the beliefs, practices and interactions of actors is the ethnographic approach of social anthropology (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983). It is characterised by ‘deep immersion’ in social worlds to understand day-to-day practices, and how these practices become meaningful. Ethnographers emphasise and observe human acts and interactions in physical, economic and social contexts. They understand how these acts and interactions become meaningful because of bigger symbolic and interpretive structures that are the outcome of earlier acts and interactions. Ethnographers try to grasp the ‘making’ of meaningful social behaviour. Although traditionally ethnographers studied alien tribes in exotic places, it became increasingly common to study Western practices, such as scientific practices (Latour, 1987), organisational practices (Kunda, 1992) and policy practices (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003). However, political practices at the apex of government and deep inside the policymaking process have not been studied in this way. The omission is unfortunate. Ethnographic immersion in such practices adds value because it opens black boxes of elite behaviour in government that would otherwise stay closed. In addition, because it is about individual actors and

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agents, as well as about structures and institutions, it offers many opportunities to get at the bigger picture, without losing a sense of the mundane nature of elite life, and the ‘nitty-gritty’ of government action. Moreover, it enables researchers to be reflexive. It forces researchers to think about how they create meaning. Such reflexive practices are often lacking in quantitative or positivist approaches to studying political life.

Ethnographic immersion: ‘recovering’ meaning Ethnographic approaches have several key features. First, deep ethnographic immersion is driven by a ‘being there’ attitude. Accounts of social realities are derived from fieldwork rooted in direct observation, often over long periods of time. In that way, researchers can watch and hear how the people they observe see and listen. Such seeing and listening are not isolated from day-to-day action, but are happening during that action. Ethnographic immersion also goes with interpretive, symbolic and constructivist perspectives on how social realities are enacted and structured by the people that are part of and make up such realities. Such approaches come in many guises. Ethnographers offer cultural readings of social behaviour (for example, Geertz, 1973). They portray behaviour as creating meaning. They show how meaning is rooted in language, objects, identities and symbols, so all behaviour is social. Interactionist understandings of social behaviour underscore the negotiated, symbolic, and even theatrical or ‘dramaturgical’ dimensions of social life. When people act, they use practical methodologies and ‘taken-for-granted assumptions’ to create order. They comply with shared social guidelines, or apply institutionalised categories, so their acts are not perceived as alien or hostile (Garfinkel, 1967). People also actively present ‘selves’ in negotiated encounters with multiple others. They ‘play’ with roles that are performed on different stages – ‘front stages’ and ‘back stages’ (Goffman, 1956). In one simple phrase, ethnographers view social realities as socially constructed (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Ethnographic immersion needs qualitative methods that provide ‘thick descriptions’ which seek to grasp the layered nature of day-to-day acts and deeds, and to account for how people account for their acts (Geertz, 1973) These approaches are used widely in the social sciences if not political science. For example, organisational sociology draws on a wide array of interpretive and constructionist perspectives (see Alvesson, 1996; Brunsson, 1989; Martin, 1992; Van Maanen, 1988; Weick, 1979, 1995).

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Observing Government Elites

Historically, there are some famous examples in political science (see Kaufman, 1960, 1981). Interpretive approaches persist to this day on the fringes of political science (see Faucher-King, 2005; Hay, 2002; Bevir and Rhodes, 2003, 2006). The most productive area for ethnographic approaches in political science in recent times has been policy studies (see for example, Bobrow and Dryzek, 1987; Fischer, 2003; Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003; Shore and Wright, 1997; van Eeten et al., 1996; Yanow, 1999). But interpretive approaches and their ethnographic methods are a minority pursuit. This volume seeks to persuade a wider audience that combining the analytical perspectives of an interpretive approach with the methods of social anthropology gives new insights into the behaviour of government elites. This volume studies government elites, or to be more precise, top-level political office-holders and high-ranking civil servants. We describe the everyday worlds of these elites through their eyes, focusing on beliefs, experiences and everyday practices and encounters. We ask ‘what is the meaning of the working life of political and other governmental elites?’ We concentrate on meanings, beliefs and practices, not laws and formal rules, correlations between social categories, or deductive models. We analyse the ways in which practices are produced, reproduced and changed through the particular and contingent beliefs, preferences and actions of individuals. We analyse how their practices are embedded in political-administrative traditions; in webs of institutional rules, routines, rituals and relations. We explore how their beliefs, practices and traditions create meaning in politics and policy-making, and how everyday practices produce new meanings that change the bigger picture of government action. In short, we see government elites creating meaning and see their day-to-day life as an important part of this process. We believe that ‘being there’ for at least some of the time and observing elites ‘in action’ helps political scientists understand elite behaviour.

Getting ‘up close’: what we know and what we don’t know Public office-holders, and the organisations they inhabit and lead, have been studied for many years and in many different ways. There are case studies, surveys and biographies of political and administrative elites. They have yielded much useful knowledge. First, there are studies of elite demographics and traits. They survey the gender, class, education and many other characteristics of elites. They allow us to draw conclusions about the social, ethnic and political make-up of government elites

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(Putnam, 1976; van der Meer and Roborgh, 1993). Such studies may show the biases in elite composition and assess the representativeness or professionalism of political and administrative systems. Second, there are studies of elite attitudes, values and predispositions: survey and interview-based studies of their social and political beliefs, their attitudes towards policy, organisational and managerial issues (see for example Dogan, 1975; Aberbach et al., 1981).2 A comparable tradition exists in the interdisciplinary field of political psychology, where researchers rely on content-analyses of speeches, writings and debates to uncover the personality structures, cognitive maps, belief systems and emotional states of public policy-makers (Cottam et al., 2004). Third, there are studies about elite behaviour. They come in two guises. There are intensive case studies that describe what elites have done and decided and how this behaviour has come about. The defining characteristic of such cases is that they are based on multiple sources of datagathering and offer detailed reconstructions of key episodes of elite deliberation and decision-making (see for example Allison, 1971; Janis, 1972; Paige, 1968). The other form of behavioural elite research resembles the work reported in this volume. It comprises observation and interviewbased studies of ‘days in the life of  ’ that seek to document the typical activity patterns of public elites. They cover such features as allocation of time and attention, and the balance between thinking, reading and interacting in formal and informal settings, face-to-face or electronically (see for example Kaufman, 1981).3 All these approaches vary in their treatment of the larger structures or institutional contexts that shape the behaviour of government elites. Most see elite members as autonomous agents but they trace the constraining and enabling structures that are the outcomes of earlier beliefs, practices and interactions. They explore how elite actors are constrained by constitutions, organisational operating procedures, political rules, administrative traditions and the like (Rhodes and Weller, 2001). They also show that elite practices and choices may bring about changes in the institutional context.4 This body of knowledge is important but it has at least one important limitation. It obscures an important part of elite life; namely the link between these various facets (demographic characteristics, traits, attitudes, behaviours, acts and institutional contexts), as understood by the elites in their practical reasoning and practices on the job. As scholars we try to identify patterns and make sense of what is going on. But we know little about how elites make sense of their world day in and day out. It remains unclear how individuals, issues and institutions add

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up to meaningful governmental action. Thus, a solid understanding of phenomena like leadership, strategic decision-making, change management, and project management in public organisations not only requires us to understand what the people who control these activities do and how they do it, but also to gain insight into why they do it. How do they find space amid constraining structures to enact alternative realities? How, by using certain words, metaphors and symbols, do they alter, bend or modify ingrained meanings? For many years, social scientists studied the world of policy implementation, bureaucratic rule application and ‘street-level bureaucrats’ in such policy areas as police, housing and social services. They show how specific policies are enacted in face-to-face encounters between bureaucrat and client, customer or whomever (see for example: Lipsky, 1980; Manning, 1977; Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003; Prottas, 1979; Van Maanen, 1978). But there are no equivalent studies about those who live at or near the pinnacle of government who are responsible for policy-making and organisational leadership. ‘Studying up’ from the vantage point of the street-level bureaucrat has to be complemented by ‘studying down’ from the vantage point of elites. How government elites make sense of politics, and what policy means to them, have to be studied in detail. To fill this gap, elite life needs to be studied ‘up close and personal’. We need to use a combination of intensive research methods to recover meanings (Taylor, 1971) and the link between context, beliefs and practices. This book seeks to do just that. It goes beyond the classic positivistic inclination to capture governance, policy-making and organisational processes. It does not look for predictable patterns, regularities and mechanisms in elite behaviour. It does not seek law-like regularities in the way organisational processes shape individual actions. The emphasis falls on the everyday experience of most of us who live in organisations and the way that experience is shaped by highly contingent, improvised, and often personal and subjective factors, embedded in webs of institutional rules and routines. We take that everyday experience as our starting point. We show it is possible to capture these personal, subjective, yet embedded factors in a way that complements and perhaps corrects conventional understandings. In some ways, this ambition is similar to that of the proponents of political psychobiography (see for examples Glad, 1980; Walter, 1982). However, our project differs in two ways. First, we do not claim to explain the entire nexus between the private life, political and behavioural pattern of particular individuals we study. Second, it does not rest

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on any given set of theoretical commitments. The psychobiographical approach is dominated by psychoanalysis. Many political psychobiographies treat their subject’s political behaviour as abnormal or otherwise undesirable, and draw on psychoanalysis to explain these alleged pathologies (see for example, the classic Lasswell, 1930; cf. Brett, 1997). The authors in this volume do not say – ‘this is great leadership’ or ‘this is abject government’. They show how elite players construct leadership and government, and how they qualify events as ‘great’ or ‘abject’ and why they do so.

Ways of getting up close: shared perspectives, diverse methods Ethnographers reconstruct social action and the meanings of social actors by observing other people’s acts and deeds, and by recovering their stories and tracing accounts of things that are happening. Thus, Hammersley and Atkinson (1983: 2) make the basic claim for ethnography that ‘it captures the meaning of everyday human activities.’ Fenno (1990: 2) argues, ‘the aim is to see the world as they see it, to adopt their vantage point on politics.’ Ethnography, then, encompasses many ways of collecting qualitative data about beliefs and practices (see Shore, 2000: 7–11), not only because different theories might be used, but also because many qualitative methods are available. As argued, ethnographic immersion often means that constructivist epistemological stances are taken, and that interpretive and symbolic perspectives are applied, such as the one pioneered by Geertz (1973). Different approaches will choose different methods. Moreover, various sorts of methods for studying beliefs and practices are available, that differ in terms of what is observed, how observations take place, what observational periods are chosen, and if and how observations are complemented by other methods. Researchers might not only seek ‘thick descriptions’ but they might also focus on how symbols ritualise and order social behaviour (cf. Turner, 1973). Or they might trace stories or narratives to understand how people interpret phenomena such as ‘governance’ (Bevir and Rhodes, 2003, 2006; see also Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003). Or they might observe the rules and routines of administrative life (Feldman, 1989). So, we are not epistemological, theoretical or methodological missionaries one way or the other. We do argue the case for ‘being there’, as well as for observing elites in action as an important addition to the political science toolkit. Participant and non-participant observation are

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conspicuous for their absence in the political science armoury of research methods. We show it is a feasible and revealing approach, though one with many nuanced variations. All chapter authors employed observation as part of their ethnographic research strategy. How they have employed it, what they have observed exactly – meetings, or symbols, or stories, or rules, and the like – and how they have used the results to interpret elite worlds, differ. Ethnography leaves much room for scholarly creativity. We discuss the several ‘meanings’ of ethnographic research in Chapter 9. Suffice it to note here that political scientists are creating meaning as much as the government elites they study. Also, their meanings are influenced by academic rules, communities and practices. Nevertheless, despite the variety, there is a shared basic thrust to all the chapters. First, every author uses observation to get a ‘bigger picture’. They observe people and practices to understand a bigger story about organisational leadership, politico-administrative relations, policy management, or the evolution and workings of the European Union. Second, every author focuses on day-to-day interactions and acts of many actors, even when one actor is the focal point. These acts and interactions might be of different sorts – textual, emotional and physical. The combinations of interactions and acts constitute practices. Third, every author explores the link between individual action and the institutional context in which people act. They observe and speak with tangible agents – individuals – and they try to study how agents are embedded in institutions. Words like symbols, stories and routines are used to capture such embeddedness.

Pitfalls of proximity: how to be systematic and objective Getting up close is intuitively appealing for students of elites but it also harbours some classic pitfalls that have driven many social scientists away. We acknowledge these pitfalls. We do not downplay them. We seek to cope with them explicitly. Most important we confront the ways in which inadvertent ‘bias’ creeps into the analysis. In other words, we must remain ‘systematic’ and ‘objective’, even after leaving behind positivistic, natural law-based and universalistic research approaches (see Yanow and Schwartz-Shea, 2006). Identifying pitfalls is not only about pragmatic lessons for coping with research barriers, nor is it only about professional lessons for maintaining researcher integrity but it is also about philosophical lessons for successive approximations to ‘objectivity as inter-subjective agreement’. In Chapter 9, we draw on the experi-

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ences recounted in the chapters to identify the pitfalls and to reflect on conditions that sustain systematic research. First, researchers might encounter pragmatic pitfalls during fieldwork. Hanging out with research subjects for considerable periods of time and interviewing them repeatedly may result in too much empathy with them and their problems. Academic detachment can be compromised. Conversely, researchers may come to detest, despise or otherwise dislike their subjects and find it hard to write an even-handed analysis. Researchers grapple with the question of how to stay close, yet neutral. A related problem is the control elite subjects can exercise over any eventual publications. What will they allow? What are researchers willing to settle for? How do we report and present empirical material? How do we show real events and critical incidents without harming research subjects? How do researchers cope with pressures to guarantee anonymity? Second, researchers will encounter questions about professional norms. Although many proponents of intensive research make much of ‘grounded theory’, the prevailing consensus in the social sciences is that all observation is theory-driven. How we can prevent our expectations clouding our judgement? How do we interpret our interpretations of elites? Also, observational research has a spy-like quality. The aim is to get to the bottom of things and covert behaviour may help the researcher to do that. How open should the researcher be? When is covert behaviour defensible? These dilemmas are a matter of continuing debate (Punch, 1986; Mitchell, 1993). Finally, there are philosophical questions about systematic and objective research. How do we know that the people and organisations selected for study are in any way representative of the larger government, public sector, or elite group of which they form a part? More fundamentally, what does generalisation mean in interpretive research? What is validity? Also, how do we know that the comparatively few days that we spend observing and interviewing our subjects are typical days? How do we explore critical moments, incidents and behaviours? Finally, our presence as researchers influences the behaviour and reasoning of our subjects, consciously or unconsciously, and provides us with a potentially flawed picture of their actions and thinking. Subjects may engage in impression management for the researcher rather than going about their business as usual. How do we make sure that observed behaviours remain natural? And so, what does reliability mean in ethnographic work?

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Critics of intensive and observational methods use these potential sources of bias to claim that ethnographic methods are unreliable and that even if they are not, they do not allow for any meaningful generalisation. We contend that most of these pitfalls differ in degree, but not in kind, from those inherent in any style of social science research. Moreover, anthropologists and other intensive researchers have argued over these issues for decades, and developed intelligent and widely accepted ways of avoiding and mitigating the biases. For example, if we were reporting a survey, we would include various details such as the sample size and the response rate to increase confidence in the results. Similarly, for our qualitative research, we can report such details as the number and length of interviews and the total hours of observation for the same reason (Yanow, 2006). We can also triangulate three sources of information: ‘the pattern of practice, talk, and considered writing – the first is the most reliable, the second is the most copious and revealing and the third is the most difficult to interpret’ (Oakeshott, 1996: x). As Sanjek (2000: 281) argues, observation is an essential complement to interviews. More fundamentally, however, the biases are not only about sticking to methodological rules of thumb to remain systematic and objective but it is also about the meaning of objectivity. The belief that some method is inherently superior to another is naïve at best, and the oftheard claim that quantitative research methods are more valid and reliable than qualitative ones rests on a false dichotomy long discarded in the methodological literature (Miles, 1979). Categorical statements on the superiority of quantitative methods can be found aplenty. For example, in political science, the influential King, Keohane and Verba (1994) textbook barely disguises its distaste for qualitative methods. And their stance tells us more about the unreflective nature of their epistemological commitments than about the reality of the social science research shopfloor. This book showcases distinctive methodological tools for those wishing to pursue an interpretive political science. Of course, qualitative research methods are a long-established feature of the social sciences. There are many textbooks which cover observation, interviews and transcripts, recordings, participant accounts and other related approaches. Our account complements existing accounts in three ways:5 (i) We see no point in trying to pretend that the ethnographic approach and its distinctive research methods is just a ‘soft’ version of the positivist approach with its penchant for ‘hard’ quantitative

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data. They are simply different in both the aims and knowledge criteria they employ. (ii) We adopt a comparative, ethnographic approach to assessing research findings rather than a verification-refutational approach. (iii) We provide ‘insider’ accounts of the various techniques ‘in action’. Grounding in fieldwork and not in abstract argument is the best way to assess methods. In short, what works is best.

The first point needs some elaboration. There is a key question. If normal canons of reliability and validity do not fit, how do we choose between rival accounts? ‘Objectivity’ arises from using agreed facts to criticise and compare rival interpretations. A fact is a statement, typically about a piece of evidence, which nearly everyone in the given community would accept as true. This definition of a fact follows from recognition of the role of theory in observation. Because theory is integral to observation, we cannot describe a fact as a statement of how things are. Observation and description entail categorisation. Facts always entail prior categories, so they are not certain, pure and ultimate truths. Hence our notion of ‘objective’ knowledge is one of inter-subjective agreement arising from using agreed facts to compare and criticise rival narratives. Criticism plays a pivotal role in such an evaluation. Critics of a narrative can point to facts that its proponents have not considered. They can highlight what they take to be facts that contradict that narrative. In short, a narrative must meet tests set by its critics. If objectivity arises from comparing and criticising rival narratives, it is obvious that we want to contribute to a reflexive political science (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000). Every chapter asks how do we use relatively novel methods with what results? But also we explore what ethnographic research means for such conventional standards of assessing the quality of research as validity and reliability. From an interpretive standpoint, research is also embedded in webs of rules, routines and rituals. We should engage openly with the debate about how do we know what we know. In this volume, we practise what we preach and in Chapter 9 we revisit these research pitfalls, drawing on not only the findings of the various chapters but also the authors’ experiences in the field. It will show that observation-based elite research is intellectually productive and practically do-able. It will also talk about its challenges and loopholes. No method can be a panacea for any field of academic study. But neither should a method that yields such precious knowledge continue to be ignored by most political scientists.

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An outline of the volume There are countless places where we can observe life at the top, and there are countless lenses through which we can look at it. We sought to capture some of that variety. We studied different types of elites in different sectors and countries at local, national and European levels of government to show that our approach travels. The choice was pragmatic. We went where we had access. We have grouped these fieldwork encounters in two batches: those chapters that cover elites working in national systems in both local and central government; and those chapters that focus on elites operating in national and supranational institutions, specifically the European Union. Moreover, we did not set out to do, and have not written, a comparative analysis. Part I opens with Rhodes’ account of a day in the life of a UK minister. He draws on extensive fieldwork shadowing various ministers for several days on end, interviewing them and the countless officials who make up a large part of ministers’ professional lives. He shows how departmental office routines serve to domesticate crises and tame what would otherwise be an impossibly chaotic ministerial existence. In Chapter 3, ‘t Hart reconstructs the leadership of the man at the helm of the Dutch intelligence service in the immediate post-Cold War period, when the survival of the organisation was at stake. Based on a year of participant observation inside the service, he reconstructs the beliefs of the leader, his way of working and how it was seen and reacted to by members of the organisation. In Chapter 4, Noordegraaf describes how one policy manager in Dutch central government ‘managed’ a specific policy issue. He shows how this policy manager moved from one meeting to another in a highpaced policy environment, full of papers and many other meetings. He shows also how this policy manager kept pace and tried to make sense, not of the policy issue, but of the high-paced policy practices aimed at producing policy outcomes. Policy managers use discursive coping mechanisms, rooted in day-to-day practices that evolve over time. Finally, in Chapter 5, Norell takes us to local government in Karlstad, Sweden. He worked for three decades in the top ranks of that city’s civil service and latterly returned as a researcher to interview his former colleagues. He writes an account of stability and change in Karlstad elite life that is both detailed and longitudinal. Based on both his ‘lived

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experience’, as well as later academic data-gathering, it combines the virtues of proximity and distance. Part II comprises three studies of bureaucratic practices and meaningmaking in European Union (EU) governance. In Chapter 6, Geuijen, ‘t Hart and Yesilkagit report the findings of their observations and interviews of Dutch national civil servants whose jobs take them into the EU system. They juxtapose the experiences of officials in two different policy sectors representing two different governance regimes in the EU system – veterinary policy and police cooperation. They show that these regimes breed two distinctly different sets of beliefs and practices about how to ‘do business in Brussels’. Thedvall’s chapter is similar in scope and aims. She followed Swedish officials sitting on an EU labour market committee as they went back and forth to Brussels to negotiate EU standards and measures. She attended the preparatory meetings where the officials from different parts of the Swedish bureaucracy need to converge on a common Swedish position, often without clear political guidelines. She then observed the Swedish delegation at work in the Brussels meetings, negotiating about the construction of European realities. ‘Yo-yo-ing’ between these arenas she shows how officials cope with the diverging requirements of their roles. In Chapter 8, Cris Shore reflects on his fieldwork in the European Commission (Shore, 2000). He criticises some key features of classical Geertzian ‘thick description’, relying instead on Turner’s (1973) more sociologically grounded symbolic ethnography. He then uses this approach in his own fieldwork on the EU civil service. He relates how he sought to balance the need to effectively ‘infiltrate’ what is often depicted as a closed, technocratic bulwark with the need to remain a ‘professional outsider’. He documents how Commission officials get socialised into the culture of the institution through what is called ‘engrenage’, and how this process bred a subculture of politicised cronyism that was later revealed by official investigations. In the final chapter, we revisit the aim of this volume to show that ethnography presents a viable and valuable addition to the political scientist’s toolkit. We show that it helped us generate insights about elite behaviour that we could not otherwise have gained. ‘Being there’ and observing elites in action added value. We reflect on that knowledge and the claims underpinning it. We distil practical lessons – down-toearth ‘do’s and don’ts’ – on how to do political elite ethnography in contemporary Western government.

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Notes 1. Good examples include: Blewett, 1999; Carlsson, 2003; Castle, 1980, 1984; Crossman, 1975; Feldt, 1991; Reich, 1998; Watson, 2002. 2. See: Aberbach et al., 1981; Campbell, 1983; Dogan, 1975; Hooghe, 2001; Page, 1997; Putnam, 1973; and Reeher, 2006. 3. See also Dalton, 1959; Mintzberg, 1973; and Kaufman, 1960. This tradition has been continued by a new generation of scholars, including Dargie, 1998 on British public sector chief executives and Noordegraaf, 2000 on Dutch public managers. 4. Examples include Blondel and Müller-Rommel, 1993; Campbell and Szablowski, 1979; Dogan, 2003; Jacoby, 1976; and Page and Wright, 1999. 5. This section draws on Bevir, 1999: chapter 3; and Rhodes, 1997: chapter 9.

References Aberbach, J. D., Putnam, R. D. and Rockman, B. A. 1981. Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Allison, G. T. 1971. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston: Little Brown. Allison, G. and Zelikov, P. 1999. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2nd edition. New York: Longman. Alvesson, M. 1996. Communication, Power and Organization. Berlin: De Gruyter. Alvesson, M. and Sköldberg, K. 2000. Reflexive Methodology. Londen: Sage. Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City: Doubleday. Bevir, M. 1999. The Logic of the History of Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. 2003. Interpreting British Governance. London: Routledge. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. 2006. Governance Stories. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge. Blewett, N. 1999. Cabinet Diary: A Personal Record of the First Keating Government. Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press. Blewett, N. 2006. ‘The personal writings of politicians’, in T. Arklay, J. Nethercote and J. Wanna (eds), Australian Political Lives: Chronicling Political Careers and Administrative Histories. Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2006, pp. 91–6. Blondel, J. and Müller-Rommel, F. (eds) 1993. Governing Together: The Extent and Limits of Joint Decision-making in Western European Cabinets. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan/New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bobrow, D. B. and Dryzek, J. S. 1987. Policy Analysis by Design. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press. Brett, J. (ed.) 1997. Political Lives. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Brunsson, N. 1989. The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions and Actions in Organizations. Chichester and New York: John Wiley. Campbell, C. 1983. Governments under Stress: Political Executives and Key Bureaucrats in Washington, London and Ottawa. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Campbell, C. and Szablowski, G. J. 1979. The Superbureaucrats: Structure and Behaviour in Central Agencies. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada. Carlsson, I. 2003. Sa Tänkte Jag: Politik och Dramatik. Stockholm: HOH Förlag.

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Castle, B. 1980. The Castle Diaries 1974–76. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Castle, B. 1984. The Castle Diaries 1964–70. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Cottam, M., Dietz-Uhler, B., Mastors, E. M. and Preston, T. 2004. Introduction to Political Psychology. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Crossman, R. H. S. (1975) The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister. Vol. 1: Minister of Housing. London: Jonathan Cape. Dalton, M. 1959. Men who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration. New York: Wiley. Dargie, C. 1998. ‘The role of public sector chief executives’, Public Administration, 76 (1), pp. 161–77. Dogan, M. 1975. The Mandarins of Western Europe: The Political Role of Top Civil Servants. New York: Sage Publications. Dogan, M. (ed.) 2003. Elite Configurations at the Apex of Power. Leiden-Boston: Brill. Downs, A. 1967. Inside Bureaucracy. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Dunleavy, P. 1991. Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice: Economic Explanations in Political Science. New York: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Faucher-King, F. 2005. Changing Parties: an Anthropology of British Political Conferences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Feldman, M. S. 1989. Order Without Design. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Feldt, K.-O. 1991. Alla Dessa Dagar: I Regeringen 1982–1990. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1991. Fenno, R. F. 1990. Watching Politicians: Essays on Participant Observation. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California. Fischer, F. 2003. Reframing Public Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books. Glad, B. 1980. Jimmy Carter in Search of the Great White House. New York: Norton. Goffman, E. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hajer, M. A. and Wagenaar, H. (eds) 2003. Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. 1983. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Tavistock Publications. Hay, C. 2002. Political Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hermann, M. G. 1987. Handbook for Assessing Personal Characteristics and Foreign Policy Orientations of Political Leaders. Columbus, OH: Mershon Centre. Hersh, S. M. 2004. Chain of Command: the Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. New York: HarperCollins. Hooghe, L. 2001. The European Commission and the Integration of Europe: Images of Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacoby, H. 1976. The Bureaucratization of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Janis, I. L. 1972. Victims of Groupthink. Atlanta: Houghton Mifflin. Kaufman, H. 1960. The Forest Ranger. A Study in Administrative Behaviour. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kaufman, H. 1981. The Administrative Behavior of Federal Bureau Chiefs. Washington: Brookings Institution. Kelly, P. 1992. The End of Certainty. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

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King, G., Keohane, R. O. and Verba, S. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kunda, G. 1992. Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-tech Corporation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Lasswell, H. D. 1930. Psychopathology and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, B. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lipsky, M. 1980. Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Manning, P. K. 1977. Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Martin, J. 1992. Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press. Maynard-Moody, S. and Musheno, M. 2003. Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Service. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Meer, F. M. van der and Roborgh L. J. 1993. Ambtenaren in Nederland: Omvang, bureaucratisering en representativiteit van het ambtelijk apparaat [Civil Servants in the Netherlands]. Alphen a/d Rijn: Samsom. Miles M. B. 1979. ‘Qualitative data as an attractive nuisance: the problem of analysis’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24 (4), pp. 590–601. Mintzberg, H. 1973. The Nature of Managerial Work. New York: Harper & Row. Mitchell, R. G. 1993. Secrecy and Fieldwork. London: Sage. Mouritzen, P. E. and Svara, J. 2002. Leadership at the Apex: Politicians and Administrators in Western Local Governments. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Noordegraaf, M. 2000. Attention! Work and Behaviour of Public Managers Amidst Ambiguity. Delft: Eburon. Oakeshott, M. 1996. The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Page, E. C. 1997. People who Run Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Page, E. C. and Wright, V. (eds) 1999. Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page, E. C. and Wright V. (eds) 2006. From the Active to the Enabling State: The Changing Roles of Top Officials in European Nations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Paige, G. D. 1968. The Korean Decision. New York: Free Press. Prottas, J. M. 1979. People Processing: The Street-level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies. Lexington, MA: Heath. Punch, M. 1986. The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork. London: Sage. Putnam, R. D. 1973. The Beliefs of Politicians: Ideology, Conflict and Democracy in Britain and Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Putnam, R. D. 1976. The Comparative Study of Political Elites. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Rawnsley, A. 2001. Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour. Revised edition. London: Penguin Books. Reeher, G. 2006. First Person Political: Legislative Life and the Meaning of Public Service. New York and London: New York University Press. Reich, R. 1998. Locked in the Cabinet. New York: Random House. Rhodes, R. A. W. 1997. Understanding Governance. Buckingham: Open University Press.

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Rhodes, R. A. W. and Dunleavy, P. (eds) 1995. Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rhodes, R. A. W. and Weller, P. M. (eds) 2001. The Changing World of Top Officials: Mandarins or Valets? Buckingham: Open University Press. Sanjek, R. 2000. ‘Keeping ethnography alive in an urbanizing world’, Human Organization, 59 (3), pp. 280–8. Shartle, C. L. 1956. Executive Performance and Leadership. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Shore, C. 2000. Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration. London: Routledge. Shore, C. N. and Wright, S. (eds) 1997. Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London: Routledge. Taylor, C. 1971. ‘Interpretation and the sciences of man’, Review of Metaphysics, 25 (1), pp. 3–51. Turner, V. W. 1973. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. van Eeten, M. J. G., van Twist, M. J. W. and Kalders, P. R. 1996. ‘Verhallen vertellen: van een narratieve bestuurskunde naar een postmoderne beweerkunde?’, Bestuurskunde, 5 (5): 168–89. Van Maanen, J. 1978. ‘On watching the watchers’, in P. K. Manning and J. Van Maanen (eds), Policing: A View from the Street. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear. Van Maanen, J. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Walter, J. 1982. The Leader: A Political Biography of Gough Whitlam. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Watson, D. 2002. Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM. Sydney: Knopf. Weick, K. E. 1979 [1969]. The Social Psychology of Organizing. Reading: AddisonWesley. Weick, K. E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Woodward, B. 2004. Plan of Attack. New York: Simon & Schuster. Woodward. B. 2006. State of Denial. New York: Simon & Schuster. Yanow, D. 1999. Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Yanow, D. 2006. ‘Dear reviewer, dear author: looking for reflexivity and other hallmarks of interpretive research’, paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 30 August–3 September, Philadelphia. Yanow, D. and Schwartz-Shea, P. 2006. Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

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Part I Observing at Home: National and Local Elites

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2 The Everday Life of a Minister: a Confessional and Impressionist Tale1 R. A. W. Rhodes

Giving the public details about oneself is a bourgeois temptation that I have always resisted. (Gustave Flaubert [1879], cited in Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot. London: Picador, 1985, p. 94) We are restrained and limited by the kinds of cultural stories available to us. Academics are given the ‘story line’ that the ‘I’ should be suppressed in their writing, that they should accept homogenization and adopt the all-knowing, all-powerful voice of the academy. But contemporary philosophical thought raises problems that    undermine that academic story. We are always present in our texts, no matter how we try to suppress ourselves. (Richardson, 1997, p. 2) Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit A social science. (‘Under Which Lyre’, in Collected Poems of W. H. Auden. London: Faber and Faber 1994) It should be remembered that just as    mathematicians use impossibilities such as the square root of minus one    to express their eternal verities, so it is with writers and their fictions.    just because I have made it all up doesn’t mean it isn’t true. (Reginald Hill, The Stranger House. London: HarperCollins, 2006) 21

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Being there Normally, I would start a chapter with something like the following paragraph. The chapter reports my shadowing of ministers in British government and seeks to answer the question ‘what do ministers do?’ The first part of the chapter briefly outlines the research and explains the idea of a ‘confessional tale’. The second and largest section of the chapter draws extensively on my fieldwork notebooks, supplemented by interviews with the ministers, to describe not only the everyday life of ministers but also my reaction to being with them for many days. Finally, I reflect on what I have learnt. This starting point has the virtue of telling the reader what question I will try to answer and how I will try to answer it. What it does not tell the reader is how nervous I am about writing this chapter. Like Richardson, I accept I am present in my text. Like Flaubert, I have been schooled to avoid the temptation of self-revelation. And I do not want to commit a social science! So, the chapter is a journey on which I try to find a way of incorporating me in my story of ministers’ everyday lives and in which I try to express some truths about everyday life in a government department. The chapter also attempts something markedly different from the existing literature on ministers.2 I do not seek to engage with the academic literature but with my fieldwork observations. I aim to describe the changing world of permanent secretaries and ministers through an account of their daily life in government. I seek to provide my interpretation of their interpretation of what the world looks like through their eyes. So, I watched people in their everyday office life. I relied on what they said and did, on their reasons for their actions. I looked for patterns but I did not test hypotheses. I focused on meanings, not statistical frequencies. I did not break individual behaviour into specific roles but looked at people in the round. I looked at the contingent, the improvised, the personal and the subjective. I took everyday experience as the starting point. In a short phrase, I aimed at a ‘thick description’ of office life (Geertz, 1973). I draw on three sources of information: ‘the pattern of practice, talk, and considered writing – the first is the most reliable, the second is the most copious and revealing and the third is the most difficult to interpret’ (Oakeshott, 1996: x). Oakeshott will turn in his grave if I describe

The Everyday Life of a Minister 23

this approach as triangulation, but my account is based on these three sources of information. On practice, I observed the Private Office of two ministers and three permanent secretaries for two days each, totalling some 120 hours. I also shadowed two ministers and three permanent secretaries for five working days each, totalling some 300 hours. On talk, I had repeat interviews with: nine permanent secretaries 2 × 2-hour taped and transcribed, three secretaries of state and three ministers 1×2hour taped and transcribed; and nineteen other officials 1×1-hour taped and transcribed, giving a total of 67 hours of interviews. On considered writing, I had copies of speeches and public lectures; committee and other papers relevant to the meetings I observed; newspaper reports; and the usual secondary sources.3 My interviews and fieldwork observations are for citation but not for attribution without permission. I anticipated that I would have to write an anonymous account. I chose three service-delivery departments similar in size and status, so I could talk about the composite minister, department, or permanent secretary and remain plausible. Had I sought to draw a composite based on departments as unlike as the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Department for Work and Pensions, the result would have been implausible. I conducted the interviews in 2002. The fieldwork was carried out in 2003. There were several repeat interviews and occasional visits in 2004. I told everyone I would not write up the research during the life of the 2001–5 Parliament. I calculated that everyone would have a different job when I told my story, thus minimising if not removing any political sensitivities surrounding the events I describe. It is an example of multi-site or ‘yo-yo fieldwork’ (Wulff, 2002) as I paid repeated visits to several sites. This chapter is based on two of four fieldwork notebooks compiled when shadowing ministers and mainly on ministerial interviews. So, I report work in progress, and the chapter should be read as such. The fieldwork began in January 2002 and ended in April 2004. I seek to describe the everyday life of the Minister. However, the Minister’s tale has some characteristics that will seem unusual. In particular, I am part of their story. There are several ways of telling the story: realist tales, confessional tales and impressionist tales (Van Maanen, 1998). Realist accounts are dispassionate, third-person documentary accounts of everyday life. A confessional story is autobiographical and told in the first-person. Impressionist tales are episodic and complex, stressing contingency. I use the latter two ways of telling in this chapter and tell the personal

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story of the complex, episodic, ambivalent and contingent everyday life of a Minister and for an extended discussion see Chapter 9.

Their stage The main character in my tale is the elected politician who heads a central government department and is known as the Secretary of State. The top official in the department is known as the Permanent Secretary. Most are middle-aged, white, university-educated men who have spent their working life in the senior civil service. They are a small elite group who work closely with the elected politicians. The events I describe took place during the second parliamentary term of the UK’s Labour government, which began on 8 June 2001 and ended in May 2005. The Prime Minister and head of the government is Tony Blair and his official residence is No. 10, Downing Street. He appoints all ministers, Secretaries of State who are in the Cabinet, ministers of state who are not and the Parliamentary Secretaries referred to as ParlS, who are even more junior than the middle-ranking ministers of state. Most are drawn mainly from the majority party in the elected House of Commons. Some junior ministers come from the non-elected House of Lords. The duties of ministers are laid out in the Ministerial Code (Cabinet Office, 2001). To protect the anonymity of the Minister, I do not provide any biographical information. I use ‘he’ only because there are more male than female ministers. I call the main character ‘the Minister’, with a capital letter. Strictly speaking that is inaccurate. The correct title is ‘Secretary of State’ commonly abbreviated to SofS. The former is cumbersome. The neologism is ugly. So I use the everyday expression popularised by television of ‘Minister’ and refer to the ministers of state as ministers, in lower case, or junior ministers. The Ministers are members of Cabinet, the fulcrum committee of British government, although its role and importance varies with the whims and wishes of each prime minister. The other key coordinating central bodies are the Treasury, which holds sway on all matters financial, and the Cabinet Office, which is home to a rag bag of central functions, unkindly referred to as the rest home for the pet projects of past prime ministers. Private Offices support both Ministers and permanent secretaries. Civil servants staff both offices. A principal private secretary (PPS), who will be a young, fast stream civil servant expecting rapid promotion, heads each office. For the Minister, ‘the private office is the

The Everyday Life of a Minister 25

bridge between the minister and the department’ (Jary, 2004: 15). Every day the Private Office prepares and collates the papers the Minister must read for the next day’s meeting and the letters that need to be signed. They are collected in a red, rectangular, boxshaped, briefcase for the Minister to take home each night. The red box is a focal point of office activity. It is always battered. I never saw a new one. In the spirit of Monty Python, I wondered if there was an office for battering boxes. Also, Ministers rarely travel alone. There is always a member of the Private Office to open doors, steer the Minister to the car, prompt in committee, and take notes of a meeting. They dress in suits. They carry notebooks. They speak but rarely, and never loudly. I accompanied the Minister as if part of his Private Office. I became part of the furniture, blended in with the wallpaper. Often the inhabitants forgot I was there.4 I know because on occasion I was nearly left behind as we rushed from one meeting to the next. The distinctive feature of any Minister’s Private Office is the special or ministerial advisers, Spads. They are political appointments, not career civil servants. They are on tap but not on top. The Private Offices vary in size from four to sixteen, although ministerial offices are always larger. Finally, most ministries are divided into functional directorates, headed by a Director-General (DG), although the terminology varies. Most have some form of Management Board comprising senior management of the Department and non-executive members appointed for their external experience and expertise. It advises on strategy.

Shadowing ministers, ministerial shadow Of course there is no such thing as a typical day. All days come with a surprise, with stress, with last-minute changes. If there is a typical day, it is long, with many meetings, few breaks, unexpected and possibly unwelcome changes, an evening engagement, usually a speech or dinner and a red box or two for late-night relaxation. As I looked at the official engagement diary, the pace was unrelenting. I was tired just reading it. How can anybody keep up this pace and remain at the top of their game? I think I know the answer. They cannot. Ministers have so many good intentions, so much to do, but finite energy and enthusiasm. So, there is anger, mistakes, defensive behaviour and a sense of frustration. My story is one of the inhabitants seeking to contain their complex and changing world within their diaries. I describe one day

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Table 2.1 The Minister’s engagement diary Time

Activity – planned

9.00–10.30 10.30–11.00

Ministers meeting Bilateral with Permanent Secretary Management Board Meeting Lunch with Management Board

11.00–13.00 13.00–13.30

13.30–14.30 14.30–15.15 15.15–16.00 16.00–17.30 18.00–19.00

Activity – unplanned

Two phone calls with No. 10 Special Advisers, both booked while out

Departmental Special Advisers Meeting with interest group Meeting with interest group Meeting with Professor Rod Rhodes Dental appointment, home and the red box

(see Table 2.1). It is a commonplace day. It might even err on the side of easy because there is space for a sandwich lunch and there is no evening reception. The departmental cocoon On arriving at the Department, it is immediately clear that I am entering the land of the official and the powerful. There are security guards on every door and everyone has to check in at the front desk to get a security pass. The pass is issued provided you are already booked in by your host. There is a large board displaying today’s security level – black, the lowest level. There is also a table with two more security guards who randomly check visitors and their bags. Once you have your pass, you are invited to sit down while your host comes to collect you. The process is not unfriendly but it is as impersonal as it is implacable, with social comments best kept to the formal ‘good morning’. Flippancy is just ignored, cheeriness is tolerated, and brevity and politeness are preferred. No matter how many times I went to one of my departments, and it was often enough to be recognised by surname, the process was the same and I was not allowed to walk through the building unescorted. My status as a professional stranger was all too clear. I was not one of them.

The Everyday Life of a Minister 27

The Private Office was friendly. I had been in and around the Department on several occasions and for two lengthy stays. So, I am collected and taken to the PPS. He is a high-flying civil servant, marked as a potential PS, who heads the Minister’s Private Office. Slim, dark, short hair, dressed in the inevitable dark grey suit, white shirt and tie. He sits at a desk apart from everyone else in the open-plan office. The others sit at discrete groups of desks. The office is unrelentingly modern. Wherever governments shop, it is the office equivalent of Ikea. His desk is at the front of the office, with the front defined by closeness to the Minister’s door. He faces everyone else and is the nodal point of communication, a constant point of reference for everyone else. He describes his job as head of the team of some 80 people who support all the Ministers: ‘I have got management responsibility for them and making sure that things run smoothly and Ministers have all the support they need.’ Also, he works closely with the Minister, ‘giving him the support he needs, acting as communication interface between him and the Department and vice versa, and obviously managing his office.’ If that sounds prosaic, even boring, the job has its challenges because: You’re facing the Minister, you’re facing the Department, you’re facing the PS, and you’re facing the other Ministers. And you are sort of caught between these different forces, and you know that there are going to be times when you can’t please everybody. That’s quite difficult but that’s the job    It took me a while to realise that every time I spoke, everyone assumed I was the Minister. Now I’m careful. The PPS is described by the PS as ‘the Minister’s representative on earth’. It is said with a smile, but like many flippant remarks it is double edged. The phrase recognises his standing while reminding the PPS that he is the PS’s subordinate. In turn, the PPS comments that the PS sometimes ‘takes his frustrations with the Minister out on me’. An academic colleague commented that the PPS seemed like a ‘ball bearing, caught between these different forces’. He is ‘more subject than agent’. I prefer to describe him as a nodal point for information. Everything of importance goes through him to the Minister. Information and selective attention bestow standing. A former Minister, Richard Crossman (1975: 618), described the Private Office as both a ‘Rolls Royce’ and a ‘cocoon’. So, when the PS says his job is ‘making sure that things run smoothly’, he is evoking these well-known metaphors. It is hard to overstate the dedication to making the Minister’s life smooth or the Office’s sensitivity to the Minister’s

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moods. They know the Minister’s mind before the Minister knows what he wants. Being the centre of so much attention must be addictive. One former Minister confessed that the withdrawal symptoms on leaving office were acute. The Minister, like every other Minister irrespective of age, race or gender, is waited on hand and foot. Privilege goes with the turf. He has the exclusive use of his own toilet although there are two others within twenty metres. Water, coffee, tea and sandwiches are offered and brought whenever the Minister wants them. A diary secretary controls who can and cannot see him. A member of the Private Office escorts him everywhere, carrying bags and files. A car sits and waits on his every movement. Although the House of Commons is a mere five minutes walk away, he is driven there. When he leaves his coat in the car, the driver brings it to him. I often thought the short walk to Parliament and break from all the attention would be a welcome respite. I know one PS who insisted on a twenty minutes’ break at lunchtime to stretch his legs, and clear the mind, in a nearby park. I never saw a Minister forgo the perks of office for anything as ordinary as a walk. The Private Office is just as sensitive to moods. The comment that the Minister ‘is not in a good mood today’, evokes the comment ‘Oh bollocks’ and the epithet ‘friggin’ PQs’, meaning the Minister’s impending appearance in the House of Commons to answer parliamentary questions is the cause of his bad mood. The first time I saw the Minister he walked into his cocoon remarking cheerily, ‘Finally, a man in the office’ because the Private Office is staffed mainly by women. He spots that a tile in the ceiling has been removed, so he continues, ‘It’s terrorists; there’ll be men on ropes next.’ The PPS immediately rings maintenance to get it fixed. There is a buzz around the office. I thought, ‘Ladies and gentleman, Elvis Presley is in the building.’ There is the same sense of celebrity. I remember that he is the Queen’s Minister; the office has a long history of grandeur. Everyone seems to change gear; they process their mails a little more quickly. Of course, the Minister’s remarks establish he is a warm and amusing person to work for. Of course, I smile politely. I thank him for his cooperation as he invites me to sit in his office of cream and oatmeal coloured easy chairs and sofas, and pale yellow walls with abstract paintings and modern bowls and vases. Tea arrives unbidden; on the ritual of tea drinking see Rhodes (2005). The culture of the Private Office is one of long hours. There is always someone there when the Minister is there, and they have to prepare for his arrivals and departures as well as the briefings for today’s meetings

The Everyday Life of a Minister 29

and the boxes for tonight’s reading. Today was an early start because the Minister had a breakfast event with a speech. The PPS will not do such an event. There are three private secretaries and they will rotate who accompanies the Minister. The same is true of the Press Office, which also sends someone to go with the Minister. They are a put on breed. The private secretary looks tired and finds the job hard going: ‘The hours are awful. You can’t arrange anything during the week.’ They are young people, often newly married, some have a first child, they live miles out because they cannot afford Central London, and many look forward to their next posting. What is the compensation? They believe they are at the centre of things. One academic colleague described this as an example of bureaucratic enchantment because they work long hours for low pay in offices that are at best undistinguished, if not the clerical equivalent of a battery for hens. It matters not. Members of the Private Office know it is an essential posting for their career development. There is also the halo effect of being physically adjacent to and being greeted by the Minister. So, they accept willingly that ‘If you work 9 to 5, you wouldn’t survive because you couldn’t do the job.’

At the office The Department has a ministerial meeting every week and they refer to them as ‘KiTs’ or ‘Keep in Touch’ meetings. A junior minister describes the meetings as ‘informal, sitting around, and the Minister talks to us about what’s happening, what’s going on across the government, what his current priorities are’. The other ministers report on what they are doing but ‘in pretty brief form’. The meetings alternate between ministers only and meetings at which also the PS is present with some senior officials. At today’s meeting there are no officials, only the several ministers with the Special Advisers, Spads, the PPS, and the Parliamentary Secretaries, ParlS. The latter are tolerated by officials but they are the lowest of the low and, even worse, they know it. Some self-knowledge is not good for self-esteem but MPs have to start somewhere and, provided they show minimal competence, they will move on and up quickly. Most of the people attending are male in dark suits – grey or black – with white shirt and tie. In vain I look for the hand painted silk tie or even the Paul Smith designer suit that is a hallmark of New Labour. The most distinctive outfit is a loud pinstripe that makes its wearer look like a spiv. And that is worn by an outsider, for today’s meeting starts

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with a presentation by consultants on the Department’s public image. Conventional wisdom has it that civil servants put together packages of advice from several sources for ministers to make policy, but I see more discussions about the presentation of policy than of the substance. We start with a paper about the results of an opinion survey of stakeholders’ view of the Department. There is a PowerPoint summary and, as is so often the case, the speaker hides behind it. Lights are dimmed, so you can’t see him clearly. He drones on, in effect reading the slides. I think, ‘you circulated the paper earlier and we’ve read it’, only I know several of the ministers have not. Only the Minister with his Private Office and its succinct briefings are on top of the game. Interest is barely above zero. Tea is served during the presentation and the clatter of cups and the constant whispers about ‘pass the sugar’ and ‘can I have a biscuit’ drown out the speaker on occasion. This meeting is not a laugh a minute. The document reports that the Department ‘lacks focus’ and ‘overall, stakeholders are critical’. Members of the audience wriggle in their seats, look around, scratch, whisper to their neighbours around the table, or doodle on pads. But the Minister is no mere mortal. He has to remain alert and look interested. And he does, with commendable aplomb. I am dying of boredom and he is almost perky. After twenty minutes the audience can contain itself no longer and starts interrupting. The Press Office leaps to its own defence. The Minister intervenes to stop the meeting deteriorating. The report is ‘a useful and timely reminder to keep the change process going’ and although ‘we are doing the right things we need to do more’. With that warning ringing in their ears, the ministerial team keep their opinions to themselves. Questions and comments are desultory. Although the Minister’s intervention was not meant to be a summing-up, it serves that purpose and the consultants leave. The tone of the meeting changes almost immediately. Everyone is paying attention because they are talking about what they want to talk about. First, there is a report on parliamentary business. Where is the Bill in committee? How is it going? Any foreseeable problems? No, the meeting is reassured. All is going as well as can be expected. And that is what they want to hear. They need to know, but no one wants more problems. The conversation is that of familiars. There are no obvious undercurrents. It is businesslike, with little or no badinage. The Minister keeps things moving. ‘Do we have enough speakers for the debate?’ Each junior minister reports on her or his portfolio. The reports are brisk. What we are doing? What progress have we made since last week? The meeting expects to be alerted to any possible political problems.

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Interestingly, they pay as much attention to Parliament as the media. To this outsider, the purpose of the briefing is not to give information but to reinforce their sense of being a team. They are in it together. If one minister is up to his or her eyeballs in a certain country commodity, it reflects on everyone. Their prospects hinge in part on the reputation of the Department. The Minister reports last. He is pleased with the press coverage from yesterday but concerned about developments in the EU on which the Department will have to keep a weather eye. Here, he is less than forthcoming. He is not just concerned about specific EU policies but also about the government’s response. It is not clear whether the others latch on to this subtext. I know the Spads know, but there is no reaction from the others. With his report, the meeting begins to wind down. One of the ParlS is going to Trinidad and Tobago and he asks for a briefing. There is much raucous laughter and various suggestions about what he could do, only some of which involve sunbathing and swimming in the sea. The Minister smiles but does not bother to call the meeting to order. The badinage continues, apparently a good point on which to draw matters to an end. He shuffles his papers and returns them to their red folder. The others take their cue and the meeting breaks up. One minister’s mannerisms suggest he is ‘off message’. His report is excessively brief – two rather than the more usual five or ten minutes. When the others speak he is reading and highlighting a document, presumably a speech he will give later. In the lift, after the meeting, I ask the PPS about his standing. He is ‘not a team player’. His poor reputation compared with other ministers is revealed in the way he is addressed by officials; his name is always prefixed by ‘Mr’. Not so the others, who are often just called minister or in the confines of the Private Office referred to by their first name. Using this title speaks volumes. The PPS ‘hopes’ he will go in the next reshuffle, but that is a civil servant speaking. Ministerial posts are not always allocated by ability and for hard work. When I discussed this minister with one of his ministerial colleagues, I was told with much merriment that he would stay because ‘he is harmless, a Brown-ite, and everybody has to have one’.

The Management Board The PPS is waiting with the folders for the next meeting. All such folders are colour coded. For example, parliamentary questions are coded orange meaning it is an ‘Ephemeral file. This file will be destroyed after ten years’. Meeting files are red. First, there is a short briefing meeting with

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the PS before a meeting of the Management Board to consider the latest version of the Department’s strategy or business plan. The PS comes to the Minister. He too is waiting. Their discussions continue as they walk to the meeting room. I go with them. The PPS is not invited. The briefing with the PS is the next step in a bureaucratic ambush. On the previous day, the Minister had met a stakeholder member of the Board to discuss their contribution to this meeting. There is a view shared by both the Minister and the PPS that the PS does not always follow through. After making it clear that he is talking ‘off message’, the PPS explains that he led the team that did the review. He comments that the PS didn’t realise he needed ‘to be constantly pushing’. He accepts ‘he is pretty good at making people want to do things’, and he ought to use these skills ‘to keep things moving, to maintain the momentum on the Change Program’. He wants the PS ‘to recognise his own leadership skills  to inspire people a bit more’. The Minister agrees: ‘I could see it was getting bogged down’. It needed ‘another mega injection of energy’. The PS ‘says the right things’ but ‘he’s actually not driving it’. The PPS is of the view that he ‘had to stiffen his resolve’ over the internal reforms and the Minister is about to do the same. He tells the Management Board member that he wants him to challenge the Business Plan. He is happy to do so: ‘It’s a mixture of cliché and jargon with nothing to check progress on delivery’. ‘Yes’, says the Minister ‘I didn’t realise we were getting bogged down in it’. He tells him he wants to ‘sharpen up some of the objectives’. Also, ‘how will we know if we are not making progress?’ And now the crux: ‘the PS is sensitive on this. I will heap praise on him but as a prelude to a discussion of lessons for next time. We must use the business plan to get people to make decisions’. The Board Member ‘entirely agrees’ with the Minister and he will address the issues of ‘delivery’ and ‘outputs’ at the meeting. I tell the Minister ‘I have gained the impression perhaps inaccurately that you are quite “hands on” in terms of managing the department’. He says ‘I am at the moment and I was to start with’. Privately, the PPS tells me the Minister does not do ‘the really “nitty-gritty” stuff of managing because he’s got plenty of other things to think about’. This conversation introduces two pieces of managerial speak that are all too often heard inside and outside Whitehall. There is a fashion in such things. I was surprised to hear conversations about ‘stakeholders’ because that is one of yesterday’s buzz words for New Labour. Arguably, business plans will be in decline as I write this account. But service delivery was the fad on the rise.

The Everyday Life of a Minister 33

The Management Board meeting begins without the preliminary tea ritual! In fact, the Board had tea in the anteroom to the meeting before we arrived. There is no interruption for tea and coffee during the meeting because there is a buffet lunch to follow. There is water but no ice as we are in England, not Australia. The Minister starts the meeting by introducing the business plan. He praises the PS and suggests the meeting could sharpen up the objectives and try to identify the lessons for next time. The team leader talks the meeting through the plan with the ever-present PowerPoint presentation. My nasty suspicious mind springs to action. The team leader identifies some weaknesses in the plan. It has too many objectives and not enough measures. When the PS speaks, my suspicions are confirmed. The PS is a large man of imposing presence. He often slumps in chairs as a way of taking the back-seat at a meeting, but not today. He sits erect, leaning forward slightly. His tone is defensive but crisp. He does not invite discussion let alone contradiction. He suggests the plan is ‘ground breaking’. It is ‘business as usual while redirecting the tanker’. He makes several jibes about ‘our friends at the Treasury’, whose approval is required for budgetary and investment decisions. He dismisses their criticisms as ‘niggling’. The plan may be ‘weak on delivery’. However, it is the first of five years and next year’s delivery will be the priority. I record in my notes: ‘He knows what’s afoot. He’s deflecting criticisms before they have been made’. The PS puts up a slide summarising the major issues. I am no longer in any doubt. He knew about the ambush. The slide could act as a summary of the Minister’s meeting with the Board member. The Minister asks him to leave the slide on ‘to guide discussion’. Why wouldn’t he? It’s a list of his concerns. How do I make sense of this situation? Has the PS captured the Minister’s agenda? Or is he saving face by anticipating criticism? It is still his agenda that runs the meeting. It has no effect on the comments of the Board members on the business plan. They weigh in. Their several comments include: ‘you don’t have the metrics in place to measure progress’; ‘detailed action plans are missing’; ‘you are trying to be too clever’; ‘get some measures and learn as you go along’; and ‘there is too much waffle, too much wooliness, it needs to be crisp, more precise’. There is a general concession that the plan ‘is going in the right direction’ but the overall tone is critical, none more so than the Board member briefed by the Minister. He sides with the Treasury; ‘they are clearly right about measurement’ and he questions the skills of officials: ‘do they have the skills and capacity for the job?’ Also, he thinks the Board should have been involved earlier.

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The Minister is taken aback by his trenchant critique and apologises for not getting the Board involved earlier. He tries to steer the discussion back to refining objectives but is interrupted by another Board member who wants to know ‘how you are going to achieve them’. After all, he continues ‘you have been failing for a century’. If any useful lessons are being drawn beyond the PS’s slide, I do not hear them. The discussion is not constructive or supportive. The PS is impatient, commenting that most of these points have been discussed before, but the Minister, not the PS, is the focal point of the meeting. All the comments are directed to him. There are almost no cross-table exchanges. The meeting has moved on from the specific topic of the plan to a more general discussion of internal reform and trite phrases about the ‘culture of the organisation’, ‘the need for leadership’ and ‘the failure of innovation’ abound. I have heard all of this before at meetings to discuss management reform in universities. They are the day-to-day topics of the so-called ‘new public management’; the language of management consultants. The Minister stops the chatter to allow the individual Director Generals (DGs) in the department to provide a summary for the Board of what’s going on in their area. We are subjected to a deluge of management speak; objectives, targets, trajectories and evaluation are common currency. They are interspersed with some older language; one DG claims the title of his presentation fails ‘the cocktail party test’. He means it is not witty and amusing. He doesn’t seem to realise the rest of us never go to cocktail parties and we don’t know anybody who does. The presentations deliver boredom by the megaton. The Minister has the advantage. The Private Office has provided the usual succinct briefing on what everyone will say. So, even if his attention wanders, and it does, he still knows what’s happening. Everybody uses PowerPoint. Nobody displays a gram of charisma. There is the occasional flicker of enthusiasm but zest is visibly absent. The meeting is ‘a bore of grey suits’ as the men live down to their reputation, and the women are right there with them. I am reminded of The Animals song ‘We Gotta Get out of this Place’ and, to my horror, I find I am humming it! I stop, looking around to make sure no one heard me. The Minister is reading another document. When he is listening he has his elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin resting on his hand. He does not fidget. He is not animated. He may adjust his spectacles. When he is talking he uses his hands. The PS is more obviously bored. He slumps, sits up, slumps again or does some other work. He writes. The room is oppressive. The latest speaker drones on and on. Some

The Everyday Life of a Minister 35

people nod, probably to stay awake. Eyelids droop. The PS realises it is drifting and makes some flippant remarks but the drone wins. The meeting never recovers. There are a few moments of animation when the question of abolishing retirement age crops up. The PS cracks jokes about age.

Lunch – almost The Minister and the PS leave with me racing to catch up. They are chatting about ‘keeping No. 10 in the loop’ on the way to a buffet lunch. I don’t know why. They turn to the implications of the discussion for the next round of business planning. They also discuss appointments. These appointments are patronage appointments to various government committees and agencies, not civil service ones. The PS tells him he has ‘deliberately put one of our best chaps onto this area’. A government buffet is not normally something I would welcome. I expect cold quiche with salads drenched in bottled dressing. But at this precise moment even cold quiche would look like manna from heaven. In fact, they have gorgeous hors d’oeuvres of lamb fillet en croute. So, Murphy’s Law strikes. A Private Secretary arrives with a message for the Minister. He has two calls booked with Spads at No. 10. So, with a handful of lamb fillet en croute, I traipse, dispiritedly, after him. I ask ‘did he [the PS] really say chaps?’ ‘Almost certainly’, he replies. Traditionally permanent secretaries are from ‘Oxbridge’, a term that refers to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. There is a longstanding tradition of the civil service recruiting people from fee-paying schools and Oxbridge. It is a clear marker of a middle-class upbringing. It is associated with a specific accent, variously described as plummy or BBC. Words like ‘chap’ resonate of Oxbridge between the wars and an age I thought long gone. In England, accents and language are always reducible to class; a statement confirmed by my experience in the Department. For example, it was easy for me to look like a member of the Private Office. Sounding like them was a different matter. My dulcet Yorkshire tones were a tad obvious. I was made all too aware of my accent by such questions as ‘Where are you from?’ I would answer that I was from Australia, which invited the retort, ‘but not by birth’. Further conversation could involve cricket, J. B. Priestley, although not rugby league. It also involves social discomfort for me because accent is still a mark of otherness. As George Bernard Shaw famously commented, ‘it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making

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some other Englishman hate him or despise him’. Such stigmata may be less acute today but there are still residues of the earlier era. After the Management Board meeting, I asked the PPS if he had briefed the PS about the impending criticisms by the Board. He said not. Maybe I asked the wrong question. Perhaps he briefed the team leader who briefed the PS. However, in offices, information cannot only move quickly but also seemingly by osmosis. The analogy with a village remains apt, although I doubt the PS sees himself as Miss Marple at the heart of St Mary Mead’s web of gossip. The important point is that the top of a government department is a small world and everybody knows everybody else’s business. Back at the office, the telephone conversation with the No. 10 Spads is unintelligible. The Minister just makes the conversational noises that usually betoken agreement or at least understanding. The conventions of such calls are, however, interesting. There is a hierarchy. When the Prime Minister announces his Cabinet, there is a public list. That list is the official hierarchy of ministers and ministries. So, the Prime Minister waits for nobody. His office gets the minister on the line and puts him or her through to Tony so he is not kept waiting. Whenever you hear the phrase ‘Do you want to put your Minister on and I’ll put him through’, you know the protocol hierarchy has been invoked. On this occasion, ‘my’ Minister waits on the line until he is put through. The Private Office has brought some sandwiches for the Minister from the buffet. The Minister has ‘five minutes’ – a phrase that signals a break of indeterminate length – so he is doing his e-mails as he eats his sandwiches. So, again, I have no idea what he is talking about.

The Minister and his minders If tracts of the day have been boring, matters are about to improve. The Minister has a meeting with his ‘cauldron of Spads’ – the officials’ collective noun for them and the analogy is to the witches of Macbeth. There is no obvious difference in dress code between Spads and civil servants but they are younger. Above all, they are enthusiastic and committed to ‘their’ minister. This meeting is almost family-like. They gossip furiously about the party and rival ministers. It is relaxed. People are sprawled out on settees, feet up. The Minister chats about his ‘favourite’ journalist and wonders ‘if you can put poison in his breakfast for me’. Others doubt he will be there because the pubs are not open. It is staccato. People talk over one another. The formality ever-present when officials attend is missing.

The Everyday Life of a Minister 37

Everyone is bubbling. The Minister, not the Department, got friendly coverage from the media for a recent initiative. It ‘has gone really well’ with ‘big ticks all round’. The Minister agrees, ‘we should be really proud of this’. They start talking about more ‘milestones’ – jargon for newsworthy targets. They also discuss various photographs, including one of a smiling baby with only a few teeth. They wonder if they should airbrush the teeth out for the final version. And, dear reader, they did airbrush them out! The features of such meetings are their informality and their unstructured nature. So, in a nanosecond we move from media coverage to Iraq. ‘What are we doing to get our share of the contracts?’ The problem is American partiality in awarding contracts. The Minister wants a ‘level playing field’ at least in public. In private, he wants ‘our share’. One Spad observes, ‘We should get credit because we’re doing the killing’. Another replies ‘That’s bloody stupid’, not because it puts commerce before people, but because saying it ‘will turn the Arabs against us’. The meeting is convinced we must do something, ‘otherwise it will be the French and the Russians who’ll get the business after we’ve done all the bloody work’ said with no sense of irony. They agree the Department must talk to the Foreign Office and the Minister for International Development to get them to do more. ‘And it mustn’t be tied to aid’. They mull over the Iraq war. Earlier in the week, the news came though of the ‘victory’. The Minister remarks that ‘it will leave a lot of bruises’ and that ‘for some people it is the last straw’. Even more are ‘troubled’. ‘It will be years before we know if we did the right thing’. Others comment ‘it would help if we could find weapons of mass destruction’; prompting the reply ‘it’s why we went in’. The Minister closes the subject by asserting that ‘Tony is handling it absolutely superbly’ and conversation switches to the EU. The subject does not involve any Departmental policy. Rather the focus is on internal Labour Party machinations and, in particular on Gordon Brown. The Minister wants a decision to join the Euro but Gordon Brown is a known opponent. The Minister wants data on the economic tests that Brown has set for entry so he can argue with him. ‘We want Gordon’s economic assessment and I want to reinterpret it’. He ‘wants to keep bridges open to Europe’. He deputises a Spad to prepare a brief for him. However, he is uncertain when to raise the matter in Cabinet. They discuss possible allies in Cabinet. They run through a list of names. They are uncertain of some ministers’ position. To find out the Minister could ring the relevant Spad or he could use one of his Spads. The Spads agree to ring their counterparts in the relevant

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department. The Minister disagrees; ‘do not ring around the advisers’ net, we don’t want it leaking’. After the meeting he comments that he does ‘have a different position on the Euro from Gordon’ but ‘until we get to the point of making a decision, there is absolutely no point constantly having headline stories saying “The Minister has made another pro-Euro intervention”.’ The conversation moves from Europe to a possible Cabinet reshuffle. The Minister tells them it may not be at Cabinet level. So, they concentrate on junior ministers in other departments and backbench MPs who might be suitable recruits for the Department. It is gossip about standing in the Party and in government. It is the lifeblood of such meetings. They love it. The Minister remembers I am there. He says, ‘you didn’t hear any of this’. They all laugh. I smile. Gossip is the currency of both Westminster and Whitehall. Officials are also enthusiastic practitioners of the art. I observed to the PPS that the PS loved having a good gossip about what was going on. He replied: ‘He gives the impression he’s having a gossip but actually that’s just his style, things do get done’. And that is the second use of gossip. It is not just reporting back on the informal political hierarchy but it is way of greasing the wheels of conversation rather like the British and the weather. We don’t care whether it is raining but the topic gets social interactions underway without embarrassment. And we all know the English, including civil servants, avoid embarrassment.

More visitors The PPS announces that the parties for his next meeting have arrived. It is six officers from a major interest group. If I thought the Management Board meeting was dire, it was as nothing compared to what is about to happen. They begin by announcing they are ‘good corporate citizens’ and how much ‘they welcome the opportunity’ to meet the Minister. Their spokesperson talks of a ‘true convergence’ with the Department and describes their links as ‘so exciting’. I have frozen my face. It’s like listening to a sales pitch by a sleazy executive in a Hollywood movie. He is toadying up to the Minister and in turn the Minister is making them feel welcome at the top table. But the spokesperson is only just warming to his task. He describes the tenure of the Minister as ‘stunning’. He offers the Minister a present, which he declines explaining it is against the rules and it is. He tells him they should call any time; ‘just pick up the phone’. There are smiles and laughter; they are bonding. I understand why the Minister feels he has to see – perhaps I should write, ‘grant

The Everyday Life of a Minister 39

an audience to’ – a major interest group. I am amazed at the group’s performance. There is no agenda. There is no possibility of a decision because they ask for nothing. Again, I witness the Minister as celebrity. The Private Secretary comes in. The finishing time of this meeting is pre-arranged. I wonder if the Minister is wincing inside or whether he expects such homage.

Traipsing about The Minister gets ready for the next meeting with a quick wash and brush up. Everybody tells you they avoid ‘back-to-back meetings’ – the PS, the Minister, their diary secretaries. Everybody has back-to-back meetings, regularly. The expression ‘back-to-back meetings’ is a mantra they chant to one another. Its meaning is not obvious. It is not a rule for limiting appointments. Rather it is a way of impressing on people that they are so busy they have to have back-to-back meetings even though they gave firm instructions to the contrary. It is a form of ministerial machismo. We take the lift to the meeting and the Minister explains he is ‘dreading’ this meeting. It is a forum of sports representatives, which is not his normal area of responsibility but, in the era of joined-up government, his Department has to be there. The forum exists because a prominent sports personality, who is a friend of the Blairs, persuaded the Prime Minister to set it up. With some venom, the Minister describes the sports person as ‘a lobby of one’. The Minister is the chair because Tony Blair asked him and he did not see how he could refuse. Its terms of reference are    there’s the rub, and the reason he describes the meeting as dreadful. They are at ‘loggerheads’ over them. The topic of today’s meeting is sponsorship and sport. It was a good job the PPS told me, because I would never have guessed. The Minister is a few minutes early. Tea is being taken – the essential lubricant of any meeting. He mingles, expertly recognising faces, smiling, and seemingly relaxed and friendly. It is his public face. It is as if he has a case of ‘faces’ he can wear and he chooses the one most appropriate to his current task. Throughout this discussion, the Minister does a good job of appearing interested. He nods in all the right places, looks at the speakers, turns his papers at the right time. He does NOT shuffle and organise his papers, check his diary, read and annotate a paper, or talk to his neighbour at the table. He speaks rarely but on the few occasions when he does he stresses setting priorities, limiting their interest to a manageable number

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of topics, and realistic costing. If anyone was listening carefully, they would know he is criticising them and telling them what he wants if there is to be any progress. No one is listening. What value was added by this meeting? The most obvious output is that the Minister has obliged the Prime Minister, normally a wise course of action. But for Blair’s involvement, he would have sent a junior minister. A second outcome is that the Minister has discharged his representational or ambassadorial function in Whitehall and beyond. I have not described this meeting as boring. The Management Board was a bore but it was necessary. The main characteristic of this meeting is that it was unnecessary. It exists as an unquestioning reaction to prime ministerial whim. It has no clear agenda and if it has outputs it has no obvious outcomes.

The journey home My story of everyday life stops here. The rest of the day is taken up with my interview with the Minister and a dental appointment. He offers me a lift back to my hotel in his official car, which I accept, hoping for some informative conversation in the car. But he is tired, so we talk about Australia. We agree Australian wine offers the best quality for price in the world. By London traffic standards we make good time, although we don’t have far to travel. I wonder if London itself contributes to the air of rush and stress that surrounds the Minister. It is such a big, noisy, dirty, congested place. There must be corners of peace and quiet but I see none of them in the square mile of Westminster and Whitehall. I just see people and traffic rushing in every direction. I miss the peace and quiet of my Canberra suburb with its gum trees and hills where the noisiest thing is the parrots or the Kookaburras arguing over territory, mates and food. There is no stillness here. My day isn’t over. I go over my notes, clarifying, correcting, adding to, and noting queries for the PPS when I get in tomorrow. The Minister will have his teeth seen to and go home to the red box. It will be finished in the kitchen tomorrow morning over breakfast.

So what? The value of observation is that it delivers thick descriptions. But what does a thick description tell us that is different from, for example, the conventional analysis of the ministerial roles of ministers? My thick

The Everyday Life of a Minister 41

description of a day in the life of the Minister suggests several distinct and distinctive conclusions.5

Talking Ministers and officials talk to one another in ways that are striking to outsiders. There is no one set of ideas, no one vocabulary, which characterises the culture of departments. Rather, there are overlapping, competing, webs of beliefs. One set I have labelled simply traditional beliefs.6 The other set of beliefs originate in the public sector reforms of the 1980s and are commonly referred to as the new public management, although New Labour has given them a twist of its own. I can identify these beliefs through their separate languages. Each has its pet phrases and jargon. I was surprised to hear phrases like chaps and references to cocktail parties. I thought that era was long gone, and it is not the dominant discourse. They are trace elements of an earlier time and some of them, such as probity and doing the right thing, are as relevant now as they ever were. Of such older traces, the most common surround homage to the Queen’s minister. The Minister is called Minister or Secretary of State and rarely addressed by his first name by officials. Outsiders display equivalent verbal and physical deference. He is the centre of attention and this simple fact is displayed in language, beliefs and practices. The monarchical tradition of hierarchy lives on as a central characteristic of the Westminster model and ministerial practice. The point is that the Minister is a celebrity if not royalty. Other phrases survive from the era when civil servants were administrators, not managers, in itself a signifier of shifting beliefs. So, they ‘clear lines’ with ministers, worry about being ‘off message’, want to go ‘with the grain’ and avoid ‘back-to-back meetings’. I found the best examples of this language in a video made for civil servants about working with ministers. It was made tongue-in-cheek but the key point is that everybody knew the phrases. The video presupposes familiarity with civil service beliefs about ministers. So, officials are told there ‘is a bit of mystique around ministers and they make you feel inferior’. You have ‘to put yourself in the minister’s shoes’. Or, more formally, the Cabinet Office’s booklet on working with ministers advises ‘while it is helpful if ministers understand the needs of civil servants, it’s essential that civil servants understand the needs of ministers’ (Jary, 2004: 5). You must recognise that ‘we are all on the same side’. This advice is mixed up with office folklore: ‘get off the phone, you’ll get it quicker’ and ‘everybody sticks their head down and ignores you’. The other feature of office

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folklore is the love of acronyms. It is all pervasive. If you cannot talk acronym you are lost. On my first visit to the Department, I had to ask if there was a list of them because the meeting I had attended was nearly incomprehensible. I had no idea who or what they were talking about. The diary secretary earned my undying gratitude by producing one. It was seven pages long! Afterwards I never went to any department without asking for one. They all found one, although it was not necessarily up-to-date. They had to have it. Even their own kith and kin, when they came from other departments, needed help. However, they need only the acronyms for other organisations. They knew about KiTs, usually group meetings, or ‘1:1s’ or one-to-one meetings, usually a meeting with one other person. To make matters even more confusing there was no consistency. So, a 1:1 could be a KiT in another department! Traditional language and beliefs are overlaid with the new public management or, as it is referred to by some, critically, ‘New Labourspeak’. The obvious examples are the Department’s business plan with its stress on objectives, targets, performance, outputs, cost containment and evaluation. The layer added by New Labour uses such words as joined-up government, delivery, and value driven. Recent candidates for inclusion include innovation and leadership. Some brave spirits rail against jargon (Jary, 2004: 64–5) but fail to understand its core functions are to demonstrate that one is an ‘insider’ and who is ‘on-side’. The languages vie with each other. It is not clear to this professional stranger that the language of management has become the dominant discourse. You have to be fluent in it but, at times, it seemed more like a veneer. Expressions like ‘driving it down’ suggest that reform has not penetrated far down the hierarchy. The world I visited was a world of process, of committees, not a world of output measurement. Officials talked the management talk with ease. But to use some of the more cringe-inducing phrases, it was not clear they ‘walked the walk’ and delivered ‘more bang for the bucks’.

Working When I ask ministers and permanent secretaries about what they do, they talk about running the Department, working with the Minister, and representing the Department in the outside world of Whitehall and beyond. I structure my remarks around their views of the work.

The Everyday Life of a Minister 43

Running the Department Management is not new. Replacing ‘administration’ with ‘management’ may signify a desire for change but it merely re-labels much of the work of the Department, which carries on as before. There are many examples of such continuing administrative activity in my account of the Minister’s day, and the best example is the Private Office. It ‘manages’ the Minister in a hundred small ways. I have described the protocols around telephone calls. Similarly, the red box is governed by its own rules. Thus, at the start of the day, the PPS will write a time, say 17.15, in the top right-hand corner of the red box. This tells everyone the box must be ready by that time because that is when the Minister will leave the office. Everyone understands that it is ‘best to get it all in one box. If there are two they get discouraged’ (PPS). By 16.30 the box will be the focus of a flurry of activity. All the paperwork in the Private Office must come together at this point. After the diary it is a key organising device for managing the Minister. It is just a cardinal rule that it must be ready by the stated time. Another obvious continuity is working in committees. It may be obvious but given twenty years of management reform it is worth stressing that committees remain the main decision-making vehicle. The Minister’s diary is made up of back-to-back committee meetings. They come in various forms and, as we have just seen, their purpose is not always to make decisions. In fact, many are KiTs, although not called such. They pose problems for the Minister who has to pay attention. Many of us who go to committees switch off at some point. I am an endless fidget and easily bored. The Minister pays attention; a simple phrase for a hard task. He also has to keep up, switching from topic to topic. I know the Private Office is efficient because they provide the briefings for all these meetings and their multifarious agendas and he moves through them without a hitch. The Minister knows his limitations: ‘I’m not as on top of this as I need to be’. But he also knows it is possible to be fully informed on only a few subjects. Without his briefings he would quickly be lost. Even with them, he can struggle. If challenged by an expert, he does not have the detailed knowledge to sustain an argument. He escapes by agreeing to ‘take it back for further consideration’. That phrase could be translated as ‘oops’. As the PPS observes, ‘He is pretty clever. He’s pretty clear about what he wants. He’s pretty decisive quite a lot of the time. So there aren’t many times when I think he’s completely lost’.

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On occasion, disorganisation and frustration prevail. For example, the Minister is in a meeting but waiting for an international call. He is in and out of the meeting as a result and irritated by trying to do two things at the same time and succeeding with neither. Every time he goes out for the call, there is a technical hitch. The various exits are punctuated with ‘Oh Jesus’ and on one occasion he bangs the table with his fists. Everyone knows – no one better than the Minister – that he should not be trying to fit the call in. When he settles to the committee he stumbles over the agenda and has to find the right place in his papers. It takes him a couple of minutes to catch up with the meeting and stop thinking about the call and the disorganisation. The primacy of committees, the boredom of endless meetings, the tyranny of the engagement diary, tea and coffee before meetings, and the routines of the Private Office are all examples of the rituals of the bureaucracy. They are used to routinise or domesticate the turbulent working environment of the Minister. So, my protestations of boredom miss the point. If issues are political and volatile, then emotions can also run high. So, the Private Office sets up meetings, tea is drunk, matters are discussed through the chair, the Private Office synthesise material for the red box, there is a further round of meetings, by which time there is an air of dispassionate consideration verging on boredom. Such routines also matter even when there is no big issue. The pace of events is unrelenting and the Private Office, the diary and the red box are the way of organising, even disciplining, events. Political life may be ‘events, dear boy, events’ but they are coped with using bureaucratic rituals. The routines are sustained by more than the working practices of the office. As important are gossip, humour and politeness. All serve to maintain the routines either by providing an outlet for conflict and aggression or defusing it. Gossip is ‘the process of informally communicating value-laden information about members of a social setting’ (Fox, 2004: 42 citing Noon and Delbridge, 1993). It is the currency of exchange in a culture of secrecy. A minister who went public with frank comments about his colleagues would damage his own reputation. So, David Blunkett’s attributed comments on his colleagues in his biography were injudicious at best. For example, Alan Milburn Health had ‘grown in competence and ability’, Margaret Beckett, Environment and Agriculture, is ‘just holding the ring’; Charles Clarke Education ‘has not developed as expected’, Patricia Hewitt, Trade and Industry, does not think strategically, and Gordon Brown throws his weight around (Pollard, 2005: 27–8). Of course his colleagues reciprocate. John Prescott, Deputy Prime

The Everyday Life of a Minister 45

Minister, is said to hold Blunkett in a mixture of contempt and suspicion while others grit their teeth at his ‘idiotic indiscretion’ (Observer, 12 December 2004). We have here a public example of a conversation that Westminster and Whitehall conducts all the time in private. Such gossip is the currency of court politics and the judgements are markers in the endless ministerial jockeying for position and recognition. It is the accepted way of making loaded judgements about other people and some such outlet is necessary in the competitive world of ministerial advancement. Politeness ‘presupposes [the] potential for aggression as it seeks to disarm it, and makes possible communication between potentially aggressive parties’ (Fox, 2004: 97 quoting Brown and Levinson, 2000). Politeness governs most workplace encounters. So, most meetings start with a discussion of the weather and general enquiries about one’s health, journey to work and, of course, cups of tea or coffee. And as Fox points out, this chit-chat includes ‘the usual full complement of pleases and thank yous, appreciative murmurs from the visitors and humorously self-deprecating apologies from the host, and so on, and on’ (Fox, 2004: 185). However, such practices have a serious purpose. They serve to relax committee members before stressful encounters and to diffuse potential aggression. In a meeting on internal budget cuts, one DG lost his temper and shouted at colleagues. The PS apologised for this behaviour all the way back to his office from the meeting. It simply wasn’t done. Overt aggression was discouraged by the almost mandatory conventions of polite behaviour. Humour does not refer to the jokes of a stand-up comic or the monologues of a Billy Connolly but to ‘wit, irony, understatement, banter, teasing, pomposity-pricking – which are an integral part of almost all English social interactions’ (Fox, 2004: 179). Interaction in the ministerial team is oiled by badinage about trips to Trinidad and Tobago and references to a certain country commodity. The Spads amuse one another at the expense of journalists. The PS seeks to enliven a dead meeting with quips about age. It is low key but ever-present. Laughter releases tension and stress and sustains routines and the management of crisis.

Working with the Minister If my account of the Minister’s day does not include a Cabinet meeting or question time in the House of Commons, or passing a major bill,

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nonetheless politics is ever-present. It can be found in the gossip about ministerial standing in the cabinet pecking order. It can be found in the discussion of internal Labour Party politics and the Euro. Even the high politics of Iraq can invade the politics of a domestic service ministry with their discussions about how to win contracts after the war. They domesticate the Iraq war and turn it into a playing field on which Britain bids for reconstruction contracts. I was struck with the centrality of the Spads. Their importance is recognised in the language of officials in the joking references to ‘a cauldron of Spads’. They are part of a network that links departments but, more important, links the Department to No. 10. Lines can be cleared on this political network without the Minister’s direct involvement. Not that there is any antagonism between officials and Spads inside the Department, although relations with No. 10 can be fraught. In the Department, each accepts the other plays a necessary role. If officials can be ‘stick in the muds’, they also have expertise and information. If the zeal of Spads can exceed judgement, their ability to manage the party and the media are seen as an essential complement to civil service skills. In any office there are raised voices, disagreement, even quarrels. I saw nothing other than a mild irritation. Thus the PPS snapped, ‘they think we are not up to the job but you’d have to be psychic to know what they want. Anyway they are too focused on spin’. I understand why the Minister wants and likes his Spads. They are noisy, boisterous, committed – in short, fun. He also trusts them implicitly to put his interest first in both the Party and the Department. Officials are also trusted by most ministers most of the time but they do not operate in the Party arena and there is always at least a touch of distance, of formality, with officials. I offer no criticism. It is, and they would agree, appropriate. But I can see that the Minister wants to relax in free-ranging discussions. He spends most of the day ‘presenting’ himself to others. Being a celebrity seems like privilege, but you have to meet people’s expectations and behave like a celebrity. In the privacy of his own office with the Spads, he can forget for a moment, take off his public faces.

Representing – dealing with the outside world I have two observations on their representative work. The Minister is a celebrity and treated with due deference. All governments need their symbolic trappings. The Minister sweeping into a public meeting with his entourage and the media is one example. The work is onerous. I do

The Everyday Life of a Minister 47

not mean it is onerous to meet people’s expectations – it may well be. Rather, I refer to the time he has to spend on it. If this work was subject to output measurement, it would be hard to identify the value added, especially given the wear and tear on the Minister.

People What does my account of the day tell me about the Minister? One conclusion is all too obvious. Ministers work long hours and are subject to great stress. One has only to compare the fresh-faced youth that was Tony Blair in 1997 with the drawn features of today to realise that high office exacts a high price. The relentless pace and pressure must adversely affect the quality of decision-making. The Minister openly admits to it: ‘Phew, I’m so tired. I didn’t sleep well last night’. And my heart goes out to the Private Office, whose pay and status are not remotely acceptable for their hours. They are unflaggingly cheerful. Their rationale is simple: ‘It’s ever so difficult to give a bollocking to a cheerful person’. It isn’t, but it makes them feel better. There is also the challenge of wearing many faces. At various points in my story I have provided several examples of the contradictory roles the Minister plays. In the Department he is all-powerful, waited on hand and foot. Ceilings are mended without having to ask, coats are fetched from cars. But he is also dependent on prime ministerial whim, attending meetings of no great significance at his behest. He is a celebrity escorted everywhere in a chauffeur-driven car, greeted at doorways on red carpets by respectful hosts. He is a godfather, recipient of homage from expectant interests. He is all too human, banging tables because of delayed phone calls. He is both key decision-maker, driving through organisational change, and automaton, chairing committees on autopilot because he has to be there. He has a public face of polite interest in the people he meets and the private face, tired and in need of dental care. I intend no criticism, no implication of insincerity when I describe him as an actor. Rather, I express admiration for his dexterity, for his skills. He is convincing in these several roles. I am impressed by the way the Minister slips between his roles. One minute he is chairing a committee, the next he is chatting away socially about breakfast at No. 10 with Tony, Cheri and little Leo. Normally, being a cynic, if I saw such transparent glad-handing on television, I would find it off-putting, but it is done with great skill and conviction. So, finally, why does he do it? On this occasion I was offered three reasons. First, he can make a difference: ‘If I’m going to be here I’m

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going to damn well make a difference’. He expresses some amazement ‘at the number of ministers who can’t do that    who can’t get their heads above grumbling about the amount of travel, or focusing on their office décor or whatever it is that gives them a sense of deep satisfaction    and    are “desperately casting around for a role”.’ Second, he just enjoys the work: ‘to be honest the thing which I probably most like is knowing what’s going on’. This sense of being at the centre of things is shared with many others at the top of the Department. Finally, ‘I am definitely an adrenalin junkie but I am not a workaholic. It’s an adrenalin high. I love doing it, yes’. In sum, this thick description is the personal story of the complex, episodic, ambivalent and contingent everyday life of a Minister. It is my interpretation of the Minister’s interpretation of his everyday experiences and encounters. It is not be the stuff of everyday political science. It is an example of the political anthropology of government elites. It offers an edifying account of British government that enables readers to see ministers afresh. Too few political scientists observe politicians at work. In his defence of case studies, Flyvbjerg (2006: 224) argues, ‘concrete, context-dependent knowledge is  more valuable than the vain search for predictive theories and universals’. He argues for the primacy of ‘thick descriptions’. So does this chapter. My story shows that with patience and persistence, we can provide thick descriptions of British ministers at work despite the endemic secrecy of British government.

Notes 1. The chapter has been read and commented on by the major participants in the study and is anonymous at their request. I thank them for allowing me to observe them at work and for their comments on the first draft of this chapter. Earlier versions were presented to the workshop on ‘The ethnography of government elites’, Utrecht School of Governance, University of Utrecht, 23–25 March 2006; the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom Annual Conference, University of Reading, 3–5 April 2006; and the Australasian Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Newcastle, 27–29 September 2006. I would like to thank all the participants for their advice and comments. Bob Goodin, ANU, and Kevin Orr, Hull, were good enough to send me written comments and for their sins appear in the text as academic commentators. Finally, a special thank you to Jenny Fleming, Paul ‘t Hart and John Wanna for comments, encouragement and patience. Any remaining errors of fact or judgement are mine.

The Everyday Life of a Minister 49 2. Little of note has been written about British ministers and their departments. For reviews of the relevant literature see: James, 1999; Marsh et al., 2001; Rhodes, 1995, 2005. 3. There is growing literature on the period, including several ‘insider’ accounts. See, for example: Beckett and Hencke, 2004; Keegan, 2003; Mowlam, 2002; Naughtie, 2002; Osborne and Walters, 2004; Peston, 2005; Pollard, 2005; Price, 2005; Rawnsley, 2001; Rentoul, 2001; Riddell, 2005; Scott, 2004; Seldon, 2004; Seldon and Kavanagh, 2005; Short, 2004; and Toynbee and Walker, 2005. 4. Initially, I used the usual term ‘subject’ to refer to ministers and permanent secretaries, treating them as objects of enquiry. Eventually I chose ‘inhabitants’ because I like the analogy of Westminster and Whitehall as a village. 5. I structure my remarks around the notions of language (talking), practices (working) and people (agency) after Bevir and Rhodes, 2003 and 2006. 6. For summary statement of the traditional beliefs of civil servants see: Cmnd 2627, 1994; Jary, 2004: chapter 7 and p. 85; and the several speeches of Sir Richard Wilson, former head of the home civil service. See for example Wilson, 2003.

References Agar, M. 1996. The Professional Stranger. 2nd edition. San Diego: Academic Press. Beckett, F. and Hencke, D. 2004. The Blairs and their Court. London: Aurum Press. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. 2003. Interpreting Governance. London: Routledge. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. 2006. Governance Stories. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge. Brown, P. and Levison, S. C. 2000. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. 1984. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crossman, R. H. S. 1975. The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Volume 1. Minister of Housing. London: Jonathan Cape. Flyvbjerg, B. 2006. ‘Five misunderstandings about case studies’, Qualitative Inquiry, 12 (2), pp. 219–45. Fox, K. 2004. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books. Heady, B. 1974. British Cabinet Ministers. London: Allen & Unwin. James, S. 1999. British Cabinet Government. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Jary, C. 2004. Working with Ministers. London: Cabinet Office/CMPS. Keegan. W. 2003. The Prudence of Mr Gordon Brown. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley. Marsh, D., Richards, D. and Smith M. J. 2001. Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mowlam, M. 2002. Momentum: The Struggle for Peace, Politics and the People. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Naughtie, J. 2002. The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage. Revised edition. London: Fourth Estate. Noon, M. and Delbridge, R. 1993. ‘News from behind my hand: gossip in organizations’, Organization Studies, 14(1), pp. 23–36.

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Oakeshott, M. 1996. The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism. Edited by Timothy Fuller. New Haven: Yale University Press. Oborne, P. and Walters, S. 2004. Alastair Campbell. London: Aurum Press. Peston, R. 2005. Brown’s Britain. London: Short Books. Pollard, S. 2005. David Blunkett. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Price. L. 2005. The Spin Doctor’s Diary: Inside Number 10 with New Labour. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Rawnsley, A. 2001. Servants of the People: the Inside Story of New Labour. Revised edition. London: Penguin Books. Rentoul, J. 2001. Tony Blair: Prime Minister. London: Little, Brown. Rhodes, R. A. W. 1995. ‘From prime ministerial power to core executive’, in R. A. W. Rhodes and P. Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive. London: Macmillan, pp. 11–37. Rhodes, R. A. W. 2005. ‘Everyday life in a ministry: public administration as anthropology’, American Review of Public Administration, 35 (1), pp. 3–26. Richardson, L. 1997. Fields of Play: Reconstructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Riddell, P. 2005. The Unfulfilled Prime Minister: Tony Blair and the End of Optimism. London: Politico. Scott, D. 2004. Off Whitehall: A View from Downing Street. London: Tauris. Seldon, A. 2004. Blair. London: Free Press. Seldon, A. and Kavanagh, D. (eds) (2005) The Blair Effect 2001–2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Short, C. 2004. An Honourable Deception? New Labour, Iraq and the Misuse of Power. London: Free Press. Stothard, P. 2003. 30 Days: A Month at the Heart of the Blair War. London: HarperCollins. Toynbee, P. and Walker, D. 2005 Better or Worse? Has Labour Delivered? London: Penguin Books. Van Maanen, J. 1988, Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, Sir Richard. 2003. ‘Portrait of a profession revisited’, Public Administration, 81 (2), pp. 365–78. Wulff, H. 2002. ‘Yo-yo fieldwork: mobility and time in multi-local study of dance in Ireland’, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 1 (1), pp. 117–36.

3 Spies at the Crossroads: Observing Change in the Dutch Intelligence Service Paul ‘t Hart

Mission accomplished: now what?1 Like many of its Western counterparts, the Dutch intelligence service (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst, BVD) came into existence as an outgrowth of the Second World War, and found its main task and rationale in the Cold War struggles against communism. For decades it pursued that mission with dogged determination, engaging in counterespionage against its Eastern European and Chinese counterparts, as well as monitoring and neutralising the activities of the Dutch communist parties and what it saw as other centres of left-wing radicalism. During this time it also expanded its activities to encompass, among others, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, economic counter-espionage, and counter-terrorism (Engelen, 1995). Reporting mainly to the Home Office minister, the BVD’s mandate was long confined to civilian intelligence gathering on Dutch soil. Separate agencies for military, foreign and criminal intelligence existed and like anywhere else, inter-organisational relationships in the Dutch intelligence sector were marked by rivalry more than by cooperation (Hoekstra, 2004: 113ff.). BVD was strictly an intelligence organisation, not an operational one. Arrest and other interventions because of BVD findings were performed mainly by the police, judicial authorities, or the Foreign Office. During the first four decades of its existence, the BVD was shrouded in strict secrecy. Left-wing activists would occasionally try to expose alleged acts of harassment and other wrongdoings, but these attempts were mostly smothered in the consensual political environment of the day. Intelligence matters were discussed away from the public eye in a special parliamentary oversight committee consisting of parliamentary party 51

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leaders (the Communist Party excepted), who shared a determination not to ‘play politics’ with something so weighty as the security of the state. There were conspicuous failures. The BVD did not foresee the radicalisation of South Moluccan youths that led to a spate of hijackings in the mid-1970s. Nor did it pick up on the espionage activities of Pakistani nuclear researcher Dr Khan, who was employed in the Dutch nuclear establishment and managed to run off with enough knowledge to enable Pakistan to start building its atomic bomb. Such incidents led to critical questions in the press, but serious and sustained public debate about Dutch intelligence policy and performance was unheard of. In short, during the Cold War era the BVD was a classic example of a public institution described by Selznick (1957). It was an organisation with a clear mission, a technology appropriate to accomplish that mission, and it was widely taken for granted, though not necessarily liked or appreciated by politicians and public alike. At times it displayed the recalcitrant behaviour characteristic of an institution that cherishes its relative autonomy. Political instructions to suspend certain operations were not taken as gospel. Ministers and their preferences came and went, but the building and maintenance of clandestine information positions in organisations such as the Communist Party or the peace movement had taken many years. The agency was not about to give them up at the bidding of a single politician, or, for that matter, the ‘enlightened’ views of one of its own heads (Vos et al., 2005: 36–7 and 175). All this changed markedly with the imminent collapse of communism. Beginning in the latter half of the 1980s, some BVD analysts concluded that Soviet and other Warsaw bloc countries and intelligence agencies were running out of steam. The agency would have to start anticipating a different world, one in which the arch-enemies would change tack or crumble. This awareness prompted the Dutch cabinet to use the retirement of the head of the agency in 1989 as an opportunity to instigate far-reaching reforms of what was increasingly felt to be an ineffectual and potentially obsolete agency. To this end it appointed a Home Office heavyweight, the deputy director-general of Public Order and Safety, Arthur Docters van Leeuwen, as the new BVD head. Shortly after his appointment was announced, the Berlin Wall fell. The New World Order hopes it fostered posed a direct threat to the entire security establishment, and the BVD was no exception. Not only would major budgetary cutbacks be unavoidable, the survival of the organisation was suddenly at stake. The BVD was abruptly and thoroughly ‘de-institutionalized’ (Boin et al., 2000).

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The challenge for the new head was either to transform the mission and ways of working of the BVD, or to preside over its demise. Docters would somehow have to sensitise, convince, mobilise and cajole an organisation full of Cold War veterans and ‘old hands’ of the need for a ‘paradigm shift’ in almost every aspect of organisational life. The key question asked by insiders, clients and interested observers alike was: how would he go about it, and would it work? It was with this interest that I approached Docters. He knew me from his prior jobs in emergency management in which I had undertaken much research. I asked if he would countenance a free secondment from Leiden University for six months. My prime objective was to ‘feel’ and ‘live in’ a government organisation, the likes of which I had been reading and teaching about for ten years without ever having spent significant amounts of time working in one. But my specific interest was to observe the change process through which the organisation was going. This chapter delivers on that latter aim. It looks at the change process from a leadership perspective. I focus on Docters’ reformist leadership as understood by the members of the organisation, and as he espoused it. I combine in-depth participant observation data and interviews with an analysis from the vantage points of several participants to provide a much richer, more nuanced understanding of leadership as change management in the public sector than the holistic, ‘heroic’ accounts commonly available in the literature.

Spying on spies: on method Punch (1986: 11) considers ‘infiltration’ the key skill in fieldwork. Mitchell (1993: 46–54) compares the researcher and the spy, concluding that secrecy is a ‘risky but necessary’ business in field research. The field researcher needs to get access and once in, acceptance of his presence to such a point that the people observed do as they would normally do even though he is there. To do fieldwork in an intelligence organisation therefore comes dangerously close to a mission impossible. You are trying to trump infiltration experts at their own game. Moreover, the stint at the BVD was my first stab at fieldwork. In my previous ten years of a research career, I had used other research strategies. How did I get in, and gain acceptance, and what have I learned about this infiltration? I made the first contact with Docters van Leeuwen in mid-1993, when the new formal structure of the organisation was put in place and the – highly symbolic – move to the new offices was imminent. It was agreed that I would not so much be brought in as an external

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researcher of the organisation but as extra, temporary brainpower within the organisation. It was a first in the organisation’s history, and in itself constituted an, admittedly minor, symbol of the ‘measured Perestroika’ that Docters sought to bring to the organisation and its relations with the outside world. Entering the organisation in this way had pros and cons. I am sure some ‘liberals’ would say that I violated ethical rules and obligations by going for this role change and in effect covering up that I was doing research from the start.2 Nobody inside the organisation expected me to study them like a researcher, let alone publish my findings. I acted as a co-worker and made my research notes in the privacy of my office or at home in the evenings. This ‘assumed identity’ or ‘double role’ is common to many field studies and, frankly, I do not see how we could get by without it – at least for some types of research questions and, in this case, for the study of elite behaviour. Still, there is a serious ethical issue here. My solution has been to wait, and wait, and wait – to let time take the edge off. I waited more than thirteen years before undertaking to publish this piece, satisfied that enough time had elapsed during which the service had seen two new heads, a new reorganisation following the one described here, the latter resulting in a name change and a major change of charter for the organisation. Most importantly, recent years have seen yet another radical change of the geo-strategic and domestic political environment after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and two assassinations of Dutch public figures in 2002 and 2004. They were paradigm-shattering events just as the end of the Cold War had been. And they caught the BVD (now entitled AIVD, General Intelligence and Security Service) largely by surprise. The most recent attack – the 2004 assassination of outspoken film director and columnist Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist – in particular triggered a barrage of criticism of the service, followed by a blue-ribbon enquiry that recommended yet another major overhaul of the organisation. The core of my defence is that so much has happened to this organisation since I was there that my story is about people and things of a different era. Moreover, my research was never intended to be a piece of history-writing about the BVD. It claims to be an ethnographic study of organisational leadership and change which theoretically could have been set in any public organisation. I just happened to have reasonable access to the leader in question and thus to this particular organisation. I did, however, take some extra steps to compensate for my ethical ‘improvisation’. First, I made sure that none of the quotes and incidents

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reported here can be traced to particular individuals – Docters excepted, of course. I also sent a draft of this chapter to Docters for comments. Gaining access was relatively easy, but what were the implications of my mode of access, of my ‘infiltration’, for my acceptance in the organisation? Coming in with the direct sponsorship of the boss gave me a certain standing in the organisation. At the same time, my prior connection to Docters and my outsider status made me a mysterious if not potentially threatening figure. This standing was clear from my earliest conversations with members of the organisation – from high to low. I instantly acquired, and to some extent cultivated, the ‘egghead’ image that is bestowed on a university scholar in an organisation of doers thoroughly unused to seeing one roaming around the corridors. This stereotype as the harmless, other-worldly bookworm, I felt, might help to soothe the ambivalence, trepidation and caution which were only just below the surface politeness of the director and the department assigned to host me and put me to work. The ‘egghead’ label – there was only one other person with a PhD in the entire service, where people with university degrees were heavily under-represented to begin with – made it easy to ‘place’ me. It enabled people to categorise my ‘otherness’, and therefore to some extent ‘normalise’ whatever I would say and do. Also, everyone knew I was there for only six months. If need be, whatever it was that I was trying to do and change, could simply be ‘sat out’ (always a viable option for the bureaucratic time-server). After I proved to be friendly, non-threatening, and useful even because of my ‘fresh look at things’, my purported analytical and writing skills, and my limited interest in and skills at bureau-political infighting, I think I became ‘part of the furniture’ as much as is possible in such an organisation. One indicator of their acceptance of me was that during the last months of my stay, the service agreed to my proposal to have no less than twelve of my students conduct on-site interviews with members of the organisation to do a preliminary evaluation of its new ‘team work’ methodology. Given the BVD’s history and culture, this project was, to say the least, unprecedented. Second, following my departure one student became an intern, again a first, actively working within the service to assist in the implementation of a project I had helped initiate. I took these developments as another sign that apparently I was to be trusted. People I nominated to become involved with the organisation were willingly absorbed into it. To get to this point, I had come a long way. In seeking to ‘blend in’, I had to get used to and observe the routines of office life at an intelligence service. Some of these were just generic office routines, such as the

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nine-to-five rhythm that most of the staff adhered to (bewildering to an academic). More particular, there were the initiation rituals. They were understandable but, for a university scholar, nevertheless peculiar. Thus, I was subject to elaborate personal background checks, performed before my secondment. Also, the internal security manager, who laid down the laws about working in an intelligence organisation, had the obligatory ‘word’ with me. One of these laws was about the rigorously enforced clean desk policy, which I found exceedingly difficult to observe. But I had to try because my boss was ‘shamed’ if I got reported for sloppiness regularly by the security people. How did I collect data? First, within the framework of the tasks given to me during my secondment – about which I agreed in writing not to comment – I conducted 35 formal interviews with members of the organisation at all levels and in all directorates. These conversations typically lasted 1–1.5 hours, and tended to branch out beyond the stated purpose into broad surveys of the change experience in the organisation. I made detailed notes of all these interviews. No recordings took place for obvious security reasons. Second, I had four 1–1.5 hour conversations with Docters, the head of the BVD, centred on progress reports. These conversations also branched out into several matters and included one ‘exit interview’. Third, I had countless informal coffee and lunch conversations, participated in numerous meetings, including three formal presentations and discussions in the management team, each of about an hour. Fourth, I was given access to a wide range of documents related to my projects as well as the general strategy and change process within the BVD. Last, I talked to other government units that worked with the Service; for example, ministries, the police, and foreign intelligence organisations. I consolidated all my impressions in nine extended memos for my direct superiors, and occasionally Docters and the other members of the management team. I also wrote four more elaborate formal reports, most of which related to my assignments, but some of which were about more general cultural phenomena I observed in the organisation. Finally, in early 2006, I showed an early draft of this chapter to Docters, and had an e-mail exchange with him about it. I used this ‘dataset’ to write the current chapter. ‘Being there’ was essential to the research, even though I am aware that the duration and depth of my fieldwork period pales in comparison with that recommended by many ethnographers. However, trying to stay outside and ‘look in’ would have been fruitless given my interest in understanding the change process in this normally secretive organisation.

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Life among spies: observing an organisation in transition Changing place, changing culture My first contacts with the BVD took place in its old headquarters in The Hague. One does not visit such a building without preconceptions. You expect to see what spy novelists like Fleming and LeCarré prime you to see: a nondescript, anonymous office-building outside The Hague’s city centre that was clearly past its prime. The sign outside proclaimed ‘Ministry of the Interior’, which was technically correct but hardly informative. The hallways were broad, and the insides of the offices looked just like any others. Perhaps surprisingly, there were countless windows in the building. Remarkably, some of them were left open. Only the stacks of tall antennas on the roof suggested that it was not any other ministry or company. I met with Docters and with one of the directors who formed the BVD management team. That man, in whose directorate I would be stationed, would come to personify the ‘old’ BVD for me, the one that Docters was keen to change. He was in his early sixties, had spent his career ‘in service of the Service’. He was affable, but his demeanour was that of the slightly bewildered veteran who had woken up one day to find that the world he was accustomed to no longer existed. When he described his directorate’s recently reorganised portfolio, he lacked conviction. It was not easy to see why: the portfolio was an odd mishmash of things that largely were still ‘to be developed’. None of it came close to what he would have done during most of his four decades in the Service, which was to identify and root out communist subversion. During the conversation, he seemed taken aback by this latest token of the transformation of the organisation that he had served with dedication and distinction for so many years. Now he had to play host to some university scholar, a political scientist of all things, who presumably was to help him ‘develop’ a few of these new activity domains. His body language was not difficult to read: this was clearly not his idea. Docters did most of the talking during that first meeting. Part of the ice-breaking topics was in fact the building. More accurately: the buildings. At that stage, the Service was housed in two separate blocks. My hosts pointed out that this was a problem. It helped perpetuate divisions within the organisation: between the directorate that focused on domestic threats – mostly left-wing activism, and its counterpart that looked at exogenous threats – foreign espionage and international terrorism. There was also the awkward fact that the entire

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leadership of the organisation was housed in one building, unwittingly conveying the impression that the other half did not matter as much. Several months after that meeting, I began working. In the meantime, the move had been completed and when I arrived, the new building was still the talk of the town in the organisation. Housed in the suburban sprawl of Leidschendam, some six kilometres from The Hague city centre, its architecture must have been inspired by classical fortresses. Robust, square and surrounded by a moat it stood there self-conscious and all but anonymous, as if to stake a claim for a new lease on the BVD’s life. More importantly, the move had been used as an attempt to break through the deeply rooted factionalism within the organisation. The formal structure of the organisation had already been changed well before the move. Directorates had been renamed, portfolios recalibrated, and most of all, an organisation-wide project management philosophy had been introduced to encourage flexibility and ‘inter-disciplinary’ collaboration across the fault lines of the past. Now people from the different ‘blood lines’ in the organisation were physically united and deliberately mixed: the silos and subcultures of the past were to be buried.

Insider-outsider Going to work in the new building exposed me to two daily rituals that served to make me aware of my ‘otherness’. First, the sensation of acute embarrassment I felt whenever I got out of the bus and walked the remaining few hundred metres to work. The BVD was not a prestigious organisation in the Netherlands, let alone in the left-leaning academic circles that I tended to interact with. So getting off the bus and walking to the headquarters of an organisation that many of my peers either loathed or did not take seriously, made me feel uncomfortable. Moreover, since I was usually surrounded by many other BVD officers walking the same distance, I could not help but fear that onlookers would see me as one of them, not as the academic outsider-observer that I wanted to be seen as. Paradoxically, once I passed the door and the impressions of imagined onlookers had ceased to be relevant, I wanted to be treated as any other BVD official. That was not to be the case for many weeks. For some obscure reason, I was not given my own security pass until I was about one-third into my stay at the organisation. This meant that each of the three days a week I went to work, I had to undergo the standard

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visitor treatment: identify myself, state my purpose, show my ID, and be collected at the door by one of my colleagues, usually my director’s secretary. Not a good way to feel inconspicuous. It took months for that unease to wear off – about the same period it took me to start talking about ‘we’ instead of ‘you’ when I referred to my assigned directorate. This is an example of the common ethnographic dilemma of proximity and distance. First you work hard to ‘blend in’, and when you have succeeded, you work just as hard not to get ‘taken in’ (Punch, 1986: 16–17).

An ‘ordinary’ organisation Some ethnographers emphasise the ‘culture shock’ they undergo during their fieldwork because of the ‘total immersion’ in the previously unknown society they are studying. This culture shock exemplifies and heightens the dilemma of balancing ‘the need to identify with and at the same time to remain distant from the process being studied’ (Reeves, 1979: 527). When I did my fieldwork, I did not feel bewildered, nor did I find life in the intelligence service hard to grasp. On the contrary, the main ‘shock’ I encountered was how ordinary it all seemed to be – and probably was. I had expected a police or military organisation like the ones I already knew. They were populated by masculine, moustache-wearing conservative men who gave you firm handshakes and penetrating looks when introducing themselves. They were friendly and helpful as long as they thought you were good folk and who were ready to call a spade a spade. The BVD was different, much more like the ministries. It had a more even gender mix, more than the occasional non-white face, more casual dressing, and a more suave friendliness. It was all thoroughly middle class. I wondered how these friendly, polite, ordinary people could possibly grasp what was going on in the dark underbelly of society. Some of my new colleagues looked and felt closer to my university colleagues than the latter would have felt comfortable with. In fact, I was surprised and taken aback by the studious nature of the place. When not in meetings, and there were many meetings, most people sat behind their desk ploughing their way through documents and compiling reports. During interviews several colleagues would showcase their deep knowledge of a particular domain – it could be Chinese politics, nuclear proliferation, or the environmental movement – much like academics. Ironically, there were few in this organisation. Many BVD officials had joined the service without an academic degree, and

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some spoke about how they regretted that, since, as one stated, ‘what you and I are doing is not all that different. We’re both researchers – aren’t we?’ So in many respects the BVD was just like any other bureaucratic organisation that I had come to know. I found that at once reassuring but also somewhat unnerving. If it was so ordinary, was it worth the effort of spending months in it? Although not your typical public agency, the BVD was nothing like the proverbial remote tribe, hard-boiled police precinct or the tough street gang that have shaped the way we think about the trials of ethnographic research. Working there did not demand the self-sacrifice and daunting interpretive feats that I thought were common to ‘hard-core’ ethnographers. I must confess that the more time I spent inside the organisation, the more convinced I became not only of its fundamental ‘ordinariness’ but also of its mediocrity, again not unlike other pockets of public organisations I had studied before. I saw the needlessly long meetings that resulted in nothing but postponement and irritations. I saw lower level officials writing memos and draft reports to one another, and worrying about not upsetting the top brass and the belangendragers (endusers) in the ministries. As a result, their reports were watered down and old when they reached their end destination – if they ever reached it. I saw the inability of many so-called analysts to write clear and cogent prose rather than long-winded treatises. They showed off their knowledge rather than getting their message across. I saw the clumsy leadership style of several team leaders, who struck me as people of modest talent. Their rise to middle management positions only became understandable given the lack of other candidates. I saw the individual tragedies of people like my boss, experts at the Cold War game now forced to work on subjects and in worlds that were largely unfamiliar to them and for whom a job outside the organisation was no longer an option. In retrospect, this seems a rash judgement. Was I being cocky? Perhaps I suffered from a ‘lack of appreciation for the discrepant observation and lack of appreciation for the tacit bases of [my] own understanding of the social world’, a deadly sin for an ethnographer (Van Maanen, 1979: 548). Whatever it was, it was a powerful sentiment, which I only revised many years later when I was invited back to give a lecture at the Service. Post 9/11, the climate and budgetary situation had changed considerably: the BVD was firmly ‘back in business’. At my lecture, I encountered a new generation of BVD officials who seemed of a much higher calibre.

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The cult of the ‘operational’ During interviews and meetings one subject that would nearly always pop up were the so-called ‘operations’ and ‘special intelligence means’ such as eavesdropping, shadowing and running informants. I was told over and over that these were the heart and soul of the distinctive competence of the BVD vis-à-vis its competitors in the security business. Clearly, the ‘operational’ dimension was something that many of my colleagues not only took for granted but took pride in. I, however, never got to see any of it, nor did I see it reflected in the memos and products that crossed my desk. I thus began to wonder: where were the ‘real’ spies among these ‘bureaucrats?’ Where were if not its James Bonds then at least its George Smileys? Guys in raincoats, safe houses, package drops? All I saw were paper-pushing, largely self-taught desk researchers embroiled in meetings, producing memos and reports that overwhelmingly relied on open sources. This made me wonder whether I got the full picture. I was reminded of a passage in Maurice Punch’s fine study of inner-city street cops in Amsterdam. He had been in the force for a year or so, had been out and about on night patrols in the red-light district. He had helped make arrests. He was invited to the officers’ parties. He was, in short, ‘one of the boys’, ‘part of the furniture’. Or so he thought. That comforting notion was bruised severely when towards the end of his time on the force, he was taken aside by one officer during a party and told that though he might think he had seen it all during his time patrolling the streets with them, they had in effect only shown them what they wanted him to see (Punch, 1979). I expected intelligence officers to be as circumspect as the police in their treatment of outsiders. So, my impression that their celebration of the operational was all talk and no substance may have been misguided, reflecting my growing but concealed disdain for the organisation. And it might well be that I was deliberately and effectively prevented from learning anything about operations. My director subtly implied as much on occasions. Such caution would have been fully understandable, but it was never discussed or set out as a precondition of my sojourn in the organisation. So a nagging doubt remained. Perhaps there was not much more to see. Perhaps the ‘operational’ quality of the BVD had assumed mythic proportions stemming from the Service’s past operational adventures, misadventures and successes during the Cold War era. Perhaps many of its existing covert contacts and networks were far less useful in the present era of reorganisation and refocusing of its activities.

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In this surprisingly ‘ordinary’ setting, living among the spies and making myself useful to them proved relatively easy. I was a trained social scientist with ten years of research experience. Moreover, and to my surprise, it turned out that I knew the ministries – BVD’s clients – much better than most of my colleagues. They were locked in a culture where ‘being operational’ and ‘knowing a lot’ gained you stature. But now they had to survive in a new organisational paradigm that emphasised utility to end-users in government. As a result, many team leaders and members scrambled to be ‘policy relevant’, and my help in this domain was welcomed.

The leader Enter Arthur Docters van Leeuwen. Since late 1985, I had met and interacted with him in semi-scholarly settings such as conferences, workshops and the writing of a book chapter. On those occasions he had been unfailingly erudite, worldly, to the point, humorous and courteous. But I had never seen him at work in an organisation he led. Wherever he went his reputation preceded him. This concerned both his appearance and demeanour. The former became his trade mark. He was a big, corpulent man with an egg-shaped, unusually large head, full eyebrows, no neck, fat hands, and thick glasses that doubled the size of his eyes. Suits did not fit him well. He would sweat profusely in warm conditions. I suppose many would describe him as ugly, but to me he was first and foremost ‘impressive’; unique and unforgettable. Once he sat down during a meeting, his entire body language exuded robustness. Here was a man who could outwait, outsmart and outwrestle anyone if he felt so inclined. Clearly aware of his formidable intellectual powers, analogies, metaphors, wit and occasional biting sarcasm were his stock-in-trade. He towered over the smaller minds in the organisation, and knew it. During one management team meeting I sat in on, he was late. There was uncertainty in the room about how to proceed. After a while the deputy head took the initiative and the group started working its way down the agenda. When after half an hour or so Docters finally arrived, he sat down and simply started the meeting again. No one said a word. Docters was given to long monologues during meetings, yet did not tolerate these from others. He quickly grasped what they had to say, often before they had finished speaking. He could be abrasive when people bored him or had not done their homework well enough. Such a style may instil fear in others, but Docters was not simply a bully with

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a big brain. Even though they could be intimidated by him, the overwhelming majority of my BVD colleagues valued him for the strength of his ideas, his evident dedication to the organisation, his competent political management, and his occasional bouts of irresistible humour and charm.

Docters’ role conception: changes, dilemmas, leadership challenges What prompted Docters to lead as he did? The core of the answer to this question obviously lies with the man himself. I shall let him do the talking and thus get him to voice the ‘theory in use’ that formed the basis of his leadership philosophy. First, I have extracted two fragments that are the core of his view about the prevailing traditions in the Service as he experienced them on his arrival: I found this organisation to be caught up in ‘grooves’: in the groove of its traditional targets, its traditional ways of operating and reporting; and in the groove of looking inward, driven by operations. Many, even at the very top of the organisation, did not admit to the questionable reputation it enjoyed in many important quarters. They felt the world around them was changing rapidly, and when it became blatantly obvious that pretending that these changes would somehow pass us by was no longer a viable option, most of them were clueless. We still lack a solid grasp of new groups and phenomena that keep popping up. We don’t think enough in terms of alternative futures, and so we have limited predictive capacity. Yet that is exactly what the new times are calling for. It is the key to keeping the BVD relevant to our patrons in The Hague. Part of the explanation for this predominance of tradition had to do with personnel policy: The low mobility of BVD personnel is a real problem for the transformation process. At the same time, we have reached the limits of what the current people can do. We cannot attain more than we are doing now, but still we need to do better than that. How to get out of that conundrum? Shortly before I arrived, he started an operation called ‘Fresh Blood’ to attract a new creed of people to the Service and break the hold of the old-style Cold War warriors. However,

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given the limited vacancies and the shrinking budget, this initiative was just a drop in the ocean. So he had to make do. The way forward he voiced seemed to contradict what he had just asserted. His only viable option was not recruits but to change the procedures and culture of the organisation to get the existing staff – whose performance held him hostage – to do better: Delegation and initiative should become much more important in this organisation. This creates room for reflection and generates confidence in one another. But most importantly it helps shatter the all too loyal and mechanistic execution of whatever a boss wants. ‘Do what you have been told’ should be replaced by ‘taking care of your own business’    We should move from a culture of deeply institutionalized mistrust to one of trust – both internally and externally – and to greater self-confidence instead of this ‘can-do’ mentality. The need to break with tradition was urgent, Docters knew, since the environment of the Service was changing at unprecedented speed. One recurrent theme was technological change: ‘How do you cope with the data revolution and the demand for “real-time information”?’ There has to be a rapid and comprehensive integration of cutting-edge IT in the Service. It will revolutionize our operations. At the moment we still work as we did twenty years ago. We cannot afford to do that much longer. Changing that proved hard    I have great difficulties convincing the departments [of the Interior and Finance] to give us the budget to make the massive investments that are needed. They are talking cutbacks, not innovation. By far the most acute change sprang from the new geo-strategic situation. The end of the bipolar world had abruptly transformed both the operational and political environment: The hard core of this organisation is its patience in monitoring its objects and its dogged persistence in getting to the bottom of things. Those are the main reasons why this service still persists. But the game we need to play has changed. In the old days we operated under the certainty of the threat and could concentrate on getting the facts. Ninety per cent was fact-driven, only 10 per cent of what we did and said rested on assumptions. Nowadays our core mission is about the reduction of uncertainty.

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The organisational dilemma was clear: That’s a big change for the guys in raincoats and leather jackets who are out on the streets; but it is a big treat for the strategists and analysts here at HQ. In the future, it will be 90 per cent assumptions and only 10 per cent facts. The risk is that this will generate tribal warfare between these two types of staff. The traditional, operational people have great difficulty with the move from fact-gathering to intelligent speculation, and from repressing what is already there to preventing what might occur    In the past, time was our ally. Nowadays, with the need to predict timely and accurately it has become our opponent. A third thread of the conversations was the management of relations within the broader Dutch intelligence and criminal justice domain: We used to be a monopolist of sorts. But recently we have been getting competitors who do the same as we do – legally or illegally. It drove some of my people nuts. While our hands are tied every step of the way [Docters refers to the formalised authorisation process required before BVD can use clandestine intelligence], they see and hear about ‘cowboys’ in the police doing pretty much whatever they like. On this issue, however, Docters did not experience a dilemma. His strategic choice seemed already made: You should not fight these competitors but enter alliances with them, particularly the police. We should develop a division of labour, and ‘subcontract’ certain things to them. That will be much better than getting into some sort of arms race among the operational and hightech intelligence branches. Our country is too small for that. And that’s what he did, devoting much energy to negotiating a memorandum of understanding between the BVD and the Criminal Intelligence Division of the national police.

Talking about Docters: leadership images in the organisation Talking with my BVD colleagues about their work meant talking about the reorganisation that had taken place which in turn inevitably led to talking about Docters, the man who was seen by everybody to drive the whole process. I spent hours and hours listening to people from all

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corners of the organisation recounting their experiences, volunteering their opinions and, occasionally, putting out feelers to someone they suspected – understandably but incorrectly – might be closer to him than they were. Eventually I began to see a four-fold pattern to their characterisations of Docters’ leadership. I did not test it at the time, but I remain convinced that had I presented these patterns to them, few of my colleagues would have disputed the validity of these images. Of course there would be disagreements among them about the appropriateness and effectiveness of Docters’ leadership style. The ‘intellectual giant’ Well before becoming head of the BVD, Docters had acquired a reputation for erudition and exceptional analytical ability among his senior civil colleagues. He was well read not just in his original field of law, but also in history, philosophy and literature – a rarity among a managerial caste mostly focused on the lingo of budget statements and policy statements. Besides this broad intellectual foundation, he had a quick mind and verbal flair. He instinctively looked at the long-term implications of issues. Well aware of all these qualities, he was also known to be self-assured bordering on arrogant. For a man with such qualities to head of an agency filled with operationally minded ‘do-ers’ guaranteed culture shock. His leading role in rethinking the mission and ways of working of the Service was widely acknowledged. And it was valued by many. A deputy director put it as follows: We are great at getting data. Really good. The more the better, we tend to think. But we are not so great at selecting from all these data. We don’t tell coherent stories. We don’t manage to lift it up to the level of the big picture. Docters forces us to think more in these terms, and consider the perspective from which our users will look at our reports. Much clearer than his predecessor or anyone else in the organisation. A director who confessed he had been deeply sceptical when he first got word of the appointment of ‘outsider’ Docters van Leeuwen to be the new head of the Service, had clearly become a convert: Docters certainly opened our eyes. We have stood there with our heads stuck in the sand for much too long. We must go into the world around us. React on what is there, or react on what is being

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asked of us. And we should learn to think for ourselves what is important    Our role as the security antenna of the government is crucial. If we are too restrictive in defining the criteria for getting involved in something, we are bound to be too late. He was widely granted a pivotal role in uplifting the quality of the service. A member of the strategy unit said: The problem with the service is that the operational echelons simply haven’t got the appropriate level of skill and insight to deliver the kind of stuff that plays well with our clients in The Hague  There is just not enough communication between the thinkers and the doers in this organisation. That is why Docters and some others in the management team feel they have to micromanage our lives. Docters understands that quality control is the key to our survival out there in The Hague, and has conceptualised what quality intelligence product entails. He can be brutal at times when he sees stuff that he thinks is substandard, but without that kind of kick in the butt we would be out of business in no time. Docters’ conceptual abilities were not just useful for upgrading the dayto-day intelligence work. The core of his contribution lay, according to everyone who talked about the subject, in giving the organisation a new lease of life. He led members in finding a new mission and rationale when this was essential to organisational survival. A team leader put it as follows: Docters is miles ahead of the pack when it comes to developing a vision for the future. The directors probably enjoy little else but running operations as usual. If Docters should leave, the vacuum will be huge. The ‘change agent’ No one doubted Docters’ personal commitment to rescuing the BVD from a possible death. Many recounted that the initial steps towards the inevitable reorganisation had been a breath of fresh air. He adopted an open, relatively participatory approach to reorganisation, with plenty of room for input and initiative from below. Unmistakably, however, he was the engine of the process, aided by an external adviser he had brought in, and whom he had worked with in prior positions as well. Over time, this locus of reorganisation momentum crystallised

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in himself, the external adviser and a small inner circle of people he valued and trusted, including a public prosecutor seconded to the service’s strategy unit. It did not take me long to detect fundamentally different perceptions and evaluations of Docters’ reorganisation style. Many signalled that it had generated a hard core of ‘true believers’ in the new line, more or less pitted against a (mostly) ‘silently sceptical’ core of traditionalists, and a much larger mass of essentially pragmatic followers of fashion. Several of my immediate colleagues felt that the changes threatened what they saw as the core of the BVD’s distinctive competence (the ‘operational work’ and the focus on known threats): Docters and his disciples tend to forget what our unique selling point really is in this organisation. It’s our ability to deploy clandestine methods of gathering intelligence. The operators are our true hens with the golden eggs, not these analysts that Docters is going on about all the time. (Source operator) The difference with the advocates of the changes could not be bigger: There is this myth about the ‘operational added value’ that we are supposed to have. I think there is at least as much added value to be had from us being the only agency in town that consistently looks at the world using the lens of domestic security. The idea that we are degenerating into some sort of stuffy think-tank is just rhetoric. We will always have the special intelligence component, but we should not think that this alone will make people pay attention to us. (Senior analyst) Another analyst opted to bridge that gap: We analysts need to emphasise our ties with the operational directorates. We should not open ourselves to the claim that we are just a bunch of nerds who read books and crunch numbers and don’t understand what is really going on out there. The ‘political animal’ Docters had had a long career in several ministries before heading the BVD. He had a reputation as a tough, at times ruthless, bureau-political negotiator. To some extent, this reputation served him well in his

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attempts to safeguard the BVD’s interests in its traditionally difficult and increasingly competitive relations with other intelligence organisations: You know, we are getting more and more problems with the Justice Department and the police. They are switching from their traditional repressive to a much more proactive, preventive approach. CRI [the national police’s Criminal Intelligence Division] is no longer content at just at collating and integrating the information they get from other sources such as us. They are keen to do their own collecting, including the use of undercover and other clandestine techniques. Docters has fought this, and it has now reached the point where it will be an issue in the next cabinet formation: does this country need or want a police intelligence organisation, one that not only does criminal intelligence but also political intelligence? This has always been a sensitive point in the history of Dutch policing, but times seem to be changing. Docters will have to pull out the stops to make sure we are not overrun. (Deputy director) Docters realised that one key to the agency’s survival was to stake out new tasks and thus new sources of legitimacy – and funding – in the post-Cold War era. Many saw it as an asset that he was used to reaching beyond officialdom into the political caste. He was keenly aware of this pivotal role and the need to be on good terms with whoever held the Home Office minister position. Without Home Office support right at the top, the agency was doomed. He was lucky: there was instant and enduring chemistry between himself and the social-democratic Home Office minister Ien Dales. In coalition with her he managed to secure a new top-priority task for the service, for example, monitoring the integrity and corruption of the government and public sector at large. When Dales died suddenly, a sense of crisis pervaded the top of the organisation. Docters was all fired up. Who would succeed her, and could he work with the new minister? Great consternation resulted when a known ‘BVD enemy’ (see Hoekstra, 2004: 35–6), Amsterdam mayor Ed van Thijn got the job. During a prior, brief period as Home Office minister in 1981–2 Van Thijn had clashed repeatedly with the then head of the Service, and as mayor of Amsterdam he had also been sceptical of BVD activities and products. Every effort was now made to please him and show him the service was no longer the rusty, conservative bunch of Cold War warriors it had been. This ‘operation ingratiation’ succeeded. After a few weeks, Docters relaxed because he was satisfied that Van Thijn would give him no headaches. He could not hope to

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have the same close partnership he had enjoyed with Dales but at least he had managed to placate a potentially vociferous critic. At the same time, the strategy to diversify the agency’s portfolio made it necessary to cultivate clientele relationships with other ministers and their ministries, a task to which he devoted much time and energy. Moreover, he consistently pushed to strengthen the external relations of the BVD, which should no longer assign its priorities based on known threats and targets, but based on the needs and preferences of belangendragers, that is, office-holders and organisations who were charged with upholding key state and public values and interests, and who needed timely and relevant BVD advice on addressing existing and potential threats to these values and interests. He also initiated a more proactive public relations policy, a move initially frowned on by many in the organisation. According to some, Docters was the opposite of the bureaucratic budget maximiser or empire builder he was often said to be. On the contrary, they felt he ran the risk of being overly responsive to the concerns, fads and fears of political principals. They feared the politically urgent would come to drive out the fundamentally important in the agency’s allocation of attention: Docters goes to all these receptions. Ministers and top officials come to him with some vague hint or worry, and he invariably says ‘we’ll look into it’, or worse: ‘we’ll take care of it.’ And all this gets dumped on us, and throws us off course. We go from incident to incident. It’s okay for Docters to raise our political profile, but he has to be really careful not to end up as the government’s prostitute. (Security adviser) Moreover, some wondered whether Docters had not oversold the ‘new’ service to its political masters: Great expectations have been raised during Docters’ time as Head, but I wonder if we as a service can really satisfy these expectations. Look at public sector integrity, look at monitoring minority groups. Can we really deliver on that? It will take years before we can. (Analyst) One of Docters’ main internal allies during the reorganisation process stated his private doubts succinctly: ‘I think we have definitely generated a tension between pretence and potence. We can only hope that we won’t fall prey to it.’

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The ‘autocrat’ One team leader, who had participated regularly in management team meetings, opined: The current management team? Well, that’s not really a team, is it? It’s a one-man show. Docters has such a phenomenal intellect and is such a forceful personality that the others have become sort of, well, invisible. Many echoed this sentiment, and clearly not all were happy with this state of affairs, particularly those I knew to be representatives of the old guard. They may have respected their head’s drive, intelligence and political skill, but they were profoundly uneasy about the direction he was taking the Service into. Although they were careful not to say so clearly – for that would constitute a break with the evidently wellestablished cultural norm of embracing the ‘new Service’ and emphasising the untenable nature of the old one – old guard officials were disappointed there was so little discernible counter-argument from the remaining veterans at the top of the organisation. One was uncharacteristically blunt: Docters manages this place as an all-powerful ruler. He is surrounded by minions. The directors [the other members of the management team] have little to add, and don’t dare to disagree, at least not openly. This reorganisation is carried on by a small band of true believers in the new philosophy. And he gets away with it. (Team leader) One analyst commented: ‘Docters is a highly intelligent man, but it is surprising how little interest he shows in opposition and dialogue.’ The closer one got to the top, the less inclined people were to characterise Docters’ style as autocratic because they saw more of the man than most other members of the organisation and because it reflected badly on their own inability to stand up to him. For example, as I was about to leave his room at the end of an interview, one of the directors sought to reassure me in avuncular fashion that things weren’t so clear cut: People here tend to think that Docters is a tyrant and that the rest of us in the management team are just a bunch of wimps. But that is not the case. In smaller, informal gatherings Docters can be quite open and prepared to adjust his opinions. In larger gatherings he

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is very certain of himself – on purpose, since he sees those meetings as occasions where he must preach the gospel [of the ‘new’ service]. One veteran in the small strategy unit offered a similar observation: ‘You should never disagree in public with [Docters], but he is susceptible to valid arguments – sometimes it needs a bit of time, but he gets there.’ Still, no one denied that Docters was a forceful personality given to making his views and preferences abundantly clear, to the point of being abrasive. What does having a ‘larger than life’ boss with a distinct authoritarian component in his leadership style do to an organisation? I have already noted the dependence of the organisation on its leader for ideas, direction and protection. Some also signalled social side-effects: There is a yes-men culture towards Docters. This is brought about by a combination of his own dominant style of leadership combined with the deep-rooted culture of hierarchy and loyalty of this organisation which is not unlike the old days of the police. (Source operator) The longer I spent in the organisation, the more I sensed unease about Docters’ sometimes brusque interpersonal style. A team leader said: You know the old saying that nothing grows in the shade of a giant tree? Well that is what we’ve got here right now. Docters is such a towering figure that he unintentionally creates an authority vacuum. By keeping all the directors in his shade so much, he undermines their power over their own people. Middle managers simply feel that their bosses are outgunned up there [speaker points towards the management team’s meeting room], and so they feel free to ignore suggestions and comments from the directors. Humour was a coping mechanism for some: ‘I am going for a grilling’; ‘This comes straight from He Who Must Be Obeyed’; ‘The Oracle has spoken’. These and similar catchphrases were used by my colleagues to describe their encounters with Docters.

Leadership and organisational change: beyond simplicities This episode in the life of the BVD lends itself to reflections about leadership and change in public organisations. They are straightforward, even

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obvious, but often ignored by senior officials. The first is that structural change is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for organisational reform to become self-sustaining and robust. Docters left when structural changes were more or less completed. He was not done yet in making sure these changes spilled over into corresponding changes in attitudes, norms and habits of the ‘silent majority’ in the organisation. He was clearly aware of the need to bring about such changes. He was also aware that these cultural changes are not something that can be ordered by decree and implemented overnight. He just did not stay long enough to make them stick fully. Second, there is a difference between leadership that induces compliance and that which induces identification, and internalisation of its policies among organisational members (Kelman and Hamilton, 1989). Only the latter produces self-sustaining behaviour, which will be repeated even after the main architects of the policy are no longer in charge. Docters was a towering figure in the BVD, yet too big for many people’s comfort. He was feared by some, who complied. He was respected and considered enigmatic by many others, who did what he urged them to do because they identified with him, not necessarily with what he aimed for. Judging from what happened after the announcement of his departure, there were only few who bought into his vision for the organisation. Docters either did not pick up on these subtle differences, or was temperamentally unable to switch towards a style that led to a more ‘constructive management of shared meaning’ in the organisation by seeking to converge his reality with the realities experienced by those working on the shop floor (cf. Kan and Parry, 2004). As a result, he temporarily squashed the resistance to change to which many in the organisation were inclined, but at the price of leaving many of its members unconvinced about his innovations. Third, leading a major reform is a daunting task, too big for any single individual to accomplish. If one disaggregates and compares successful and not so successful reform drives, one recurrent factor is that the former tend to be driven by ‘teamwork’ or at least ‘marriages of convenience’ between individuals with complementary sources of influence and power, which they employ in (tacit or deliberate) coordination. Such marriages increase the reach and depth of the reform process (Goldfinch and ‘t Hart, 2003). With this in mind, I was struck by how ‘alone’ Docters appeared to be. During the management team meetings that I attended, he deliberately or unwittingly set himself apart from the rest of the group by his erudite, witty, sometimes biting, but always long

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monologues. Formidable though he might be in many respects, he did not seek or get the allies he needed to make things stick. Docters’ leadership of the BVD was pervasive, and there can be no doubt that it left an important mark. But perhaps less of a mark than he, although a realist, had imagined. This outcome became apparent when the thing that some feared and others quietly hoped for, finally happened: Docters left the BVD. He became the Chief Public Prosecutor, invited to take on the leadership of yet another public institution in need of a major overhaul in the face of drastic changes in its environment. I was there when the news broke. And the response of some of my colleagues was, to say the least, remarkable. It was a period during which a clear difference was revealed between those that had bought into the new philosophy and those that had been merely paying lip-service to it. The latter changed the way they spoke about Docters, the organisation of the Service, and its future. Before I realised it, ‘wait and see’ and ‘back to basics’ were the buzz words of the day. Talk of the impending ‘second wave’ of reorganisation all but dissipated. The visionary, demanding, sometimes bullying leader was gone – and so was the need to dance to his tune. The traditionalists and sceptics were glad to learn that Docters’ eventual successor, former navy admiral Buys, was keen to ‘consolidate’, code language for turning back the clock, back to the primacy of running operations. It took years, a new head and another wave of changes in the world outside for the pace of reform to resume and accelerate.

Coda: the fragility of ethnography I confronted Docters with this interpretation of his leadership in early 2006 by sending him a first draft of this chapter. He granted I had written a valid account of my personal experiences inside the organisation but he argued about some of my interpretations. He claimed the study ‘only gives voice to the internal doubters and dissidents’, thus unwittingly producing: a cliché image of a likeable bully vis-à-vis a number of intimidated employees. In quantitative terms, you may have a point. I estimate that about a quarter to a third of the people really made the move. But the majority that did not, were not among those that made something really special happen within and to the organisation. That side of the story you miss, perhaps because of your research method. For me, the story of that era is one of a successful salvage operation,

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succeeding by the unleashing and combining of internal and external positive and negative sources of energy. I sensed from his mail that it was the ‘autocrat’ part of the story that stung. He gave an example to refute it: For a number of weeks, people around me had been secretive and hush-hush. I let it happen. And yes, they had prepared a big surprise for me: the ‘other building’ had been decorated from top to bottom with flags carrying an exceedingly grim picture of me, but more importantly, there were stalls everywhere, there were games and little theatrical performances representing the new tasks and the change process itself. That’s what I mean. That vital energy one does not pick up from your story. Moreover he argued that I had missed the high esteem in which the Service came to be held by some of its foreign counterparts under his watch. Nor had I captured the urgency of the political instruction given to him. It was brutal – renew or die. Finally, he was surprised that I had not noted some of the remarkable operations that had been conducted, ‘which incidentally got me a few foreign decorations’. His response, predictably self-serving (but who would not try to embellish one’s own record in response to a researcher’s probing?) forced me to rethink. Was he right? In a self-evident but not unimportant sense he was. He had been in the organisation for years, I for months only. His party example had occurred well before my time, and I had not managed to uncover it, or similar imagery from the early reorganisation period, during my interviews and observation work. Moreover, my grasp of what was going on was naturally constrained by my place in the organisation: placed somewhere in its hierarchy, I could not wander around freely as the proverbial anthropologist can in ‘her’ village. My ‘co-worker’ role obviously constrained my researcher role. I did not follow Docters around for any period of time; I did not sit in on his meetings with politicians and foreign counterparts. Nor did I see the ‘off-stage’ ‘developmental’ work in a much more ‘coaching leadership’ vein, which he claimed in his e-mail ‘absorbed about half of my time’. As well as by rank, I was also constrained by the security regime of this particular organisation. Operational information is compartmentalised, and ‘successes’ are not necessarily advertised, not even in the organisation.

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Docters’ response, in short, was a cause to reflect. It appealed to my nagging doubt as I was doing the fieldwork, one which every observer of intelligence-type organisations is familiar with: how do I know what I don’t know? Perhaps it was me. Maybe I should have spent much more time on the inside. Maybe my lack of ethnographic training and experience made me commit avoidable mistakes. But perhaps it is also the method itself. It produces a good story. It can even, as I tried to do, bring researchers to discover the multiple stories about people, events and their meanings that coexist in organisations. It may alert the researcher as no other research method can that these stories and the disjuncture between them have tangible effects, in this case on the course and outcomes of organisational change processes. But one big question is still on my radar. However ‘thick’ we make these stories, no matter how much descriptive detail and neat ‘vignettes’ we provide to demonstrate how deeply we reached into the ‘black box’ of elite life, how in the end can we tell that we got it right? Notes 1. I am grateful to Karin Geuijen, Paul Verweel, Susann Ullberg, Arjen Boin, John Uhr, Dvora Yanow and my co-editors for critical comments on a preliminary version of this chapter. I am particularly grateful to Arthur Docters van Leeuwen and my erstwhile ‘colleagues’ at the BVD for accepting my presence in the organisation. Docters van Leeuwen also provided two rounds of gracious, yet penetrating comments on an earlier draft of this chapter, parts of which are cited here. The responsibility for the final text remains entirely mine. 2. See Mitchell, 1993: 23–32, who contrasts ‘liberals’ with the ‘humanists’ who do approve of some forms of secrecy and deception in doing social research.

References Boin, R. A., Poppelaars, C. and Kuipers, S. L. 2000. ‘De crisis die uitbleef: De inlichtingensector, de mantel van geheimhouding en het voordeel van de twijfel’, in R. A. Boin, S. L. Kuipers and M. H. P. Otten (eds), Institutionele crises: Breuklijnen in beleidssectoren. Alphen: Samsom, pp. 144–66. Engelen, D. 1995. De geschiedenis van de Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst. Den Haag: SDU. Goldfinch, S., and ‘t Hart, P. 2003. ‘Leadership and institutional reform: engineering macroeconomic policy change in Australia’, Governance, 16 (2), pp. 235–70. Hoekstra, F. 2004. In dienst van de BVD: spionage en contraspionage in Nederland. Amsterdam: Boom. Humphreys, M., Brown, A. D. and Hatch, M. J. 2003. ‘Is ethnography jazz?’ Organisation, 10 (1), pp. 5–31. Kan, M. M. and Parry, K. W. 2004. ‘Identifying paradox: a grounded theory of leadership in overcoming resistance to change’, Leadership Quarterly, 15 (4), pp. 467–91.

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Kelman, H. C. and Hamilton, V. L. 1989. Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mitchell, R. G. 1993. Secrecy and Fieldwork. London: Sage. Punch, M. 1979. Policing the Inner City: A Study of Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat. Lonon: Macmillan. Punch, M. 1986. The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork. London: Sage. Reeves, Sanday P. 1979. ‘The ethnographic paradigms’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24 (4), pp. 527–38. Selznick, P. 1957. Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation. New York: Harper & Row. Van Maanen, J. 1979. ‘The fact of fiction in organisational ethnography’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24 (4), pp. 539–50. Vos, C., Broekhuis, R., Jansen, L. and Mounier, B. 2005. De Geheime Dienst: Verhalen over de BVD. Amsterdam: Boom.

4 Men at Work: How Public Policy Managers Cope Mirko Noordegraaf

Introduction When we observe public policy managers, much is happening, but not much is happening. Most policy managers have hectic and highpaced working days, but tangible results are hard to see – and they are hard to see daily. Public policy managers work long hours, including evenings and weekends. During these hours, they have many meetings and deal with a wide variety of papers. They attend scheduled meetings, have unscheduled encounters, and do desk-work. They channel a continuous stream of written and spoken texts through these episodes. Policy managers contact people, welcome visitors, sign papers, attend conferences, prepare political debates, watch meetings in Parliament, and organise site visits. They advise ministers, discuss newspaper articles, think of plans, introduce new words, and present formal standpoints. The value of these episodes, however, is difficult to determine. ‘Real’ events in outside worlds are often far away and real change only comes slowly and indirectly. And even when there are ‘real’ results, it is not certain they will be maintained because they may remain contested. These strange conditions are not only relevant personally – Why do individual policy managers work such long, distant hours? How do they see their work, and make sense of it? They are also relevant professionally – How do policy managers deal with high-paced, but intangible policy work? These conditions are also politically relevant – How do policy managers relate to the ‘real world’ when they manage the public’s business? What is ‘the real world’ in a high-paced policy environment? This chapter will analyse how policy managers deal with these strange conditions. The research was an in-depth observation study 78

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of high-ranking policy managers in Dutch central government (see Noordegraaf, 2000a). Because this research focused on the professional, work-related tasks of policy managers, I will stress the question of how policy managers deal with high-paced, but intangible policy work. At the end of this chapter I will also reflect on the personal and political facets of elite behaviour. Most of this chapter is about the working days and policy work of public managers in central government. In my earlier study, I observed or ‘shadowed’ fifteen policy managers – ‘director-generals’ and ‘directors’ for one week each. In earlier publications (Noordegraaf, 2000a, 2000b), I focused on working day structures and work patterns, and I showed how policy managers allocated their attention, in ambiguous circumstances, by relying on hierarchical and political rules and routines. In other words, I showed how policy managers acted. In this chapter, I focus on one particular policy manager to understand how policy managers make their work tangible. In other words, I focus on how policy realities are enacted. By closely following how one particular policy manager, Director J, dealt with one particular policy issue – ‘Issue H’ – over time, I will show how policy managers use coping mechanisms to manage their slow-moving policy processes in high-paced environments. Showing how Director J dealt with Issue H forms the descriptive core of this chapter. First, I explore why observation studies are useful, and I will explain how I undertook mine. Then, I will show how Dutch central government machinery is designed, and how highranking administrators fit in, e.g., what ‘directors’ and ‘director-generals’ are and where they can be found. Before I follow Director J’s treatment of Issue H, I will show what his working days in this administrative machinery looked like. After I sketch Director J’s day-to-day issue management and show what happened, I will try to understand what ‘really’ happened. I will try to interpret his policy work. I will show what coping mechanisms were used to enact or get a grip on policy realities. Finally, in the conclusions, I explore the professional side of work – How do policy managers like Director J work and what mechanisms do they use to cope with high-paced, yet intangible circumstances? I will also draw out the ‘political’ consequences – How do policy managers represent policy issues, when circumstances are intangible? Finally, I will reflect on the personal side of it all – Why do policy managers choose to do work like this? I will then leave the managerial working days, and return to academia to reflect on my research experiences.

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Malleable tangibility Despite much abstract talk about management – including abstract talk in textbooks and research reports about ‘real’ cases, strategies and instruments – managerial work itself is concrete, even tangible. Managers are living and breathing individuals, who work in offices with furniture and computers; they utter words and statements, have meetings with many others, produce documents, and are sometimes driven round in chauffeured cars. Managers in the public sector are no exception. Most public managers face so many concrete facts, or webs of facts, including documents, procedures, taboos, gossip, newspaper articles, telephone calls and requests, that it is tempting to describe their work solely in practical terms. Public managers, for example, are often accused of attending ‘too many meetings’, earning ‘too high salaries’, reacting to ‘too many incidents’, and producing ‘too much red tape’. Despite such tangibility, however, it is not clear what managers ‘really’ do, how we can best qualify managerial work and its impacts. One and the same managerial event can be interpreted in different, even contradictory ways. When a manager gives a speech at a meeting, for instance, it can be seen as either informing or inspiring or even disciplining other participants (cf. Alvesson, 1996). Moreover, the succession of events, such as a series of meetings, can be used to present different storylines. Meetings can either be seen as places for information exchange and conflict management (see for example: Mintzberg, 1973; Kaufman, 1980), or spaces for seeing and interpreting ambiguous signals in and around organisations (see for example: Cohen and March, 1974; Feldman, 1989), or stages for performing the dramas of organisational life (Schwartzmann, 1989). Also, the outcomes of a succession of events can be valued and evaluated in different ways. Managerial work can be seen as either solving problems, or creating perspectives, or enacting profiles and identities. Again, managerial work in the public sector is no exception. On the contrary – public managers such as policy managers, who work close to politics and craft policies, perform ambiguous work that cannot be captured easily (for example Lynn, 1987). Tangible webs of facts turn out to be malleable after all. No wonder that textbooks and research reports struggle to impose clarity because such clarity always has an abstract, unexpected twist. So, merely getting close physically to managerial life does not mean one gets close. Even managers – who can be said to be closest to their own work – are not always close. They are not reflective. How do they see their work? How do they interpret managerial events? How do they

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learn, create and retell organisational storylines? How do they establish truthful accounts of what is going on? How do they know they are ‘effective’? Such questions open interesting research avenues for getting close to managerial life and its ambiguity. The question is not only how do we account for hectic, yet intangible and ambiguous managerial action. Equally, it is not only a question of how public managers account for intangible and ambiguous action themselves. Most important we need to ask how policy managers account for intangible and ambiguous action when they act. This chapter is a step-by-step search for empirically grounded answers, through the eyes of policy Director J, who belongs to a cadre of Dutch high-ranking policy managers trying to get a grip on policy work in political worlds (based on Noordegraaf, 2000a). I describe Director J’s day-to-day work, especially how he tried to move one specific issue – Issue H – ahead. All individuals and organisations are anonymous because anonymity was a condition of research access. Some policy managers were afraid they would be ‘recognised’ and ‘watched’ or even ‘judged’ by peers and outside audiences. Although this hinders open empirical research, it does not prevent it. Also, such restrictions are both understandable and a source of insights. First, policy managers’ worlds can never be fully open. Policy management includes managing sensitive issues and ‘explosive’ situations that encourage secrecy. Also, the managerialist era with its stress on ‘performance’ (see for example Hood, 1991; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000) fuels ‘performance-fear’ (see Noordegraaf, 2000a) and the all-too-human desire to hide any failings. Second, managers’ wishes to remain anonymous say a lot about how they perceive their own work. They feel ‘watched’ and ‘judged’, which tells the observer a lot about how they perceive their working conditions and experiences.

Administrative scenery Before we try to understand policy management, I need to describe the context in which they work, starting with the buildings and offices. Most policy managers in the Netherlands work in the administrative capital, The Hague. Until recently, some ministries were located close to, but outside, The Hague. Nowadays all ministries are in the city, and most are close to Parliament. The walking distances vary from 5 to 15 minutes. These ministries became ‘policy ministries’ or ‘core departments’ in the 1990s, when policy and implementation (and oversight and inspection) were separated organisationally. Although many executive agencies and quangos are situated in The Hague, they are at a distance from our

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Political executives Minister, junior minister Secretary-General (SG)

Director-General (DG)

DG

DG

DG

DirectorateGeneral Director

Director

‘Directie’

‘Directie’

Figure 4.1 Policy ministries’ basic organisational structure

visible policy ministries, and many agencies are located elsewhere in the Netherlands. Policy ministries have the following basic structure (see Figure 4.1). All ministries are led by one or two – sometimes three – political executives. The most senior politician is the ‘minister’, who is a cabinet member. The other political executives are called ‘state secretaries’, or ‘junior ministers’. They are not members of the cabinet but they are members of the ‘government’. Normally, the cabinet has twelve to fourteen ministers, who head twelve to fourteen ministries. Every minister and ministry is accountable to Parliament, which consists of two chambers. The ‘Second Chamber’, with 150 directly elected members of Parliament, is the legislative heart. The ‘First Chamber’ or ‘Senate’, with 75 indirectly elected part-time politicians, is a ‘Chambre de reflection’. This political sphere is strictly separated from administrative spheres, apart from the occasional political adviser working directly for ministers. Each ministry is headed by a Secretary-General, who is either heavily involved in policy issues, or busy with ‘running’ the ministry. ‘Beneath’, or in less hierarchical terms, ‘next to’ the Secretary-General, there are three to five Director-Generals, who are responsible for policy-making in specific policy fields. The Secretary-General and Director-Generals might form a collegial Governing Council, as an

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imaginary strategic apex. Alternatively, Director-Generals might head policy Directorates, and be much more involved in tactical and operational policy-making. ‘Beneath’ Governing Council members or inside Directorates, policy ‘directories’ can be found, as basic building blocks for (operational) policy-making. They are headed by ‘Directors’, and they consist of ‘units’, led by ‘unit heads’. Director J is one such director inside a Directorate-General. Directors – such as Director J – and their unit heads form ‘management teams’.

Entering the policy scenery Ministerial buildings have restricted access. Everybody can attend parliamentary debates but all public buildings are restricted areas. So, access to government ministries is strictly regulated. Of course, political executives and high-ranking administrators have easy access to ministerial buildings. They are driven there in chauffeured cars and sometimes use special entrances. Middle and lower policy managers, however, must identify themselves at entrances, just like anyone else. When they go to other ministries, they are ‘visitors’. They must not only identify themselves but they must also have an appointment and explain why they want to enter the building. This is standard practice for real visitors, that is, non-administrators who want to enter ministerial buildings. Most of these outsiders have special meetings, representing other organisations that have some interest in a specific policy issue. Sometimes these visitors are researchers, who are studying distinctive policy developments, organisational changes, or even the policy managers. Suppose we are a visiting researcher, interested in managerial work and behaviour of middle and high-ranking policy managers, close to politics. Against the backcloth of different buildings, but all somewhere in The Hague, different working climates, but all full of offices and hallways, and different organisational positions, but comparable organisational structures and labels – we would enter distinctive policy scenes. We would pass security and walk to the designated part of the building. We would be welcomed either by a secretary if meeting a middle manager or by a ‘chamberlain’ if meeting a Director-General or Secretary-General. Irrespective of when we arrived, early in the morning, during lunchtime, late in the afternoon, all of these policy managers would be active. They would be involved in specific policy activities. They might be reading papers at their desks. They might be in a meeting with multiple others, close by or somewhere in the building. They might be talking to one of their staff members in their offices. These papers, meetings or talks will

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be about something specific. Immediately we hear specific terms, words, statements, abbreviations and labels. The ethos might communicate a clear sense of urgency and hectic activity. A secretary or staff member might come by with a paper that has to be signed urgently because the cabinet will discuss it in a few days’ time and because the minister must see it (that is, sign it). Someone might announce that the minister will arrive soon and that there will be a ‘crisis meeting’. The policy manager might pass around a newspaper article with headlines that are not favourable to ministerial reputations. Of course, it might also be quiet but the policy manager, his secretary and staff members will still be busy. As a visitor, one might be asked to wait a few minutes outside the manager’s office. Inside the office, the manager deals with some papers, or talks or makes telephone calls. Suppose we are not only meeting this policy manager to talk about his work and behaviour, but also to observe him ‘in action’. The immediate impression of people involved in paperwork, meetings and talks, using words and phrases, and focusing on ministers, newspaper articles and to-be-signed papers, will get clearer. It will become clear this is their work. We will see how this work evolves daily – what issues they are managing, what terms and labels mean, how they would move from one policy scene to another, and how they try to use policy scenes to create new policy scenes to get things done.

Observing policy scenes Suppose we ‘shadow’ policy managers (see Kaufman, 1980; Noordegraaf, 2000a, 2002b), and suppose we pick one particular policy manager, for instance Director J, to follow around. We can use this information to sketch a clearer picture of what policy managers are doing. Although, when I remember the early phases of my research, I must add that this clearer picture did not emerge immediately and automatically. In fact, when I started observing Director J and other high-ranking policy managers, I was overwhelmed by the mass of day-to-day experiences, signals and situations. The ‘real’ nature of their work seemed to become fuzzier, rather than clearer. I will return to this research experience at the end of this chapter, but for now one thing can be underscored: ‘open and a-theoretical’ research is impossible because all observation presupposes theory. No researcher can be a blank slate; all research is ‘framed’ in one way or the other. The crucial question is: how do we construct and develop theory while we observe?

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The shadowing of Director J, a policy director at the ministry of ——, housed in one of the more modern ministerial buildings, started on a Monday, a couple of years ago, at 8.30 a.m. Director J has been active for over an hour – he started at 7.15 a.m. Until his first appointment at 8.42, with one of his staff members, he dealt mainly with his mail and paperwork, making sure papers were signed and staff members got his feedback on policy papers that were ‘under construction’. After 8.42, his working day would be primarily interactive and one major issue, Issue H, needs his attention. His staff member is preparing for a future appointment with a leading professor and one of his researchers about a major international conference. Director J says he does not have ‘relevant information’ on the conference plans. He urges his staff member to: ‘pass it on to N  who can provide additional information as he comes from a different background’. At 8.54, Director J explains to his secretary what to do with the papers and documents he read this morning. They are disturbed by a telephone call from one of J’s fellow policy managers about a certain policy issue, which enables Director J to say he ‘lacks information’, because a policy document went ‘via the SG’ (Secretary-General). After the telephone call, Director J instructs his secretary to contact the SG’s secretary about this policy document. Meanwhile, he goes to his Director-General for a few minutes so he can get the latest information about Issue H which, both of them observe, will require their attention after Friday’s cabinet meeting. At 9.04 he walks to a hall close to his office to meet with his unit heads for their weekly staff meeting. This weekly meeting, he explains during the short walk: ‘is not about substantive discussions but exchanging experiences and information, and to set our watches’. This distinction is fluid. Looking back at recent meetings and at the preparations for future meetings, it is clear the discussions quickly become analytical. When Director J looks back to a recent Directorate’s meeting that he attended, he wonders how links between their Directorate and other Directorates inside and outside their ministry have evolved. He is worried and argues that such links ‘are influenced by personal factors’, and asks the others to summarise their experiences so they can ‘determine how to spend their energy’. He is worried about their links with one of the other ministerial Directorates, Directorate ——, and even concludes: ‘We are at war with ——; we must get revenge.’ This matter turns out to be complicated not only because several ministries are involved but also because multiple major issues are at stake. The relatively new major Issue H, which itself is complicated and will play a prominent role during the next few days, interferes with

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Issue V, which has a much longer policy history, and has created rather stable multiparty positions and equally stable expectations about new policy developments. When they look back to a recent meeting with one of the junior ministers, Director J argues this junior minister: ‘is monopolised by the Directorate for ——, although he still has plenty of time, the minister himself is too busy, and not really successful’. Consequently, he not only wonders whether they should ‘use’ the junior minister, but also whether they should do so ‘with or without contacting the minister’. When they look back to last Friday’s I-S meeting, attended by Director J and some of the other unit heads, they try to answer the questions: ‘What went wrong? What was meaningful, and what wasn’t?’ Director J argues: ‘Mr —— tries to extend his span of control. We must be careful!’ He also wonders how to ‘reduce risks’, and argues: ‘We must avoid implicit deals, and work towards a common image. This calls for strict discipline’. Again, this stance seems to be influenced by personal factors: ‘Mrs L is counterproductive. We must adapt our behaviour and pace.’ They also go through meeting agendas for future meetings, and wonder whether future field visits require preparatory action. At 10.34 they discuss a future workshop on ‘result-based management’, which Director J wants to use to: ‘monitor what has happened more systematically’.

Tracing issue management Although the fieldwork produced much more equivalent data on everyday work, we do not need to summarise any more to reach some basic conclusions. Thus, policy work is meeting and paper driven. Policy managers draw on existing accounts of what is going on to create new accounts. These accounts are sensitive to politics, conflict and controversy. However, we need more than chronological diaries of daily meetings to understand the work of policy managers. It will be fruitful to seek more ‘longitudinal’ descriptions, without losing sight of day-today activity. In addition to the rhythm of the working day, we need to follow issue rhythms. People like Director J are involved in specific issues that recur over time in specific meetings, encounters and desk-work. An example of such issue rhythms in J’s working days, is Issue H. Issue H was relatively new. It emerged on the political and administrative agenda a few years before I shadowed Director J. It proved to be a good example of slow and intangible policy processes that almost

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continuously produce high-paced action. During the few days Director J was observed, many ‘crisis meetings’ were held and ‘urgent papers’ were written. There were many quick ‘high politics’ contacts between ministers, the Prime Minister, high-ranking administrators, and others. Many hours, from early mornings to late evenings, were spent on processing the issue. Yet not much happened. ‘Decisions’ were postponed, and when decisions were reached, these decisions were reconsidered later. Although Issue H’s precise features were unique, this issue ‘logic’ was common to other cases. Most of the policy managers I observed dealt with comparable issues in a comparable way. The fact that not much happened in the case of Issue H is all the more interesting because it had tangible impacts on society. It was a largescale infrastructure project that would affect municipalities, citizens and companies. It is also interesting because there was a widely held belief that something should be done. Forced by EU policies, Dutch politicians were not only obliged to do something but they were also convinced of Issue H’s value. Not everybody agreed, of course. Also those who did agree, disagreed over what should be done. This disagreement did not just involve outside parties that resisted government plans. There was disagreement inside government, in Parliament, in the cabinet and between different ministries. Going back to Director J’s working days, the earliest sign of Issue H’s unavoidable presence can be seen early on Monday morning, when the Director goes to his Director-General. It recurs during consecutive meetings and talks. During his staff meeting (9.05 a.m.), the interaction of Issue H and Issue V is discussed. After this staff meeting, during a project team meeting on Issue V, Issue H pops up again. The pace of events increases after this project team meeting. Director J sees his secretary (12.27 a.m.) who tells him there will be a press conference about Issue H next Friday. At 1.36 p.m., Director J tells one of his deputy Director-Generals, during a telephone call: ‘Before the end of this week, we have to tell the minister how things are going.’ Immediately after this telephone call (1.44 p.m.), Director J meets with one of his fellow directors, Director B, who heads another ‘directie’ in another Directorate, with three of their staff members. Inside their ministry, they turn out to be the operational policy team bringing Issue H forward. They are subject to pressures from other ministers, outside pressures coming from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of ——, and they face much political uncertainty, a divided cabinet, and struggling political executives.

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Both directors and their staff members start their meeting by reviewing the state of play. They use the latest version of a cabinet paper, as well as a ‘letter of choice’, as starting points. They wonder ‘What information is missing?’ and they start to sum up recent research results in order to ‘get a fuller picture’. Information that proved to be important includes: the outcomes of a recent ‘audit’ – which had not reached Director J and his colleagues – and the so-called ‘H Report’. Director J wondered: ‘Which information is comprehensive? Which information is conditional?’ He also states they should invest in more comprehensive information, instead of ‘summarising existing points’. Information would be used for ‘grounding political viewpoints’. He underscores the word ‘political’. He also urges his staff members to ‘analyse one passage in the H Report’. In the second half of their meeting, they decide how to move on. They will finalise papers today. Tomorrow one of these papers will go to the R Council, an important advisory council that meets next week. They will make sure the most relevant ministers get the papers as well, as formally, these ministers ask the R Council for advice. Also a letter to Parliament has to be drafted. Director J will contact project leader K, who is heading Issue H’s project team to prepare for next Friday’s press conference. At 2.05 p.m. Directors J and B say goodbye to their staff members, and go to another meeting room to attend their weekly directors’ meeting, with three other directors (from the same Directorate). After this meeting, and an unscheduled meeting with his Secretary-General about the allocation of major funds, Issue H appears again when the Director gets a telephone call from project leader K. Director J starts by summing-up what papers are available, and what has to be done: There is a letter of choice, which has to be adapted; there is a cabinet paper, which is being handled by V and P [two staff members]; the paper for the R Council must be made. They agree their ministers have to be told. The papers have to be finalised tomorrow, so they should be in ministers’ briefcases as quickly as possible, before the R Council members get them. Director J also asks the project leader: How about the audit data? Can you hand them over to P so we can use them? We will use them carefully! And tomorrow the HC report will come out, so there will be new results.

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Finally, they discuss next Friday’s press conference. The Director calls out: ‘We need direction! Shall I tell the story on spatial structure? Although I will try not to tell too much.’ At 4.08 p.m., Director J gets a telephone call. The minister’s political adviser wants to know more about Friday’s press conference. The Director makes clear he is ‘coordinating things’ and will have a ‘clearer picture’ tomorrow. They agree they have to make sure a ‘complete story’ is presented. If only half a story is presented by the project leader, the press will think there some sort of ‘conflict’ going on. The next day, Tuesday, the first contacts with others take place about Issue H. As ever there is some early morning desk-work. It is also partly about Issue H because the Director reads the HC Report due out today. At 8.51 a.m., one of Director J’s staff comes by, wondering whether the Director heard about remarks about area Y in the HC Report. Links between issues V and H become stronger. This link is discussed later, at 9.24 a.m., in a weekly meeting between Director J, two of his staff members and the Director-General for H, and one of this DG’s staff members. They agree that remarks about area Y will only lead to more ‘claims’ by other areas, especially as regional authorities ‘play games’ and might start ‘causing trouble’, so it is more important than ever to: ‘speak with one voice’. This means, they agree, that the link with V must be clarified, claims must be anticipated, and: ‘The minister should talk with the junior minister – considering the past reactions of the junior minister to regional authorities.’ Things are complicated by the increasing number of ‘variants’, including the ‘B variant’, and ‘UD variant’, which will be ‘audited’ in turn. ‘The most affected Director-Generals must talk’, and perhaps the ministers must as well, ‘especially as the R Council will be important’. The Director states: ‘All energy must be put into the R Council meeting! Their decisions will be highly political!’ One of his staff members argues their ‘Unit for Legal Affairs must have a close look’. Immediately after this meeting ended, at 9.50 a.m., Director J meets with one of his staff members, Mr P (unit head), to discuss Issue H. Director J wants to know ‘how things are going’. Mr P explains: The Letter of Choice will be ready soon; writing the accompanying Letter will be important. The R Council papers will go to the R Council, via [so-called] Bureaus SG [the Secretary-General’s staff bureau].

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The Director calls out: ‘I must read the papers as well! When? I will check them – I have my remarks   .’ They will be ready, his unit head says, at 3.30 p.m. today; the Director wants to discuss them with Director B at 4.30 p.m. The Director says he might need to inform the minister early next morning. The minister will get the papers, but it is unclear how to proceed. R Council papers can be ‘rebuilt into advisory papers, but that might take too long’. The unit head suggests a ‘shadow advice’, and Director J says he will discuss it with their Director-General. He also wonders: ‘Why did not we get the audit report yet? I will call project leader K. I want to read it myself. The results are important.’ Finally, he asks his unit head to prepare Friday’s press conference. The unit head must present their side of the story; ‘some slides will have to be prepared’. In between these consecutive meetings, Director J makes sure Director B will be free at 4.30 p.m., and he tries to reach project leader K in order to get the audit results – but K’s secretary says he ‘cannot be reached’. Suddenly, things get ‘heated’. At 12.40 p.m. Director J is summoned by his DG to go ‘upstairs’. They must see the minister, who appears to be worried about Issue H. Because of new research results, the ‘weighing of options’, as they call it, is troubled. Additional insights into certain specific costs make it difficult to choose between ‘variants 1 and 2’. These new insights call for ‘a more precise prognosis’. Things must be ‘clarified’ even more. At 2.06 p.m., when Director J informs one of his staff members about this meeting, he wonders: ‘Must we call in a consulting firm? A decision to either choose variant 1 or 2 must be reached. The minister tends to favour variant 1. The minister wants clarity!’ He also looks ahead: Depending on the outcomes, we must discuss it with the Ministry of Finance, and we must quickly speak with I’s representatives about procedures. Some sort of covenant will have to be produced. The minister must see this on time. At 3.09 p.m. Director J sees his unit head Mr P. Apparently, ‘chapter 4 was refused by DG——’. Director J sums up the state of affairs, and asks whether Mr P received the audit conclusions. At 3.12 p.m. Director J tries to call project leader K, with no result. When he calls again at 3.45 p.m., he is told that the project leader will call back. At 3.50 p.m. Director J meets with Mr M, from the communications department, to discuss the upcoming press conference. The director says:

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It is risky, informing the press in a crisis situation. With two ministries, it is too risky. We will just explain how we deal with structural aspects and links between H and V, and that’s it. No weighing. Otherwise we will be played off against each other. At 4.30 p.m., after a series of high-paced meetings, Director J walks back and forth in his office, impatiently. He waits for the papers that are being prepared by staff members and unit heads. They must go to the minister. At 4.40 p.m., Director B arrives, with his staff members. At 4.47 p.m. unit head Mr P arrives. The Director asks, ‘Do we have everything?’ One of the staff members summarises how things are going, and explains what the Ministry of —— wants; they reject certain ‘variants’. Director J calls out: ‘I don’t want that! That’s impossible! There must be a contra paper!’ The staff member explains: ‘It is a conceptual problem. Because we [both ministries] use different labels and symbols, conflicts arise.’ Then they read the papers that have been produced. They discuss how to deal with them in terms of several major future meetings, not just the R meeting, but the I and RP meeting as well. Director J says: ‘During the R meeting one or two other ministries will raise problems’ and afterwards ‘the Prime Minister will be abroad’. They also discuss the texts. They discuss its general tone – ‘it jumps to conclusions’ – as well as specific sentences and words. They wonder whether ‘political implications’ are explained, whether ‘municipal and regional opinions’ are clear, and whether ‘links with certain policies’ become obvious. At 5.32 p.m., Director J goes over to his DG to explain how things are going. At 5.37 p.m., when he is back in his office, they discuss how to balance ‘objectivity and subjectivity’. Director J says: I’m in favour of listing six variants, in a certain order. For each variant, we list pros and cons, and include costs. Pros and cons can be discussed in terms of specific aspects, like urbanisation, regional structures, municipal functions, and economic effects. They agree unit head Mr P will ‘coordinate’ this work. The next day, Wednesday, Issue H immediately calls for Director J’s attention – he is called away by the minister, at 8.15 a.m., to discuss the latest papers. The minister has many comments: ‘The texts are too one-sided. And it is too negative about G’s regional importance.’ After this meeting, Director J calls project leader K. He tells project leader K about his minister’s worries. ‘Perhaps’, he continues, ‘we must come and meet today.’ He also says he is still waiting for the audit report.

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He wants to see it, as tomorrow his minister, junior minister, SG, and DG’s will meet, in preparation for the R Council and other Council meetings. The RP meeting might get cancelled. Most of its members will see each other during the R Council meeting and the I meeting. At 9.17 a.m., Director J meets with Director B and some of their staff members. They discuss the new report that has been prepared to list all variants and their pros and cons. They go through it, page by page. At one page, Director J remarks: ‘They will start making trouble about this cost-benefit ratio. What was project B’s cost-benefit ratio?’ At 10.51 a.m., Director J is driven to the Ministry of —— by his DG’s chauffeur to meet project leader K. They discuss available reports and the papers that are being produced, but things do not go well. They try to convince each other of their different views about how to proceed. The Director says ‘We must be objective’, and project leader K says, ‘We are objective, we use recent research results.’ At 1.53 p.m. Director J returns to his office, and he immediately tells his DG that he is back. At 4.02 p.m. he tries to talk about implementation with his unit head Mr P, but their talk turns to the interpersonal relations between Director J and project leader K. Unit head Mr P says: ‘Things are not going well. The both of you are pigheadedly opposing each other.’ The Director explains: ‘He is irritating me, he is badgering me. He formulates conditions in such a way that weighing options becomes impossible. I feel caught by the pace.’

Retracing issue management Later that day, Director J and project leader K talk to each other again, over the phone. The RP meeting is cancelled, which gives them extra room to prepare the R Council meeting papers. The next day, the press conference is also cancelled. Finally, they manage to prepare the R Council meeting. R Council members meet a week later and discuss the set of papers: the ‘letter of choice’, an explanatory paper, and an accompanying letter. Three options or ‘variants’ are mentioned, with two ‘serious variants’. Many weeks later, these ‘serious variants’ appeared to be less important, and an alternative option was constructed after additional political pressure. Coordinated by the Prime Minister, the most involved ministers and the coalition leaders in Parliament, it was decided to select a new and expensive variant, which satisfied everyone. It was a high-paced working environment with a slow-paced policy process. It took a long time for options to materialise and to put the relevant activities into perspective. In turn, this meant it was difficult

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to get a grip on the ‘real’ nature of issue management. We saw what happened at various moments, but what did happen at those moments? This question admits of multiple answers, different interpretations. We might also analyse how practitioners themselves make sense and interpret real-life processes. The events we observed and reported clarify how public policy managers try to understand what is going on. They also make it clear that managers understand today’s issues by linking what is going on today to what was going on before. In other words, it is impossible to interpret or ‘read’ one moment or episode or event in isolation from other moments, episodes and events. Moreover, what is going on and how managers think and act, must also be reinterpreted in the light of what happens later. The high-paced activities we observed become all the more meaningful in the light of subsequent activities. The fact that an important meeting and important press conference were cancelled and – much later – that another variant was created, casts the three pressured days described here in a different light. The question, then, is not so much ‘How do policy managers account for intangible action themselves?’ The question is ‘How do policy managers who act account for intangible action over time, when they act?’ We can see such recounting or meaning-making in action in the description of Director J’s daily work, especially how he treated Issue H. Director J tried to get a grip on what was going on and these ways had discursive qualities. At first sight, Director J used discursive mechanisms to interpret and deal with events. Firstly, he tried to qualify events. His interactions with project leader K and his bureau, for instance, led him to describe their interactions in military language. He spoke about ‘war’, ‘revenge’, ‘crisis’, ‘risks’, ‘conflicts’, and the like. He used earlier conflictridden encounters to anticipate new conflicts. The fact that he did not receive the audit report, and that papers produced by the project bureau remained ‘too one-sided’, only contributed to the aggressive climate. Director J also reinforced this story by underscoring the bureau’s ‘lack of clarity’ and ‘objectivity’. This discourse fuelled political conflicts, not only in the cabinet but also in meetings such as the R Council meeting. So, Director J called for more systematic approaches, ‘comprehensive’ information, ‘oversight’, ‘direction’, and ‘listing pros and cons’. All these suggestions are consistent with the military analogy. Second, Director J did not merely redescribe events. He also used his preferred language to analyse the sequences of events to ‘know’ what had to be done. His war-oriented terminology was used to understand how the junior minister was ‘monopolised’ by certain organisational

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units, and how conflict between his ministry and the Ministry of —— could be seen as a ‘conceptual problem’ because different ministries ‘use different labels and symbols’. Something comparable happened when Director J tried to use his longings for ‘clarity’ and ‘objectivity’ to rank and order Issue H’s variants, to ‘balance objectivity and subjectivity’. In this way he contributed to a developing story about Issue H, which was not primarily and directly about Issue H as such. Rather, it was about the handling of the project rather than about real outcomes and the precise contours of the infrastructure project. Third, Director J did not just redescribe events and analyse sequences of events but he did so conscious that he was playing a role in a political game. He used his awareness of the ‘political’ struggle to select specific events for his attention. He did so explicitly, using the term ‘politics’ a lot. He tried to reduce conflicts by calling for more facts and objectivity so key players – advisers and politicians – could ‘weigh options’ and ‘choose between variants’. His high-paced working days were not just about fighting over Issue H’s variants. They were about engaging in such fights to make political decisions. This is not just part of the story. It is the paradoxical heart of the story. Day after day he was busy with finding more robust information and producing more precise and systematic documents, in order to ‘ground political standpoints’, as he called it. This was mirrored in his continuous, often short encounters with superiors – his DG and the minister – not only to keep the process going but also to focus it. It was also mirrored in his continuous supervision of texts, papers and letters; of where they were, whether they would be ready on time, and what things were said in them. And it was mirrored in his troubled interactions with project leader K. Director J and project leader K were talking about objective ‘cost-benefit ratios’ when in fact they were defending politically opposing standpoints. This perspective allows us to establish a more nuanced understanding of how policy managers come to grips with ambiguous issues and conditions over time, and how discursive mechanisms and evolving stories are intrinsically reflexive. The stories refer to themselves. The meaningmaking acts of Director J were not only about dealing with ‘processes’ in their various guises – qualifying, analysing and focusing. They were also about dealing with how to deal with processes that evolve over time. Director J now and then looked back comparing current and earlier processes, in order to move forward. Going back to earlier projects, such as project B and its ‘cost-benefit ratio’, remembering the junior ministers’ ‘past reactions’, and emphasising the ‘background’ of a staff member are illustrative. Even more interestingly, Director J also looked

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back on the process of looking forward, by explicitly using temporal language – by describing processes as ‘processes’. In case of Issue H, he ‘felt caught by the pace’, and he wanted the minister to reach ‘some sort of covenant    on time’. In a more general sense he described the purpose of one of his scheduled meetings (his weekly staff meeting) in terms of ‘setting watches’. When we retrace issue management in this way, when we see how policy managers like Director J are not only developing policy stories in order to ground (political) narratives but also reflecting on the sequencing of storytelling, we might be able to describe the work of policy managers in terms that capture some of the dynamics of day-to-day managerial work. We can acknowledge that managerial acts become meaningful in the light of both earlier and later acts. It is clear that policy managers use such comparisons to create meaning. We can highlight the temporal nature of discursive mechanisms in dealing with events. We can ‘see’ how discursive mechanisms are grounded in day-to-day practices. It is not so much talk that produces activity – it is day-to-day activities, embodied in episodes such as desk-work and meetings, which produce talk. These episodes have their own logic. First, policy managers do many things to undo things happening elsewhere. Second, they ‘read’ situations by routing paper flows and meeting schedules. Third, they deal with content through contacts with people who have different insights, ideas and institutional positions. This logic is how they cope with highpaced processes, and it also explains why these processes are high-paced.

Doing to undo When government elites are studied, it is not uncommon to assume that they do things in order to do things, especially in a managerial era that values performance. Such assumptions are not only used to criticise non- or underperforming individuals, but also non-performing events or episodes, such as meetings and paperwork. My account shows that such assumptions must be viewed with some scepticism. Managerial work in policy organisations is not merely about doing to do. Policy managers such as Director J are busy with doing things in order to undo things that are happening elsewhere, or actions that are initiated by others, or outcomes of episodes that were either produced in the past, or will be produced in the near future if nothing is done. This behaviour is most clearly seen in the acts of Director J and his men in the face of project leader K’s attempted ‘faits accomplis’. Much high-paced activity ensued:

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telephone calls to get documents, hectic teamwork to write or rewrite papers, and stubborn attempts to think of new conceptual schemes that presented facts, for example ‘pros’ and ‘cons’, in different ways. My story also makes clear why this happens. Policy managers such as Director J are expected to be ‘in control’, serving politicians who are expected to be ‘in control’, but they live in uncontrollable worlds, not only because many individuals are active, each with different personal or position-based ambitions, interests and objectives, but also because all these individuals see each other, meet with each other, write to each other, use meetings and secret notes to make up new insights and ideas, and have contacts with outsiders, such as journalists, field representatives and experts, who influence inside games. It is not so much the uncontrollability of policy issues and politics as such that explains high-paced activity, but the uncontrollability of day-to-day activities of multiple individuals who try to come to grips with the idea of making policy and serving or doing politics.

Reading by routing ‘Coming to grips’ is an interpretive affair. Director J was assessing situations, anticipating action, qualifying events and judging behaviours. It was no abstract, cognitive matter. It was woven into daily encounters and experiences. Because Director J experienced things during encounters, meetings and talks, such as how his junior minister had acted previously, he was triggered to assess whether they would ‘use’ the junior minister and how they would manage the relation between the junior minister and the minister. He knew this ‘management’ would be a matter of routing: of arranging talks, sending papers and sequencing episodes. He also knew that unsatisfactory developments, such as the Ministry of —— rejecting certain ‘variants’, meant that a ‘contra paper’ had to be produced. When the preparations for the upcoming R Council meeting proved to be difficult, Director J and one of his unit heads discussed the possibility of a ‘shadow advice’. Earlier processes might be helpful in improving understanding, such as project B and its ‘cost-benefit’ ratio. Again, it is not the project as such that influences policy talk. Rather, it is earlier experiences and activities during Issue B’s management that provides lessons for dealing with Issue H (that is, dealing with Issue H’s policy flow). Slowly, through such meeting- and paper-driven moves, policy managers come to grips, and they come to grips with how they come to grips. The talks between Director J and one of his unit heads is illustrative. They reflect on how Director J and project

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leader K deal with Issue H, conclude that both managers are ‘pigheadedly opposing each other’, and ‘know’ something must be done – that is, new telephone calls, meetings, and the like – to move things forward. They also ‘know’ they must move things forward, because otherwise they will have to face angry political and administrative bosses, sceptical peers and disappointed staff members.

Content through contacting Such new events and episodes, in turn, make it clear that managerial work in policy environments is about content – about lists, schemes, categories and decisions – but not about content as such. Content is produced through contacts. New content invokes new contacts, and contacts produce content. In other words, things turn out differently when different people are involved or when people are not involved. When Director J was unable to contact project leader K, he could not get the so-called ‘audit report’. Or, to take an opposite example, the categorisation of several ‘variants’ by their pros and cons was a joint product of Director J and some of his men, who rewrote the papers containing such categories. Routing, then, is not just about sending papers to the right people at the right time, but also contacting the right people at the right moments to influence both routing and how routed papers are dealt with. How Director J and his men coped with the upcoming R Council meeting offers the best illustratation. They knew they had to produce papers that would be sent to R Council members. They also knew they had to establish contacts to produce both these papers and to get the minister to prepare some of the Council members. How R Council members literally read papers depends on how they ‘read’ papers in a more figurative sense. How do they assess the state of play of current policy developments? How do they assess those responsible for producing papers and their contact with them? Sometimes, contacts can be consciously established. At other times they ‘happen’, and even ‘force’ themselves on policy managers; for example, when the minister wanted to be involved and required policy managers to come to his office.

Conclusions and reflections At the beginning of this chapter, I asked how policy managers dealt with high-paced, but intangible policy work. My description of Director

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J’s working days and issue management, and the retracing as well as interpretation of issue management, provide the beginnings of an answer to this question. Policy managers like Director J use coping mechanisms to deal with endless paper- and meeting-driven issue ‘streams’. At first sight, these mechanisms are discursive. Events are qualified, interpreted and dealt with through talk; words, terms and metaphors, and stories. This vocabulary makes policy issues. Interestingly, much of this policy talk has a clear temporal twist. Policy managers such as Director J deal with events by referring to past events to put new events into perspective. The meaning of events evolves when new events happen. Even more interestingly, however, much of this evolving policy talk is not producing or controlling new events. Day-to-day episodes during which events are discussed and dealt with are grounded in policy practices full of papers and meetings that have their own logic. Policy managers are not just getting a grip on events and policy issues. They are trying to get a grip on day-to-day activities and other episodes. Policy practices force policy managers to do a lot in order to undo the outcomes of other meetings and papers, to take care of the routing of papers and meetings, and to establish the right contacts in order to produce the ‘right’ content. This account of managerial work shows how policy managers make their work ‘work’. It says little about personal ideas about policy work, or about political consequences. Although the research study that grounded this account of managerial work and behaviour in Dutch central government was not about ‘the person’ behind ‘the manager’, nor about ‘the politics of administration’, I can offer a few comments on the personal motivation of managers and political consequences of their acts. First, why do policy managers work such long hours? How do they see their work, and make sense of it? We expect policy managers to say they are motivated by ‘doing something for society’ or ‘making better policies’ for specific ‘problems’. Interestingly, many of the policy managers I observed did not use such terms to describe their work. On the contrary, one policy manager said ‘It doesn’t matter what the minister wants – I’ll fix it.’ And interestingly, some of the managers who did want to make a difference, when they came ‘from the field’, were the first to complain about their new ‘Mr Fix-it’ policy environment. One policy manager who became involved in conflicts with his minister left the ministry after a few years, disappointed, to return to ‘the field’. In addition, many of the policy managers had worked in different positions, in different policy fields, and sometimes at different government ministries. The rise

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of job rotation within the Senior Public Service (SPS) forces policy managers to be mobile and to move from one policy field to an other. As a result their commitment to any one policy field in their role of policy entrepreneurs is limited. So, other motivational forces are at play. Thus, policy managers like Director J are motivated by the ambiguities of policy work (Noordegraaf, 2003). Policy managers like ‘gaps’ between outputs and outcomes and they like to make the intangible tangible by establishing political ‘facts’, new laws, newspaper accounts, alternative organisational schemes, and new organisations. They then speak about how they ‘managed to go against the tide’ or how they ‘manage to anticipate’ things that are ‘now taken for granted’. A different way of saying the same thing is to view policy work as ‘games’ (for example Lynn, 1987). So, policy work is a game with the policy managers as key players. Issues can be described by the moves and countermoves of the participants, and by rules of the game. This view stresses the fun and playfulness of it all. Policy managers might then come up with statements like ‘I like to win’ or ‘I like the struggle for ideas.’ But both these portrayals are too sterile. My policy managers – and many had worked for central government for a long time and are still there – were addicted to the atmosphere of policy-making. They liked their closeness to politics, the ‘explosiveness’ of certain issues, the media attention, the deal-making, ‘quick wins’, and the like. In other words, although processes are slow-moving, the high-paced nature of day-to-day policy work is addictive. It provides an adrenalin high. Policy was not only driven by work-related necessities but by the need of policy managers for their adrenalin fix. The fast work pace was self-reinforcing. Finally, how do policy managers relate to the ‘real world’ when they manage the public’s business? What is ‘the real world’ in a highpaced policy environment? What are the ‘political’ consequences of professional coping mechanisms? The work of policy managers like Director J is a matter of getting a grip on complex policy issues and daily policy circumstances, and developing representations of that complexity. Policy managers like Director J work hard to provide policy representations via words, metaphors, texts and papers, which can be used to ground decision-making. By getting a grip on what has happened, what is going on, who is active, where and why, and who has said what before, they try to judge what can and cannot be done. Academic attempts at such representations show it is no easy task. I have identified many constraints, woven into the fabric of day-to-day

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managerial existence. I have shown how representations depend on contacts and routing. Policy managers act to deal with events and enact new realities. Day-to-day activities, embodied in episodes, have their own logic. So, events do not directly produce episodes but episodes produce events and readings of events. Despite difficulties, it enables policy managers like Director J to make a difference. Different doings to undo, different routes and different contacts produce different content and thus different distributional effects. In that sense, day-to-day policy management is ‘political’. All in all, policy managers can be said to be involved in representative practices. In parliamentary democracies, it is not just elected politicians who represent things. Even the most loyal and presumably ‘neutral’ servants of political representatives will be involved in ‘political’ representation because the fabric of political and administrative institutions forces them to.

Research reflections All research is about disciplined sense-making, but observation research poses extra challenges. My research had to confront some of these challenges. First, I encountered the combined challenge of getting access to organisations, selecting elite members, and reporting about their work and behaviour. Access can be threatening when research questions and themes have sensitive sides and when they touch on ‘performance’. Also, research subjects worry that observation will take a lot of their time, being hard-pressed already. They might also think they will be exposed because they cannot hide behind sanitised accounts of their daily work. Moreover, they might feel researchers will leak ‘juicy’ observations to the press and disturb ongoing negotiations. They might think, especially in a managerial era, that researchers have a hidden agenda, wanting to highlight the dysfunctions of government. These challenges are relatively easy to overcome. Coming from a university department of Public Administration which teaches government and has prestigious researchers, helps to remove some doubts and facilitates access. And once these doubts are removed at the highest levels, others will follow. Moreover, the ‘story’ you tell research subjects also counts. What you tell them about your research aims and how you tell them can convince them of the value of your work. The trick is to make them curious about your work and trusting of you. Finally, agreeing clear conditions for the research helps. The two obvious instances are the anonymity of respondents and submitting draft reports

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for comment. Once I was ‘in’, there were hardly any signs of hesitance or attempts to obscure things. In fact, after a few meetings, ‘being there’ is either regarded as ‘normal’ or it is not noticed at all, especially when encounters involve lots of people and outsiders. So I found that administrators would come up with all kinds of ‘real stories’ about what they are experiencing as administrators. Second, there is the challenge of conceptually and theoretically understanding what you ‘see’ when you see it. All social research is about representations of complex social realities, but in other types of research things are less complicated; for example, when conceptual schemes are used to ‘score’ phenomena. In case of ‘open’ observation research this is impossible. You enter administrative and political scenes with your ‘theories’ both to make sense of and, at the same time, to reconstruct those theories. What you see can teach you a lot about how to look and where to look. And looking poses its own problems because there is so much to see. So much happens in a managerial working day. Even a few days of observing policy managers in action will result in masses of notes and quotes. Compared with structured interviews, observation can be a source of bewilderment. Yet this aspect of observation is the most interesting and possibly the most satisfying one. Grounding theories in fieldwork can lead to new insights. Immersion in fieldwork gives the sense that things have been captured that would otherwise be obscure. In the case of my research, I got a much better insight into the day-to-day business of government, its people, encounters and atmospheres. I also changed my theoretical perspective and ‘found’ my theoretical home in the work on ‘sense making’. My colleagues have spoken of their moments of epiphany. I ‘discovered’ it is less fruitful to look for functional accounts of public managers in action than it is to offer temporal readings of managerial work. The mass of triggers for people’s attention and continuous stream of papers and talks became crucial rather than conditional. I was drawn to March and Olsen’s (1979) theoretical insights on ambiguity and attention. I was able to link their ideas to Weick’s (1995) work on the enactment of organisational realities. I realised such insights can not only be used to understand social and organisational behaviour; they can also be used to understand public organisations. Now I see the public sector as about ambiguity, signals and circumstances. I see public officials not as rule-bound bureaucrats but as game players constructing and enacting events over time and addicted to their games for their own sake.

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References Alvesson, M. 1996. Communication, Power and Organisation. Berlin: De Gruyter. Cohen, M. D. and March, J. G. 1974. Leadership and Ambiguity: The American College President. New Jersey: McGraw-Hill. Feldman, M. S. 1989. Order Without Design. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hood, C. 1991. ‘A public management for all seasons?’ Public Administration, 69 (1), pp. 3–19. Kaufman, H. 1980. The Administrative Behaviour of Federal Bureau Chiefs. Washington: Brookings Institution. Lynn, L. 1987. Managing Public Policy. New York: Little, Brown & Boston. March, J. G. and Olsen, J. P. 1979. Ambiguity and Choice in Organisations, 2nd edition. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget. Mintzberg, H. 1973. The Nature of Managerial Work. New York: Harper & Row. Mintzberg, H. 1975. ‘The manager’s job: folklore and fact’, Harvard Business Review, 53 (2), pp. 49–61. Noordegraaf, M. 2000a. Attention! Work and Behaviour of Public Managers Amidst Ambiguity. Delft: Eburon. Noordegraaf, M. 2000b. ‘Professional sense-makers: managerial competencies amidst ambiguity’, International Journal of Public Sector Management, 13 (4), pp. 306–18. Noordegraaf, M. 2003. ‘Motivated managers – motivational drives of public managers’, in T. Duvillier, J. L. Genard and A. Piraux (eds), La Motivation au travail dans les services publics. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 225–36. Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. 2000. Public Management Reform Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwartzmann, H. B. 1989. The Meeting. New York: Plenum Press. Weick, K. 1995. Sense-making in Organisations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

5 Governing Karlstad: an Insider’s Story P. O. Norell

History must be rewritten. Always. Gunnar Björling (Finnish-Swedish poet, 1887–1960)

Evolution in Karlstad politics: from a bureaucratic regime to what? Anyone observing a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Swedish city of Karlstad during the (major part of the) 1990s would probably be struck by the smoothness of it all. All items of any financial importance were prepared by the Finance Department. The proposals made by the Finance Director in his reports were approved. Sometimes, the local council’s opposition leader would register his disagreement, and that was it. No debate took place, although a few factual questions were asked. These were answered by some of the numerous top officials present. A more experienced observer would perhaps notice the ritualistic character of the proceedings. Both the process and substance of the meetings seemed scripted, and their results were almost predictable. The only slight source of uncertainty would be the Green Party’s representative, who occasionally asked surprise questions or took unusual positions. These interventions were either ruled out of order or neutralised by political arguments, which were often conveyed in condescending fashion. Had the same observer been present at the Executive Committee’s meetings during the 1960s or 1970s, he would have concluded that little had changed during the intervening decades. The dress code had turned a bit more casual, and so had speech patterns (the chair now addressed other committee members mostly by their first name, although officials 103

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were addressed by their job title now as then). Apparently the city of Karlstad conducted its political business in stable, institutionalised ways. How come? To understand this we need to look into the preparatory and subsequent stages of the decision-making process, but also into the traditions that had been developed over decades. Sometimes, key tenets of the policy-making process – such as minute-making and the language used to communicate decisions – could be traced back more than a century. People’s accumulated experiences and the social construction of what they consider to be ‘natural’ and ‘obvious’ in city politics must be taken into consideration. Political and administrative leadership in a medium-sized city is not just about conforming to institutionalised procedures and rituals, even though these might seem compelling. It is also about adapting to changes that take place on a more general societal level. Change should not just be understood as a process of slow adjustments punctuated by critical events. In such times of uncertainty, the organisation of public power can change. Local political leadership is also about relationships. It is about handling a great variety of situations and dealing with a multitude of issues more or less in tandem, some of which are complex. The job of doing so all but absorbs the individuals involved. There is a certain excitement in the many tasks and relationships I was involved in. I was strongly linked to policy-making, not just by City Hall but also by people outside it. Typically also, they are pressed for time in their work. In this intense context, relationships of various kinds develop. Some people become close friends; other relationships deliberately remain professional. This study concerns stability and change in local elite politics. More precisely, I have two analytical foci. First, I describe the actors. This term refers to the majority party coalition and its internal relationships; the relationship between the majority and opposition parties; the relationship between politicians and top officials; and relationships to other external actors. Second, I look at the context. This term refers to the institutional arrangements; issues and critical events; and general societal changes. For lack of space, I cannot deal with all these topics in detail. What follows is a story that seeks to understand both the remarkable stability and yet the advent of significant changes in Karlstad politics. It is about facts, but constructed facts, if only because it was written by someone who has been a participant in the process for thirty years. If other participants had attempted the same thing, they might have made a different selection of critical events and interpreted

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people’s responses to them differently. So, before the story begins, I need to reflect on my telling it.

Observing Karlstad politics: how to handle my experience? Anyone who has been in an organisation for a long time knows that certain episodes keep popping up in conversation around the hallways. Some stories are told over and over, for example when heads of department are at a conference and have a drink after dinner at some rural hotel. Other people add something to the story. Small controversies can arise either over what happened or about the meaning of what happened. When telling or interpreting stories of this kind you need to have a double perspective, one that comes from being close to the events described and the other from taking the perspective of an outsider, and to move backwards and forwards between these positions. I tried to combine engagement and detachment in my research and in telling this story. Let me explain. In the 1970s I spent a period as trainee at the Karlstad Finance Department and some years later another period as Deputy Manager of accountings. In between I was head of department in a smaller municipality, and had started my PhD studies. In 1983, I returned to the Finance Department of Karlstad City, now as Budget Officer. Less than a year later I was appointed head of that department. So, from 1984 to the year 2000 I served as Finance Director, directly responsible to the Executive Committee and to the Budget Committee. In the year 2000 I returned to the academic world full-time. During my entire period of service in Karlstad I spent almost all my spare time doing research. In 1989, I finished my dissertation, and started a major research project about the strategies of Swedish local authorities for handling the deep financial crisis of the 1990s. I was on leave during parts of 1992 and 1993 to conduct this research. However, I kept close tabs on what was going on in the Karlstad politics. When Sweden was hit by an acute currency crisis of in the autumn of 1992, I was called back in. After officially becoming an ‘outsider’ in 2000, I did some consulting for the city government on the topics for which I had been responsible earlier (for example, the future of the local energy companies). I have also been involved in educating new generations of Karlstad politicians and officials. In other words, the organisation I shall now write about is one which I have had connections to for more than thirty years during sixteen of which I had an almost daily contact with leading politicians and officials.

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This study is not primarily based on my diary, though I often made notes at the time and some were useful in reconstructing events and fleshing out my recollections. It mostly relies on the recollections and reflections of an ‘insider’ afterwards, and it covers a long period of time. This mode of analysis, sometimes referred to as retrospective ethnography (Bryman, 2001), raises some specific issues. It is not the same as writing a biography because I am not the centre of the story. Still, my own experiences and relationships are relevant for the accuracy and comprehensiveness of my story. In writing retrospective ethnography one needs to make oneself the object of one’s own analysis (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1991). One should be crucially aware of one’s own biases, particularly limited, self-serving memory. The ‘going-native problem’ is well recognised in the literature. It is about losing your perspective as an observer. If you get too close, you run the risk of blinding yourself to the ordinary and customary in your daily work and culture. Because you have played a specific role, you are in a sense biased. You observe some people and events but not others. The advantages of being an insider are also obvious. You get to know the informal organisation which the outsider has to learn about. As ‘a complete member’ (Adler and Adler, 1987) you have shared the experiences and encountered the dilemmas of other people involved. Insider status has other implications, especially when interviewing people you know well. During my interviews with all the key players, I noticed their expectations of the interview were influenced by my earlier role in the organisation. These were partly expressed explicitly (‘You as a former finance director of course understand and value’; or: ‘You know from your own experience what X can be like’). Sometimes, I was confided in; for example, individuals gave me a better understanding of the interpretation certain actors gave to specific events. Such confidences made it difficult to use these segments of the interview. I responded to these challenges in several ways. First, I was aware of the difficulties so, second, I combined my diary, interviews, archival research and extensive documentary analysis. I never was a ‘complete native’, because I was reflecting continuously on my daily practice using my research skills and tools. Many times, during leadership team meetings or in the office of certain politicians, I drew on analytical tools from my research – such as arena models or organisational culture diagnostics – to understand what was going on. But my research also served as a haven of refuge. When times were rough, I could always think: ‘This is not what I am up to, I am a researcher.’ Over time, I turned from a ‘complete member’, to combining participant and observer roles, to my current

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position as a ‘detached researcher’. The challenge here is to integrate in one story the insider’s sense of ‘deep knowing’ and proximity with the analytical rigour of the outsider (the researcher). My story has two parts. The first part is a historical story, based largely on my own experiences, but also on interviews with the others involved, and on primary documentation. The second part is about the present day. That analysis is based on thirteen semi-structured interviews conducted in autumn 2005 and winter 2006 with the local party leaders of the seven parties that represented in the Council, and with the two Social Democratic Party commissioners (aldermen). In addition, I interviewed five leading bureaucrats. The interviews were structured to capture activities, thoughts and opinions of what took place in different arenas. I sought to identify the dilemmas of local leadership. The two parts of my story are connected. Institutions, sometimes built up decades ago, affect the access to the decision-making processes, the pattern of interaction and the flow of information. So, experience remains relevant for both the relationship between key actors today, and what is considered a suitable solution to today’s problems.

Ruling Karlstad: the old regime This story is about a local authority, the City of Karlstad.1 As the regional centre (for Värmland province), Karlstad is an administrative city. It has a governor, a bishop, the central offices of the county council, including the main hospital, a university, and some central government authorities. It used to have a military regiment, but it was disbanded a decade ago. Politically, it is not dominated by either the social democrats or the liberalconservative coalitions. The majority coalition changes after almost every election. Socially and culturally it has a successful opera, theatres, many other musical events, and sports. The ice hockey and athletics teams are especially successful. There is an airport, a harbour and railway connections to Oslo, Stockholm and Gothenburg. The City has only about 82 000 inhabitants, but four other local authorities have grown with Karlstad, which gives the city’s catchment area a population of some 130 000 inhabitants. It is big enough to have a differentiated social and administrative structure but not so big it is hard to grasp. The proportions of votes cast for each political party in the Swedish Parliament and Karlstad council elections are roughly the same. My official position was not just ‘any position’. Finance Manager was one of two top positions that can be traced back over the centuries. Only five people held the position in the twentieth century. After a scandal

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involving corruption at the end of the 1930s, a strict fiscal regime was introduced. A chartered auditor was recruited to consolidate the change. In the 1960s, the titles of the two positions were changed from the ancient ones of Stadskamrer and Stadsombudsman to Finance Manager and Head of Secretariat. My predecessor started as Deputy Head of the Finance Department in the early 1950s and was promoted a decade later. A young lawyer from Stockholm, who had been in Karlstad for a couple of years, was promoted to the other top position. These positions were hierarchically equal, yet the Head of Secretariat was considered first among equals (nicknamed the primus). He bore an overall responsibility for advising politicians on policies and decision-making. These two people worked well together and, according to everyone I talked to, became influential. They successfully championed bureaucratic values, laying down formal procedures for making decisions; bookkeeping, filing and budgeting. Both were strong personalities, wielding much authority. Their judgements on formalities, law or finance were not questioned by the politicians. In fact, to some extent the politicalbureaucratic hierarchy was stood on its head. If a committee was proposing a budget rise or did not keep to its budget, the chair of that committee (a politician) and its head of department could be called to the Budget Committee to explain why. Among the heads of departments, sometimes, these meetings were called ‘interrogations in the cellar’ (because, for a period, some meeting rooms were located in the cellar of a government building). The atmosphere during these meetings could be hostile, with the Finance Manager taking the role of ‘prosecutor’. The Head of Secretariat left little doubt that he was in charge. You always noticed the difference in atmosphere when he was present. To some degree, his reactions affected other people’s judgement. On the one hand, he could be helpful if you wanted his advice on a specific issue, or requested a late but urgent item on the agenda. On the other hand, he could be unhelpful if he was not informed. Agenda-setting and gate-keeping were two of his most important tools of influence with his experience and exceptional professional legal skills. In Karlstad, the ruling coalition changed after almost every election. With few exceptions, leading politicians came and went frequently. The two top bureaucrats provided continuity. To some extent, they taught new politicians, new heads of departments and other officials how things were done. At the same time, the two top officials were circumspect. They avoided intruding in what they considered be ‘politics’. They were loyal to every majority coalition, but they also kept the leader

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of the opposition well informed. During the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a tremendous growth of local services, the Finance Manager (and his close collaborator, the Budget Officer) would advise the Budget Committee on tax increases to make sure there was no budget deficit. They sought to restrain spending at the same time. In fact, Brunsson and Rombach (1982) found a new ideal-typical budget role in Karlstad – the superguardian. The Finance Manager and the primus favoured a consensual form of politics. They kept all the top politicians in the loop, yet kept most others at bay. At times, they were proactive and helpful to the majority in finding legal and financial solutions to intricate issues. The Karlstad Secretariat and the Finance Department in the 1970s and 1980s were an institution (Selznick, 1957). They had clear missions, and a widely agreed-on technology to achieve them. Other actors held them in high regard and adapted their behaviour to suit the two top bureaucrats. These bureaucratic leaders successively strengthened their role and were always prepared to defend key values. Moreover, to a large extent these ‘institutions’ were taken for granted and they were seen as acting in a way that was ‘natural’ and ‘right’. The chief bureaucrats had the ear of the leading politicians. I do not mean they had great influence on specific policies or that they interfered in what happened in other departments as long as the departments were docile. Rather this duopoly defined the problems, thereby influencing the debate. Apparently, the duopoly was rigid. Few initiatives were taken. Creativity was unwelcome. You could find some critical voices, though seldom heard in public. This was the organisation and its context when I joined as the new Finance Director in 1984. When you enter any organisation at this senior level, you become co-opted into an entire mini-world. Thus, between the announcement of my appointment and my start date, I was offered a seat on the board of a regional bank. Some time later, I ‘inherited’ a seat on the Audit Commission of another bank from my predecessor. I accepted both and was introduced to a new world for me of bankers and business people. At least partly, that is another story. The important point here is that I was taken up straight away by Karlstad society, although I did not have such aspirations. Because of my lack of interest as well as time, I did not go to the bishop’s coffee event after the Christmas ceremonies, though invited. Neither did I become a Rotarian or a freemason, like many of my colleagues. The Head of Secretariat was clearly part of this society, partly through family and partly through position and interest. He was both a Rotarian and a freemason. He chaired the regional board of one

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of Sweden’s most prestigious banks. He also liked being a member of the board of Färjestad (the popular and successful ice-hockey team). He knew all the people that mattered.

Issues and events In retrospect, I think it is possible to identify two types of issues in Karlstad politics. Traditionally, Karlstad political culture understood that some issues had status. They concerned ‘what is best for the City’ and were best resolved by agreement between the Social Democrats and the non-socialist bloc. These issues concerned city planning, huge infrastructural investments, relationships to other authorities and to business, the establishment of companies, financial arrangements (such as the selling of a stock of shares in nuclear plants, or to establish a municipal pensions fund), the reorganising of committees, companies or administration and the hiring of heads of department. These issues were above ‘politics as usual’. They were de-politicised into ‘matters-of-fact’. For such issues you need expert advice, thus giving top officials opportunities to play dominant roles. Further, in some of these issues, the ideologies of the two main opposing forces in Swedish and Karlstad politics – the Social Democrats and the liberal Moderates – were aligned; for example, there was much overlap between the Social Democrats’ advocacy of economic development and job creation and the Moderates’ commitment to ‘doing what’s good for business’. On the other hand, there were topics characterised as ‘political’. They concerned resources for the distribution of welfare services. The nonsocialist parties, and especially the Moderates, believed there were inefficiencies in the welfare system, while parties to the left argued for additional funding to enhance the quality of services. In the political world, some events clearly influence the relationships between key actors profoundly. Critical events mean individuals or institutions confront dilemmas because they have to reconsider their existing beliefs (cf. Bevir and Rhodes, 2002: 140ff.). Looking back at my time in City Hall, I think that five events were pivotal in that they influenced relationships for years to come. These events were: the electoral success of the Green Party and its effects on the negotiations about coalitions from the mid-1980s; the financial crisis of the 1990s; the appointment of a new Director of Administration in 1993; the collapse of bloc politics after the 1994 election; and the budget coup of the Social Democrats in 1998. After I left, two other events were important: the split-up of the Green Party in 2001 and the resulting change in the majority coalition;

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and the handling of the Youth House item, from 2000. I introduce, briefly, the story of each event as relevant below. These critical events still play a role in the minds of several key actors; although the further back I go, the fewer the contemporary officeholders who remember. Remarkably, however, some of the young politicians of today, who had not entered the local political elite when these events occurred still referred to them in their interviews! Clearly, these events resonated in collective memory, although the interpretation of what happened differs between the main actors.

Stability and change: the evolution of Karlstad politics The 1980s The 1980s was a time for new ideas internationally and nationally. The financial situation had changed drastically at the end of the 1970s. The growth of local services led to huge state budget deficits and retrenchment. Central government introduced new economic and financial regimes: markets were deregulated; alternative ways of organising were introduced. Public institutions were much criticised and compared unfavourably to private business. The challenge was formidable. Public demand for services was forecast to increase but tax increases were no longer considered an option: a big departure from the 1970s. Modern management ideas reached Karlstad. Educational programmes for the heads of departments were introduced. Fixed-term contracts were offered. Job titles were changed from ‘manager’ to ‘director’. For example, the four heads of department directly serving the Executive Committee now became Director of Administration rather than Head of Secretariat and Finance Director rather than Head of Finance Department (now). With their counterparts in the Planning Department and the Personnel Department, these four formed a leadership group coordinating policy preparation and implementation. In the newspapers, we were referred to as ‘the Gang of Four’. The political scene in Karlstad, as in many other cities, also changed in the 1980s. Traditionally in Sweden there are five local political parties conventionally seen as forming two blocs: the non-socialist – the Moderates, the Liberals and the Centre Party – and the socialist – the Social Democrats and the Left Party, which was originally the Communist Party. In the 1980s, the Green Party became prominent, claiming no affiliation with either of the two established ‘blocs’. Environmental and energy issues were hot in Sweden at the end of the 1970s and the

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beginning of the 1980s. Strong popular commitment fuelled the political breakthrough of the Green Party. The first time this party was represented in the Council was after the 1982 election. It represented a new, ecological dimension in politics. Although it had only some 2–4 seats between 1982 and 1994, because the two main blocs were always neck and neck at the ballot box, the Greens held the balance of power. After almost every election the Green Party negotiated with both blocs for the best deal on positions and policies. As we will see on several occasions below, the arrival of the Green Party was a critical event that changed the nature of coalition politics in Karlstad irrevocably. At this time, the decision-making process was on a monthly cycle. Committee items that needed an Executive Committee or a Council decision had to be submitted on the first day of the month. Most were immediately handed over to the administration for review and recommendations. A week later the commissioners – the five or six leading politicians from both majority coalition and opposition – with the primus, the Finance Director and one or two other officials met to have an informal discussion on such items. At this stage, views could be exchanged before people had to commit themselves. Of course, for the more politicised issues, representatives’ views were already on record, though in many cases compromises were forged in informal discussions. Roughly the same people met three or four days later in the more formal setting of the subcommittee, where the proposals to the Executive Committee were formalised. Another meeting of that same subcommittee took place in the last week every month. Primarily, this meeting was for sharing information and for coordination. Other top officials would be invited to report on progress of major initiatives. People from other authorities or, more rarely, businesses with specific ideas on city development issues, would also be invited to attend. The Executive Committee met one week after the first subcommittee meeting. One month later some of the items would be on the Council agenda. The Council acted as the focal point for the public debate. This layered structure of meetings was orchestrated in no small part by the primus. He controlled who was invited and which issues were given priority. He used his leverage to facilitate consensus. At least five times a month, the leading politicians met with leading officials to handle important political issues. In addition, the various political party groups had their internal meetings prior to the meetings in the Executive Committee and in the Council. Occasionally, officials were invited to speak on an issue at these meetings. The leading politicians were also members of the board of the Economic Development Company, which

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met about six times a year. Furthermore, all leading politicians met in the Budget Committee. The frequency of meetings of this committee varied (up to twenty a year), peaking in autumn. From time to time, a budget conference was organised, normally in Sweden but sometimes abroad (for example, in Denmark, England and Croatia), where there were many occasions to have informal chats and share experiences. These trips were an innovation of the 1980s. A member of the Moderate party (M1) chaired the Executive Committee in 1979–82 and 1985–8. He had a military background (lieutenant-colonel). During his ‘reigns’, there were few dramatic political initiatives. He believed in the virtues of balancing the budget and sticking to formalities. Most insiders agreed the position of the primus was strengthened during this period. M1 took pleasure in the Council debates. He and his main opponent, a Social Democrat and chair of the Executive Committee from 1988 to 1991 (SD1), had lively and sometimes ideologically flavoured exchanges of opinions. At a personal level the two men got along well. Offstage, there was a lot of laughter and joking between them. After a Council meeting, they would have a coffee together, discussing which of them had ‘won’ the debate. Politicians and officials visiting from other cities were often surprised at this light-hearted atmosphere. Neither of these two politicians challenged the institutional fabric and the culture of consensus it produced. Issues characterised as ‘what’s best for the City’ elicited little controversy.

The 1990s The critical event of the 1990s was the major economic and fiscal crisis that hit Sweden. It had repercussions for years to come. In coping with fiscal crisis, neo-liberal policies made inroads in central government, reverberating down to local government. For example, when the electricity market was deregulated, the power supply system was partitioned from electricity trading. Karlstad split them into two separate companies. Other city government activities were also transferred to companies. A holding company was created to steer and supervise this growing number of companies, their seats on its board providing the local political leaders with yet another (consensual) meeting place. Indeed, Karlstad was one of rather few local authorities that dealt successfully with the fiscal challenge. The budget system introduced a few years earlier stood up to the test. The Left–Green majority worked closely with the non-socialist opposition. When members of committees were briefed, all important officials and representatives of trade unions

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were also present. The briefings were given by the Finance Director (me), SD1 as chair of the Executive Committee, and the young Moderate deputy chair (M2). The message was simple, strong and unanimous: the years ahead will be tough; people could be fired, though we shall try to avoid redundancies among employees in permanent positions. Every committee, every head of department and other officials, was encouraged to participate in the tough challenge of controlling expenditure and making the best of what we had in providing public services. An informal ‘heads of departments’ group took the lead. Its members exchanged information and provided reciprocal support. These group sessions also served to prevent colleagues from taking advantage of the situation by marshalling outside support from interest groups or media. The primus was the gate-keeping guardian. The political wind of 1991 blew to the right, so the Moderate politician (M2) became chair of the Executive Committee. He is one of the most prominent local politicians in the modern political life of Karlstad. M2 entered politics at a young age and almost immediately got important political posts. In 1985, he persuaded the Green Party to support the non-socialist bloc. At the end of the 1980s, he became a member of the Board of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities, where he now is deputy chair. M2 has a numerous international commitments (for example, he is a member of the EU Regional Committee) as well as national and regional. In Karlstad, M2 has been a commissioner since 1988. He chaired the Executive Committee from 1991–4 and in 2002. He acted as deputy chair in 1988–91, 1994–2001 and 2002–6. M2 grew up in Karlstad where he studied business economics. Through family, position and interest he has strong links with Karlstad’s high society. Not only is he a Rotarian and a freemason, he is also an avid networker. He has a political instinct the likes of which I have never encountered before among politicians. He can ‘smell’ when an item will be controversial. His experience and skill mean he dominates small group settings. He is quick to voice his views and take the lead in discussions when others needed time to reflect and form an opinion. He was tough in Council debates, and served as the main target of the socialist parties’ electoral campaigns. After the 1991 election, a non-socialist coalition was formed, chaired by M2. Financial issues dominated throughout his period of office. The consensual approach prevailed. The now oppositional Social Democrats were included in policy-making. The new leader of the Social Democrats (SD2) was one of the strongest champions of the policy of restraint. SD2 was a trade union man. He had a proletarian background and did not

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get the opportunity to educate himself until he was an adult. SD2 was an impressive man, with an exceptional memory. He was a practical man, building his own house, and he died of a heart attack while building his second. He wanted straight answers. SD2 and his predecessor as local party leader SD1 never got along well. While SD2 was a practical man, SD1 was more of an intellectual. SD2 was a typical family man. SD1 had a lively social life. SD1 got on much better with his ‘political enemy’, M2, both enjoying their prominent roles in the city’s social arenas. SD2 never liked going out in the evenings; he always got up at 4.30 a.m. At the end of his reign, he withdrew more and more into his office, talking to few people outside the meetings. The story of the appointment of a new Director of Administration in 1993 will illustrate the changing climate of the 1990s. It was another critical event because it represented a major break with tradition. One of the main candidates was the director of the real estate department in Karlstad, a lawyer, who worked closely with the retiring primus. He had been in Karlstad administration for almost twenty years and was considered a competent leader. He represented continuity. Another main candidate was a female lawyer. For several years, she served in one of the neighbouring, smaller municipalities, in later years as its Chief Executive Officer. She also had a good reputation. She represented change. M2 strongly championed the male candidate, but did not get sufficient support from his coalition partners. There are competing interpretations about why he did not command support for his preferred candidate. Some considered the male candidate too close an ally of M2 and the retiring primus. Appointing him as the leading official in City Hall meant the ancien régime would continue. Many wanted a change. To paraphrase, the prevailing view was that ‘We want a break: a competent woman is what Karlstad needs. We need a new political-administrative style in this organisation.’ So, a new, young, female top official – referred to here as CEO – succeeded the male, veteran primus in 1993. In his appearance, clothing, way of speaking and Sir Humphrey Appleby qualities, the latter represented the ultimate bureaucrat. The new CEO represented a different style of leadership. She was more focused on human and social values. She was a better listener and less prone to adopt categorical positions. She was prepared to use an incremental strategy for the changes she found necessary. Where the primus was perceived as reserved, CEO projected a softer, more welcoming image though she hardened on the job. CEO’s appointment was one of M2’s rare defeats in Karlstad politics, but it was soon followed by another. When his party won the 1994

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election, the situation was unclear. To form a majority, the Moderates needed the support of five parties (leaving out only the Social Democrats and the Left party). M2 tried and failed to negotiate a five-party coalition. The Social Democrats needed the support of two other parties and SD2 was able to form a coalition with two non-socialist parties, who had taken the unprecedented step of turning their backs on M2’s Moderates. M2 was relegated to the sidelines of the policy-making process, albeit temporarily. There are different versions of the story about why this bloc-breaking coalition was formed. One is that the two non-socialist parties took responsibility in hard times. This new coalition had a solid majority in the Council and was able to take the necessary steps to secure the finances of the City. The Greens and the far Left were kept out of power because they were notoriously ‘unreliable’. Another interpretation is that the leaders of the two non-socialist parties felt excluded from the decision-making as a result of M2’s style of leadership. M2 focused his energy on the Social Democratic opposition, taking the support from his coalition partners for granted. He paid the price for it in 1994. A third explanation is that staying in power is always positive for a party and its leading members. By switching their allegiance, the two party leaders could continue as full-time commissioners, and party members would be appointed chairs of key committees. Each version of the story has its supporters and all these considerations played a part in the decision. The electoral period 1994–8 was one of typical consensus. The Moderates were now in opposition, and M2 sought a rapprochement with the ruling coalition. To a large extent, they were included in the policy process, especially on issues where there were few differences between the blocs. The real political fault lines in this era did not run between Social Democrats and Moderates, but between the Executive Committee, the Budget Committee and central administration on the one hand, and the spending committees and administrations on the other. Traditionally controversial planning and welfare issues were overshadowed by the financial challenges posed by the fiscal crisis of the state. There was a classic clash between ‘guardians’ and ‘advocates’ (Wildavsky, 1984). The brunt of the pressures was borne by the Social Committee because it was the only committee that did not manage to keep within its budget. Party lines mattered less than positional ones. SD2, for example, was hard on his party member, the chair of the Social Committee, and did not hesitate to voice his criticisms in public. The Swedish economy and the state’s budget gradually recovered in the latter half of the 1990s. In 1997–8, the situation was much

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improved. In Karlstad the fiscal regime was sound. The response to the fiscal crisis had been successful. The committees and the departments limited their spending to the available resources while keeping service levels that were well-regarded by Karlstad citizens. Surveys at the time, positive central government evaluations and benchmarking exercises all bear out this assessment. However, another critical event was on the horizon. Important forces in the Social Democratic party were dissatisfied with the dominating role of SD2. They felt the party’s performance in Council debates was bland. Its leaders (the party’s two commissioners) worked more closely with the leader of the opposition (the ‘political enemy’ M2) than with their own party colleagues. As one of the minority party leaders commented in interview: We almost never got the chance to talk to [M2], we could agree a time to meet and then a late cancellation came; he was acting on so many arenas [local, regional, national and international] simultaneously that he always seemed to lack time. The critics wanted more progressive policies, especially with an election imminent. During the 1998 budget process, I was approached by a few Social Democratic members of the Budget Committee. They had some specific questions about, for example, the costs of new policies. Of course, I answered their questions. Their request was nothing unusual. The finance department traditionally supported both majority and opposition parties when preparing their budget proposals. After a second meeting, I asked why they were so eager to have information before the budget meetings. They confided in me that they were preparing an alternative Social Democratic budget; in other words, a ‘coup de régime’. New people were to take over. I had a dilemma. If I told SD2 what was going on it would compromise my department’s independent status when preparing the budgets but not telling him could be interpreted as an act of disloyalty. Our relationship was professional. We were not close friends. Had we been friends, I doubt I would have been approached by the critics. I found it hard to have a relaxed conversation with him. We had had our controversies over the years. But we respected each other and he appreciated most of the advice I gave him. I did not tell him about the briefings but I remained uncomfortable. He retired in the autumn of 1998. This announcement came long before the ‘coup’. After his retirement, we cleared the air. But we had to have that talk. I had correctly

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followed established practice but it left the taste of disloyalty in my mouth. So, it was no surprise that after the 1998 election, a red–green coalition was formed. A relative newcomer to Karlstad politics became chair of the Executive Committee, SD3. A former teacher, and subsequently one of my research assistants at Karlstad University in the 1980s, she became head of its Institute of Gender Equality Studies. Politically, she started as a member of the Left party (the Communists) and as a member of that party she was also a commissioner of the County Council, an institution responsible mainly for health services. The socialist parties had dominated the health services almost without interruption. In the early 1990s she switched to the Social Democrats. She rose to prominence quickly. Her position as chair in Karlstad was her first local political role. The new red–green coalition heralded a change of policy focus. Financial issues and considerations were still important but no longer towered over anything else. New issues moved on to the local agenda: gender equality, the environment, public health, integration of immigrants, international relations and political participation of young people. Subcommittees concerned with these topics were set up. Gradually, a new breed of officials was hired with the explicit purpose of directing bureaucratic activities towards ‘horizontal values’ and ‘joined up’ government. The previous coalition had already taken some long-range initiatives, and these continued. The new coalition added a vision for Karlstad. It had specific priority areas including annual environmental and social audits. But if the new coalition was ambitious, it was not strong. First, its leading people were inexperienced in finance, economic development, city planning and the like. In contrast, the opposition was led by seasoned politicians, three of whom had seven or more years of experience in running the city. Second, the Green Party was in danger of splitting. This party advocated direct member participation. In opposition, it was not unusual for them to take party meeting votes on almost every single issue on the agenda of a future Executive Committee or Council meeting. The discussion and the arguments in the Green Party’s meetings can and do differ from their discussions with representatives from the coalition partners. The local party has a fair share of ‘zealots’, people with a strong conviction who from time to time are influential in advocating more ‘ideologically pure’ policy positions. In contrast, the representatives of other parties normally have rather broad mandates. They are expected to consult their party ranks only on big issues. So the ‘backbench’ zealots were in conflict in their own party’s ‘frontbench’

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negotiators in the coalition. It was not long before the Greens split. The critical event was the ‘Youth House’ (see below).

The 2000s The coalition wanted to turn an old plant, close to the city centre, which in later years had been used by the local bus company, into a community centre for young people, run by young people. The opposition felt this venture was best suited to private entrepreneurs. As this controversy was shaping up in 2001, three councillors from the Green Party and some committee members started a new party: the Karlstad Party. They were dissatisfied with their party leaders and the coalition’s performance. They switched their loyalties to the non-socialist opposition camp, giving it a majority in Council. All members of committees stepped down and new ones were appointed. This event happened less than a year before the election. In that year, the new coalition sold the old plant to a private firm, which soon after established the commercially based ‘Pleasure Factory’. After the 2002 elections, the red–green coalition returned. One of its political promises was to create ‘a real community centre for young people’. The Youth House struggle and the political crisis that it precipitated left deep marks. Relationships between representatives of the two political blocs hardened. The times of informal meetings and consensual approaches to big issues were over. The organisation of Karlstad’s political life changed during the 2000s. Two new positions of ‘political secretary’ were created, one working for the majority, the other for the opposition. Local party organisations also enjoyed increased financial support, which they used to employ people (part-time) to coordinate their activities. In policy terms, issues of city development were back on the agenda. Most recently, the structure and ways of working of the three key institutions – the Executive Committee, the committees and the central administration – were reformed. The CEO relinquished some of her line management responsibilities and got a freer, more strategic role. The system of subcommittees connected to the Executive Committee was altered and a specific subcommittee for economic development was created. The Budget Committee was abolished and its functions were transferred to one of the regular subcommittees. In general, policy-making and implementation now proceed in a smaller number of (amalgamated) committees and administrative units. The character of the parliamentary arena has also changed in the last few years. It is more polarised along party bloc lines than it was before.

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Attendance at the preparatory meetings before Executive Committee and Council meetings was widened to include each and every Council committee. All committee members of the majority coalition have a gathering before the meeting to decide on their view on all committee agenda items. If they cannot agree, the item in question will be dropped from the committee agenda. The majority parties are keen to keep their ranks closed in public. The system of preparatory meetings has even penetrated other, ostensibly non-political, institutions, such as the boards of the municipal companies. Every Monday, the four commissioners of the majority coalition and their political secretary meet before the Executive Committee and Council meetings. The aim of these meetings is to coordinate political strategy and tactics. The progress of specific projects is reviewed. Frequently, the officials responsible for the preparation or implementation of these projects are invited. Any unresolved differences of opinion in or among the majority parties are submitted to the group of commissioners. The party leaders of the opposition and their political secretary also meet every Monday to assess political strategy and impose discipline. The opposition established the same meeting structure as the majority. They have committee and company board pre-meetings. As one opposition party leader put it: ‘We cannot be less well prepared than the majority, and as they have chosen this way, we must adapt to it.’ The Monday meetings are not just about political coordination and about deciding what standpoint to take on specific items. They are also about sharing information and distributing work. As one of my interviewees said: ‘We are gossiping about who told you what about whom and what is going on out there.’ The distribution of work poses questions like: Who will attend this or that political or social event? It is also the opportunity to instruct the political secretary about what sort of information should be collected or what article prepared. The administrative leadership now has equivalent briefing and coordinating meetings. SD3 and CEO meet almost every day. There are many things to coordinate, not just the agenda. They include, for example: social, political and economic events; visitors from most political and governmental levels; and business, sports and culture delegations. They must also decide who should participate, whether the City should give a dinner party, the preparations for visitors and events. The borderline between the work politicians and officials blurs. Both have to create and manage overlapping networks. When I return to Karlstad I can see how things have changed but have also stayed the same. Not many years ago, you could just walk straight in

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the City Hall, go to the floor, corridor and room you wanted, and knock on the door to see the person you were looking for. Today, there is a reception on the first floor and the visitors have to be announced. There is another reception just outside the commissioners’ corridor and the door to that corridor is always locked. Of course, the reason is security; for example, one of the commissioners was threatened and now wears a security alarm. When I returned to conduct interviews for this study, I was pleasantly surprised to find I was still being recognised five years after my departure. Doors were opened, the receptionist smiled, and no one asked me to state my business. The new political formality is obvious. The commissioners are housed on the same floor in their own corridor on the third floor. The two Social Democrats (SD3 is now in her second period as commissioner), one from the Left party (second period) and one from the Green Party (first period), have their own rooms as does the Social Democratic political secretary. The part-time political secretaries of the Left party and the Green Party share rooms with their party colleagues. In this corridor we also find the leader of the opposition Moderates (M2), and the political secretary of the opposition. The leaders of the other opposition parties have rooms on the first floor. Of the eight leading politicians I interviewed, in practice, six had full-time appointments and two were half-timers. This corridor also has a meeting room that can take ten people or so and another smaller meeting room, and a kitchen. The corridors for the CEO and her ‘strategic staff’ do not differ much, however, from my days. There is one distinctive change in the staff. There are many new faces. I refer to them as the ‘new administrators’ because their tasks clearly differ from the work of the ‘traditional administrator’. They are expected to coordinate ‘horizontal values’, for example marketing or coordinating events. Many of these people were recruited for their existing networks in and outside City Hall. Their focus, as well as that of the more traditional administrators, is now directed outwards. The current policy paradigm or conventional wisdom emphasises the use of horizontal governance and public–private partnerships.

Understanding stability and change in Karlstad politics and government Let us look a bit closer at the dilemmas politicians and officials face today. Bevir and Rhodes (2002: 141) put it as follows: ‘Change occurs in response to dilemmas. A dilemma arises for an individual or institution

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when new ideas stand in opposition to an existing idea and so forces reconsideration.’ Subjects are strongly affected by the social context within which they act; but there is always room for agency. We can act creatively for reasons that make sense for us. Various people act differently in similar social contexts. So, I retrace the dilemmas experienced by Karlstad’s politicians and administrators. When trying to understand the character and dilemmas of local politicians we must take into account relationships and obligations outside City Hall. The internal party arena is crucial. The meeting arrangements of the several poltical parties in Karlstad do not differ much. Typically, there is a meeting every month, open to all party members. All parties have a board, which also meets every month. If we move up the party hierarchy, almost every established party has a regional and a national organisation. The latter two do not normally interfere in the local affairs unless something extraordinary happens. The party arena is decisive for the nomination of candidates and for the campaigning. As the story of the coup makes clear, it can be politically devastating for commissioners to misread the mood of the party and to neglect internal opposition. The rise of the Green Party as a political force was one of the drivers of change in Karlstad’s political practices. They have been effective negotiators, particularly in drafting the majority coalition’s manifestos. Such manifestos are detailed statements of intent, which are used as benchmarks at the end of an electoral period. The Greens’ party tradition compels their representatives to bring issues back to the party and thus to navigate between their grassroots and their coalition partners. The Greens’ leader is made aware that every month he has to report to the party meeting what he has achieved in advancing ‘the green cause’ over the last four weeks. Hence he has had to invoke party pressure arguments in his dealing with coalition partners frequently: ‘If this is the position, I cannot get the support of my party.’ Implicitly, this is also a plea for loyalty: ‘Don’t put me in an impossible situation.’ And by extension, the coalition could be challenged. Another implication is that ‘The next time you could need my help.’ The rise of the Greens created a dilemma for the other parties. They were used to inclusiveness, concertation and de-politicisation. The reality of Green power is partisanship, horse-trading and ideological politics. If, for example, the Social Democrats want the support of the Greens on, for example, economic development, which could mean more cars in the city centre, then they must offer something in return, sometimes in a different policy area. The leader of the Greens is aware

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that certain institutions promote consensus politics, which could reduce the role of the small parties. That is not in his or his party’s interests. There have been important changes in the issues, sometimes referred to as ‘horizontal’ challenges, in Karlstad politics. For a long time, such issues were not controversial. The opposition kept a low profile in exchange for being in the loop, if not a seat at the decision-making table. Yet today, issues like city development are politicised. If the Social Democratic leader of the coalition chooses to interpret an issue as a ‘best-for-the City-issue’ that was not included in the coalition manifesto, then the Greens cannot wield their usual influence to ensure the issue is dealt with on a broader, all-party basis. Such behaviour creates tension in the coalition, which is then exploited by the opposition. Institutions that sustained the culture of consensus of the old system have been abolished. The two most obvious examples are the commissioner’s preparatory meetings that included participation by the opposition, and the Budget Committee. Likewise all-party budget conferences and all-party ‘study tours’ have gone. Budget preparation now occurs in a regular subcommittee of the Executive Committee where the majority simply presents its proposal and there is little room for compromise. This way of working of the red–green coalition has affected the work of the oppositional minority parties. Given that Karlstad politics is always a close race, the opposition is usually only a few votes away from becoming a majority. A coalition councillor crossing the floor could mean a change of majority, an eventuality for which every party leader has to be prepared. So formality and discipline have spread. The fact that the local political situation is more fraught makes the situation more complicated for the administrative leadership. In the Karlstad tradition of ever-changing political majorities, local officials have to develop a specific outlook and skill set. The emphasis on professional independence and traditional bureaucratic values that characterised the regime of the primus remains. But it has had to be complemented by new notions of flexibility and the capability to navigate in an increasingly polarised political environment. Traditionally, the administration prefers to interpret as many issues as possible as ‘what is best for the City’ issues, since this means both blocs will pursue a joint solution. For example, top officials are used to keeping the opposition leader in the loop. This convention could easily be justified by his or her standing as (say) deputy chair of the Executive Committee. My informants agree that something new is happening. The leader of the opposition is fascinated by business and finance issues; that is, issues which are not a priority for the majority leader. Her interests and competence focus on ‘softer

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values’: gender equality, integration, culture. M2 wants ‘his issues’ on the agenda, to put the majority on the back foot. On the other hand, SD3 and her party members want to focus on what the City does well.2 When the leader of the opposition criticises the majority on issues like the abolishing of the pensions fund or dividend of shares in the holding company, the majority leader now argues that ‘We base our position on our staff’s professional advice.’ Political controversy between government and opposition is thus transformed into one between the administration and the opposition! The relationship between M2 and CEO is a formal, professional, ‘distant’ one – unlike the informal joviality that prevailed in the old regime The view of the opposition is that the administration is much closer to the majority than formerly. As a result, there is a growing asymmetry of information between majority and minority. The administration is, of course, aware of the delicate balance they must strike between openness and loyalty. They would prefer more open, trust-based relationship between the political blocs, and more opportunity to keep the minority informed and ‘in step’. The administration faces the dilemma of when to bring what type of information to the opposition. The administration prefers ‘open and formal directives’, decisions made by the Executive Committee instructing the administration to investigate certain issues and to come back with a proposal based on ‘facts’. When working close to a leading politician you sometimes get ‘closed and informal directives’ like ‘Would you please look into that?’ The opposition is aware that leaders of the parties forming the majority have meetings with top officials. They take place in the meeting room of the commissioner’s corridor; sometimes they meet in the Chair’s office. One opposition interviewee wondered: ‘What are they up to, all these top officials sneaking into the Chair’s room and quickly closing the door? Why are we not informed?’ Clearly, the administration, from time to time, is urging the majority to include the opposition – but when the latter chooses not to, there is little they can do. As a result, ‘political antennae’ – the feel for what is appropriate to do and say as a top official in the political arena – have become a pivotal requirement for Karlstad bureaucrats. The primus’s strategy of gaining authority solely based on professional expertise and control of the administrative apparatus will no longer suffice. So, a different breed of officials emerges. Three people out of the five top officials are now political scientists! Many of the ‘new administrators’ take initiatives and coordinate activities in the policy areas strongly championed by the present coalition. To do this, they need to check with politicians as

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well as with their administrative superiors. Many issues concern external actors. Every week there are occasions where leading politicians and top officials meet representatives of other authorities, private business and other civil actors. In recent years, the number of developmental projects the City is engaged in has increased drastically. Often both majority and minority parties are involved, but not always. Some business leaders are interested in developing the City, others are apparently less so. In fact, some are hard to involve in projects of any kind. So, from time to time, ad hoc groups meet to discuss strategic issues in an unprejudiced way. No official minutes are kept. Minority parties do not attend.

Conclusions My story is of stability and change in a local government. It began with describing Karlstad’s strong tradition: a set of institutions and practices that provided the people who inhabited them with self-evident beliefs about the natural and proper ways of acting when conducting public business. For decades, Karlstad City government was characterised by bureaucratic, technocratic values strongly championed by leading officials. The political institutions and the politicians operated accordingly. The local political scene was characterised by the division between a socialist bloc dominated by the Social Democrats and a non-socialist bloc of three parties mirroring the national arena. A politico-administrative culture of consensus-seeking prevailed, in which certain issues were depoliticised by classifying them as ‘what is best for the City issues’. Other issues were considered more ideological in character, usually those involving resources for welfare services. For the former issues, the Social Democrats and the non-socialist parties worked together; these were perceived ‘matters-of-fact’, where you need good advice from experts to find the best solution. In these issues the administration had a dominant role. The fact that the leading officials were strong personalities and held their positions for decades further strengthened this conservative tradition. The tradition was challenged by societal changes such as economic crises and market, ecology and networking ways of looking at the welfare state. The composition of the local elite also changed. People with new ideas, different experiences and ambitions joined this hitherto homogeneous and stable, local political and administrative elite. I have described the clash between ‘old’ and ‘new’. During the 1980s the Zeitgeist changed. Liberal market solutions and the new public management gained currency. However, the institutional structure continued

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to sustain consensus politics. Innovations like budget conferences and study visits abroad strengthened the consensus. Then the political situation changed. The Green Party entered the scene, claiming to represent a new political dimension and to have no affiliation to either of the political blocs. Due to the close electoral races between the old party blocs in Karlstad, this offered both a threat and a possibility to the traditional parties. The Greens represented a potential coalition partner, but a recalcitrant one that was never reliable. The economic and fiscal crisis that hit Swedish society in 1990 brought about a temporary return to the core values of the traditional political culture. The parties cooperated to keep the budget under control. The external threat sustained consensus politics, with all parties taking responsibility for cutbacks. Consensus politics even expanded to include traditional ideological issues as welfare spending. During the following electoral periods (1998–2002 and 2002–6) the political climate gradually hardened fuelled by several critical events. Some of the institutions promoting consensual behaviour were abolished. These changes were a product of the emergence of new leaders and new ‘political logics’. The new Chair brought with her experiences of the County Council, where bloc politics, the exclusion of the opposition, and the close involvement of the bureaucracy in majority coalition policy processes were part of the tradition. The new Karlstad is focused on the world outside. Involvement in international, national, regional and local projects is increasing. Hence there is a paradox in Karlstad politics today. As cooperation with a multitude of external actors increases, so internal cooperation decreases. We see the emergence of the new governance, encompassing a multitude of policy areas and actors. Specialists in ‘new’ policy areas and ‘new’ styles of managing governance are being hired. At the same time the complexity of politics is increasing. There is a trade-off between keeping a majority coalition together and including the opposition in the policy process – particularly for issues that traditionally have been considered ‘best for the City’. The interests of the majority coalition prevail. Top officials are brought into the preparatory stages of the decision-making process, but the opposition is excluded. The bureaucracy is in a delicate position of balancing access to information with loyalty to the majority coalition. Moreover, the balance of power can shift easily. Opposition politicians that have to be kept at arm’s length today could be one’s political superiors after the next election. Did Karlstad’s governance traditions change as a result of outside pressures and generational change in its elites? I am not sure. But I have

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been too close to ‘the game’ for too long to deny the importance of crudely political forces such as the drive to win. The desire to consolidate or regain executive power, the competition between parties (and sometimes between key individuals within them), the career ambitions of individuals, the need to support one’s friends and allies in times of tension, all of these factors are at play. Governing Karlstad was not only about context and drivers such as the fiscal crisis but it was also about individuals and their relationships. People matter and decisions are as much a function of contingency and tradition as of impersonal social and economic forces. Moreover, my story has been an exercise in writing contemporary history, so it remains incomplete and unfinished. It must be rewritten, always. Notes 1. Swedish municipalities are multifunctional and typically involved in many activities. They have plentiful resources, are relatively large (average more than 30 000 inhabitants), and employ many professional people. In most municipalities, the Council is the biggest employer. Financially, they have the right to levy a flat rate income tax on inhabitants. This tax varies from municipality to municipality but averages 22 per cent According to Tore Hansen (2000) ‘the Nordic model’ for local self-government is the most autonomous. 2. In March 2006, the Chair of the Executive Committee and the Director of Economic Development (both women) went to Cannes to receive a prize from the Financial Times (Foreign Direct Investment) as the most attractive region in Scandinavia for foreign investors. The Karlstad region is considered the world leader in research and development for the paper and pulp industries. Developments in commerce (for example, Ikea), city-centre redevelopment and leisure and recreation were also commended.

Reference Adler, P. A. and Adler, P. 1987. Membership Roles in Field Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. 2002. ‘Interpretive theory’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds), Theory and Methods in Political Science. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. 1991. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brunsson, Nils and Rombach, Björn. 1982. Går Det Att Spara? Kommunal Budgetering Under Stagnation. Avesta: Doxa Ekonomi. Bryman, Alan. 2001. Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferman, B. 1996. Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighbourhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Hansen, T. 2000. ‘Kommunal autonomi: hvor stort er spillerommet?’ in H. Baldersheim and N. Rose (eds), Det Kommunale Laboratorium. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.

128 Observing Government Elites Selznick, P. 1957. Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation. New York: Harper & Row. Turner, V. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. London: Cornell University Press. Wildavsky, A. 1984. The Politics of the Budgetary Process. Revisited 4th edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company

Part II Observing Across Borders: Eurocratic Elites

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6 Dutch Eurocrats at Work: Getting Things Done in Europe Karin Geuijen, Paul ‘t Hart and Kutsal Yesilkagit

I am here to represent The Netherlands, and my colleagues back home sometimes have difficulties in appreciating that. They do the individual ministries’ bidding. Their arena is about pulling and hauling between ministries. Here the arena is about pulling and hauling between countries. (An official at the Dutch Permanent Representation to the EU) Q: Are you a Dutchman, a European, or a Euregional citizen? I am first and foremost a Euregional policeman. As far as my organisational back office is concerned I am embedded in the Dutch system, but the actual job lies in this transnational region, and this is on the increase. So I have to play chess simultaneously on two boards: the Dutch and the Euregional board. That implies an additional workload. Q: Do you behave differently because of this? There is no hierarchy in the cooperation with the other countries. It is more a social, network-like thing. Cooperation is all you’ve got. It is much less direct than working in a national command hierarchy. You must place yourself in the other person’s shoes. (A senior police official in the Dutch province of Limburg)

From bureaucrat to Eurocrat The European Union has often been called a one-of-a-kind governance system and an industry of scholars tries to grasp ‘the nature of the beast’ (Risse-Kappen, 1996). Our contribution to this effort is to look at European governance through the eyes of people who routinely ‘do’ 131

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European governance as part of their jobs as national civil servants. This chapter reports part of a much larger project that involved intensive case studies of two issue areas – veterinary policy and European police cooperation. The project explores the cases from the perspective of the four relevant Dutch ministries (Interior, Justice, Health and Agriculture), as well as several of their executive agencies. It also includes a comprehensive nationwide survey of Dutch national-level civil servants (see ‘t Hart et al., 2008). We want to know what working in Europeanised environments means to national officials who do so regularly. In which arenas – both domestic and European – do they work as part of their European responsibilities? How do they grasp and use the rules of the game in these arenas? How do they prepare for their contributions at the European stage? How is their behaviour steered and evaluated by their colleagues and superiors back home? How well equipped to play this game do they consider themselves and their organisations to be? The thriving EU literature has little to say on this topic. We have conducted open-ended interviews with 46 officials in the ministries and agencies mentioned above. Most interviews lasted between 1 and 1.5 hours. We recorded and transcribed all but four of them. Secondly, we conducted five expert meetings with middle- and high-ranking officials from all Dutch ministries, each lasting for 2.5 hours and tape-recorded, during which participants were encouraged to compare and reflect on their own practices of working on European dossiers. Thirdly, we ‘shadowed’ eight of these officials as they went about their jobs, preparing for and participating in European meetings, most for one but some for several full days. Shadowing amounted to a mix of non-participant observation and seizing the opportunities offered by joint travel, breaks and lunches to have more informal discussions with both the persons to be shadowed and the people they interacted with. We kept detailed notebooks during or immediately after the observation periods. Fourthly, we conducted fourteen visits to ‘sites’ (organisations) recommended to us by interviewees. Overall, access to these people and organisations was facilitated by the fact that the research was part of a project commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior. No pressure to (re)shape our aims, scope, methods and findings was exerted on us at any stage of the research process. This is not to say the fieldwork was easy: among our research subjects there were pockets of scepticism and nervousness to be overcome again and again, and establishing rapport was difficult at times (see Chapter 9).

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Focusing mainly on the police cooperation case study in the broader project, we now depict the world of Dutch bureaucrats who have turned ‘Eurocrats’ (Thedvall, 2006: 4–5) through their actions and recounted experiences. The quotes cited above illustrate what we want to argue here: the role orientations and rules of thumb that these officials have developed during their European experiences vary markedly. They ‘do Europe’ in markedly different ways. We will show that broad notions such as ‘Europeanisation’, ‘European policy-making’ or ‘Eucrocrat’ hold little sway as tools for understanding the practical realities and experiences of national officials. Depending on the issue area and their positions, they operate in different kinds of European policy networks, which perform markedly different functions. Grasping these different logics and examining how they complement and conflict with one another is pivotal to understanding what it takes to work at the nexus between national and transnational policy-making.

The case of data availability: ‘messy’ policy-making in Europe Data availability is a hot topic on the agenda of European Justice and Home Affairs institutions. Transnational sharing of information on anything – such as people, communication data, stolen vehicles, arms, explosives, poison, money – that might lead to a threat of safety and security in Member States gets a high priority from all governments. Yet plans to promote information sharing have aroused serious privacy concerns, fears about a loss of sovereignty in this key domain of state activity, as well as charges that these measures may undermine the rule of law. Different national viewpoints on data sharing have surfaced repeatedly in the preparations for the European Council of JHA Ministers, and this case provides a poignant view on how Dutch Eurocrats deal with a hot topic. Below, we report our observations and interviews in the several arenas where this issue is processed and played out in policy-making and implementation. An expert committee: Working Party on Police Cooperation On 25 January 2006, I (first author) sat in on a meeting at the Dutch Ministry of the Interior in The Hague. Its purpose was to prepare the Dutch position on a proposal from the Austrian Presidency for a European Council decision on improving police cooperation between Member States of the European Union. A major part of the proposal

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concerned procedures for improving transnational information-sharing among police forces. The leader of the Dutch delegation would have to present the Dutch position on the proposal the day after, during a meeting of the Police Cooperation Working Party, one of the countless committees that prepare and help implement European policies and programmes. The delegation leader was a senior official from the Interior Ministry and he was chairing the discussion. Attending it were four of his counterparts from the Ministry of Justice (the ministries of Interior and Justice share responsibility for Dutch policing policy). There were also two representatives from the Dutch National Police, both veterans who had served in operations years ago. The meeting took place in a small conference room at the Interior Ministry. Expecting bureaucratic formality, I was pleasantly surprised: the mood was informal and laid back. The participants obviously knew one another well. They were all on first name terms. The business of the meeting was enlivened by frequent puns and ironic interjections. Even the dress code was informal: mostly sweaters, only the chair and the male representative from the Ministry of Justice wore a suit and a tie. I was introduced as a European affairs researcher and nobody seemed to mind my presence. They discussed the Austrian proposal. There was much talk about technical aspects: could the Dutch police departments meet the requirements envisaged in the proposal, would they have to adjust their information systems, and could one expect other countries’ police forces to do likewise? The relevant treaties which might bear on the measures proposed were presented. No one mentioned ministerial or parliamentary decisions or opinions on the subject. There was no real debate about anything on the agenda: the participants seemed to agree, and the ‘Dutch position’ simply emerged from that consensus. Some of the police present did not seem to be fully aware of the procedural ‘nitty-gritty’ of European policy-making. They asked about the role the European Parliament plays in all of this. With barely concealed condescension, one of the civil servants of the Justice Department suggested they attend ‘a course on European matters’ that would be taught soon. The next day, 26 January, the meeting of the Police Cooperation Working Party took place in Brussels. I went along as an official ‘member of the Dutch delegation’. The meeting was a full-day affair in the same enormous conference room where the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council of Ministers meet, the eventual ‘end station’ for all these preparatory meetings. Every participant could speak in native tongue as interpreters translated to and from all official languages of the Member States.

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All participants wore earphones throughout the meeting. Cameras were an essential part of the interaction: everyone had a screen on their desk on which the speaker appeared in close up, for everyone to read his facial expression. There were also several enormous screens hanging from the ceiling on which the same picture appeared. The Dutch delegation was small. Next to the delegation leader sat an official from the Dutch Permanent Representation to the EU. I sat just behind them in the second row, next to a civil servant of the Ministry of Justice who had also attended the preparatory meeting in The Hague. She had explained to me that she tended to go with the delegation leader to the meetings of this Working Party. To me as an outsider, the most striking part of the meeting ritual was that participants were referred to not by their own name, but by their country’s. Every participant sat at a huge oval table, behind a shield which bore the country’s name. A participant wanting to make a statement would put this shield on its side, for everybody to see. The chair would then grant him permission to speak, using phrases like ‘The Netherlands, the floor is yours’, and would close the interjection by words like ‘Thank you, the Netherlands.’ Another striking feature was the almost complete absence of contact between people of different delegations. Everybody was polite but controlled, sticking strictly to known verbal formulas. There were hardly any informal greetings or casual asides. Participants also acted formally towards the chair. The Presidency had just changed hands, as it does every six months in the EU. So, the opening remark of all speakers formally wished the Austrian Presidency well and expressed their intention to cooperate with the Presidency. And the politeness was reciprocal: all participants had found some small presents at their desk when arriving in the conference room, bureaucratic gifts like a tie or a booklet with the logo of the new Presidency on it. Nor was there any sign of the much-vaunted Brussels lunching-cumlobbying circuit. The members of the Dutch delegation had lunch together at the Salle Blue, one of the restaurants within the building: bread and a salad, pasta or baked potatoes with meat. The delegation leader did leave lunch before the others to have a talk with the Irish delegation on a project the Irish proposed which partly overlapped with a Dutch proposal that was also up for discussion. He also made a phone call to The Hague with one of his colleagues to check on something. During the meeting the various proposals on the agenda were discussed in depth. It was a long day for an uninitiated observer like me, with arcane technical matters receiving sustained attention. Much of the discussion eluded me. I looked more carefully at the papers and

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noticed the key proposal under scrutiny had in fact been discussed before in other Council working groups with mysterious acronyms like ENFOPOL, ENFOCUSTOM, CRIMORG and COMIX. Remarkably, hardly anyone ever referred to these discussions in other forums; it appeared as if the participants had not been briefed about them. The Austrian chair meanwhile tried to get agreement on as many parts of the proposal as possible. She had little asides with her assistants and members of the Secretariat of the Council and then would propose a different wording of some part of the proposal. This meeting, I understood, was about weighing, shaping and bending words until everybody agreed. At the end of the discussion the chair gave a short summary of the suggested changes to the proposal on which she took there to be general agreement. She also summed up issues for which no consensus-inducing words had been found. The proposal was now forwarded to next week’s Comité de l’Article Trente-Six (CATS), a coordinating committee of more senior civil servants. CATS would zoom in on those parts of the proposal on which no consensus had been reached. Those parts were now described as the ‘political’ parts of the proposal. After CATS had discussed, perhaps modified and signed off on it, the resultant proposal would be sent further up the European policy-making hierarchy, to the Comité de Représentants Permanentes (COREPER), the meeting of the Member States’ ambassadors to the European Union. Once approved there, the proposal would finally come up for political decision in the JHA Council of Ministers.

A high-level committee: CATS Before observing a CATS meeting on 2 and 3 February 2006, we interviewed people about it. One official from the Ministry of Justice and formerly at the Permanent Representation in Brussels who took part in preparing this Working Party, told me he was keenly aware of the disjointed nature of the working group system. He thought the European Commission exploited the ‘organised anarchy’ in the so-called third pillar of the EU (where the Commission has little authority and European policy arises from an impenetrable blend of expert working groups and intergovernmental pulling and hauling at Council meetings) by offering its proposals to different working groups, hoping that at least one of these channels would get this proposal to the Council. Yet the leader of the Dutch delegation to the CATS committee disagreed with the idea that the Commission was playing the system. He thought it would be a great improvement if all proposals to the Council from

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the third pillar were made by the Commission. This procedure would at least inject some consistency to the messiness. There would be one actor who kept an overview of the terrain. Currently there is no one. His chief worry about the current system was that political pressures might lead the high-level actors in CATS and JHA to fall for a hasty, patchy proposal coming ‘from nowhere’. According to him, ‘The culture of the European arena considers any decision better than taking no decision at all.’ He deplored the adhocracy this culture brought about, citing instances in which decisions conflicted with prior CATS decisions, or with a decision made by another forum in the JHA field. The Dutch delegation leader also talked about another form of pressure on the CATS committee process. Eventually all participants in CATS are accountable to their national bureaucratic constituencies. Hence he and all his counterparts from other countries had to vet each proposal put before them with one key criterion in mind: is there something in it for ‘us’? The common denominator of the CATS meetings is that all participants are first and foremost national civil servants, who feel compelled to so act or face uncomfortable questions back home. The CATS delegation leaders identify themselves as national civil servants like the participants in the Working Party on Police Cooperation. They know one another better than their lower-level counterparts do. During the meeting, they address one another (through the chair) using their first names. It made no difference to their national stance. The Dutch delegation leader told me that he would like to act more as a genuine ‘European’, taking the common good instead of the Dutch interest as his reference point for judging proposals and taking positions. Unfortunately, he said, his colleagues in The Hague, as well as his counterparts in forums such as CATS, are overwhelmingly locked into their national perspectives and seem primarily intent on preserving their existing national policies, procedures and judicial systems. He welcomed the pressure put on his colleagues by the Foreign Ministry and Permanent Representation, ‘who regularly argue that something has to happen, some improvements have to be made. If it weren’t for that, everybody would simply lay back and wait.’ A member of the Permanent Representation confirmed this view: ‘There is very little vision on which way to head in policy cooperation. The general idea is to try to avoid the inconvenience caused by anything new. It would be so much better to try to benefit from initiatives.’ A colleague from the Ministry of Interior hints at why civil servants act the way they do: ‘As long as there is no clear political vision about a certain theme, there is not much vision among civil servants either. We stick to

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the political vision.’ This, he said, breeds conservatism: ‘We are against a proposal because we have always been against it even if no one knows exactly why we took that position.’ The CATS delegation leader thought he was lucky to have a ‘Europeminded’ minister. This knowledge gave him added clout when urging his colleagues to ‘get on with it’. The Dutch Minister for Justice had made crime-fighting his top priority and was strongly aware of its European dimension. Although the outcomes of the previous day’s preparatory meeting at the Ministry of Justice in The Hague were inconclusive, nonetheless the Dutch delegation leader in CATS felt he had the authority to claim during the CATS meeting that the Dutch position was that: ‘data availability is crucial, and data protection considerations should not be allowed to slow down the process too much. You will hear me making this statement over and over again in the times to come’. He had put forward the same view during the preparatory meeting in The Hague: ‘We here should put safety first, and let others fight for privacy and data protection.’ He did confide that he would never put it in these blunt terms in a public forum in the Netherlands, since the Dutch Parliament did not necessarily support this law and order view of the issue. After the CATS meeting he told me that walking this fine line was a kind of game to him. ‘Within the Netherlands, you often act as representative of an EU position: you overact your European allegiance in order to create room to manoeuvre. You do the reverse in Brussels, by saying: “I cannot possibly take this back to my superiors at home”.’

An operational arena: Europol Many police officers told us that data availability is all about trust. Indeed they made the same point repeatedly for other areas of European police cooperation. Even if police officers are aware of the necessity for international collaboration in fighting crime, they will not necessarily share information with foreign colleagues. They cite various reasons. First, professional jealousy: ‘Why should we allow others to show off in cracking cases that we did all the work on?’ Second, reputation: ‘Who knows what police departments in “funny” countries will do with our information?’ The new Member States especially are treated with great caution. Most police officers we spoke to cited the new Member States as the main reason any EU decisions on making data available to other police forces would prove difficult to implement – even when the political pressure to comply is enormous. It would only work with

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a carefully selected batch of trusted and liked police forces. A case in point is Europol, a Europe-wide agency specifically set up to advance transnational information sharing and police cooperation. Politicians and high-ranking civil servants wanted to create a central data system to analyse key criminal and terrorist threats. In practice, police departments in most Member States deliver too little data too late for the system to get up and running. A recently retired Dutch police officer who had spent years at Europol observed ‘They just don’t do it’ and ‘This is a source of enormous frustration to the management board of Europol.’ The bumpy road of Europol’s efforts to advance information sharing coupled with its own stifled institutional development both bear testimony to an iron law of police cooperation: police officers need to feel an operational urgency (and payoff) to cooperate, and to trust one another. If there are any doubts, they won’t move no matter what the decision in Brussels and the national capitals. This caution is worsened by the practices of Europol’s Management Board. The Dutch police take little interest in Europol. Only recently one of the regional police chiefs agreed to represent the Dutch police force at Europol’s Management Board. The chair of the Dutch delegation is head of a department at the Ministry of Justice. I observed the second day of a two-day meeting of Europol’s Management Board in The Hague. It started at 10 a.m. with a closed session on who should be formally proposed to the JHA Council to replace one of the deputy directors of Europol. Only delegation leaders were allowed into the conference room. The rest of the delegation members were waiting outside in the lounge. The Dutch delegation had four members waiting outside. At 11.30 there was a coffee break and the delegation leader told us the discussion was still going on about the first of three candidates. Representatives of some Member States were quarrelling despite intensive prior quiet diplomacy and agreements. At 13.00 there was another break, now for lunch. Discussion restarted at 14.00 and finally at 15.00 the closed session was finished. As one delegation member predicted while we waited outside, after about half an hour some participants began leaving the meeting to catch their planes at Schiphol airport to get back home the same day. At 17.00 when the chair wanted to discuss and confirm minutes of the last meeting there were not enough participants left to have a qualified majority.

Cooperation on the ground: Euregional policing Yet another transnational site where data availability is considered to be pivotal is in the so-called ‘Euregions’: border areas where, for example,

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police officials from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany collaborate closely to combat cross-border organised crime. These police officers are in the thick of that fight and they consider sharing information about criminals and criminal acts with their foreign colleagues essential to make headway. They don’t care about legal niceties, they want workable procedures. They are convinced that these are impossible to design for twenty-five Member States at once, as the civil servants at the working group meetings attempt to. They instead have formed ‘experimental’ multinational teams with their neighbouring colleagues to find out what is possible, legally speaking, and what works for them. They have formed units like the Bureau of Euregional Cooperation in Maastricht, which lays out the judicial base for this cooperation, and a unit called Epic, in which representatives from all three countries work to accommodate information requests from their partners. One of us visited Epic, which is located in Heerlen, a city near Maastricht. It is a unique organisation. There is no fixed hierarchical structure. Rules of the game evolve as they go along. People from all three countries sit mixed at large round tables with computer screens in front of them. Instead of formally having to formulate information requests, they just ask for the necessary information across the table. Legal experts are available to handle the requests for legal assistance from other countries. The linguistic mechanics of making it work were fascinating. The Dutch living in the south of the country speak a dialect resembling German. The Dutch, German and Flemish-speaking Belgian police officers communicate with one another in German or Dutch. The French-speaking Belgians are mostly helped by the Flemish-speaking Belgians, or by some of the Dutch who speak French. One of the Dutch police officers who had initiated the Euregional Bureau said the key ingredients for successfully starting it were: practical expertise on crime-fighting, personal relationships, intercultural respect, a sense of urgency to make a difference in tackling universally abhorred crimes such as child pornography, and the ability to align working methods across borders. Seen from up close, Epic’s everyday practice is mundane. About 80 per cent of its work remains confined to answering simple requests like identifying car owners by checking licence plates. Moreover, cops from one country are legally not allowed to search each other’s data systems. Once this changes, Epic must gear up to the much more complicated task of not only rapidly delivering information on request, but also analysing the available information in the more than 90 data banks it can enter. Its current staff – mostly officers who have

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left operational service because of one problem or another – is hardly up to that. But the ambition is clearly there, as is the knowledge that the current political mood – information sharing is widely seen as pivotal in the ‘wars’ on crime and terrorism – is ticking in Epic’s favour

Species of Eurocrats The case of data availability illustrates that ‘European governance’ or ‘Europeanised policy-making’ is produced in a series of loosely coupled arenas, whose participants are not necessarily aware of their counterparts’ existence, postures and decisions. Nor are they always wellinformed about the bigger institutional configuration in which these are embedded. Working on European data availability and police cooperation mobilises different sorts of national civil servants driven by different rationales, operating in different ‘European’ arenas, often with considerable discretion, employing different notions of the ‘rules of the game’ in ‘doing’ police cooperation. The data availability case, and many others like it which we also observed, and about which we interviewed Dutch Eurocrats, suggest that conventional accounts describing it as ‘governing by committee’ (Christiansen and Kirchner, 2000) and ‘expertocracy’ where policies are crafted by ‘epistemic communities’ of experts (Haas, 1992) are only partially correct. It would be more accurate to describe the EU governance as evolving through multiple, loosely coupled, multilevel networks (cf. Egeberg et al., 2003). To be sure, EU working groups and committees constitute focal points for crafting European policies. They are multinational settings in which national civil servants operate as both policy experts and representatives of their countries. Although the policies they agree on are post-national in the sense that these are more than just piling up national policies and regulations, the policy process through which they arrive at this point is multinational (Thedvall, 2006). Although working groups and committees are often said to be about experts talking to experts, our observations and interviews strongly suggest that they are first and foremost about countries talking to countries, through their representatives. The multinational perspective is being reinforced by the rituals that are performed during the meetings. As we saw, for example, participants are referred to not by their own but by their country’s name. Some representatives seek coalitions with others to get the meeting to adopt the policies or regulations they prefer. Coalition building is not only done during the official meetings, but also during lunches, dinners

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and coffee breaks. These informal encounters constitute the back stage of European committee governance, which seems much more intensive in first pillar settings than in third pillar ones. Sometimes representatives come together the evening before the meeting with the intention of preparing the meeting and forming allegiances. Sometimes they sound one another out by e-mail or telephone before meetings. The national outlook of Eurocrats dominates not only their encounters with their counterparts in working groups and committees but it also governs their relations with the primary representatives of a postnational logic of European policy-making: Commission officials. Representatives of Member States come in with a focus on their national interests and somehow have to arrive at post-national policies through deliberation and negotiation. These processes can be time-consuming, and the compromises and package deals that emerge from it may produce watered down policies that satisfy no one. The Commission wants to maintain speed and focus in the policy-making process by intervening in discussions in working groups and delivering a steady stream of post-national proposals, which representatives of Member States time and again interpret as attempts to control their national affairs. National Eurocrats confront a dilemma in this to-ing and fro-ing. Some of our Dutch interviewees expressed a sense of despair at the predictable and stifling way in which all representatives of Member States seem to only want to agree on policies that fit their own, existing national systems. They detest the ‘conservatism’ that it breeds, as one of them labelled it. However, they too are trapped into doing the same. They too define their professional success as getting their national positions to prevail – or at least to avoid them being ignored altogether. After all, this national position is what they are held accountable for by their peers and in their national offices. So they display a reluctance to embrace truly post-national solutions, and play the tedious game of multinational bargaining instead. To leave our account at this point would obscure as much as it reveals about how Dutch officials do their European business. The Dutch Eurocrats we studied were engaged in different types of international transactions. The nature of their cross-border cooperation reflected the kinds of transnational network arrangements in which they worked.

Bureaucrat-diplomats Take the data availability issue we just presented. The Brussels working party and the CATS committee represent what we may call bureaucratic-

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diplomatic arenas of making European policy. The craft of the Eurocrats who populate these arenas revolves around two roles. First, as national bureaucrats they need to construct a national position out of often heterogeneous sets of views and preferences of various departmental and divisional stakeholders. Second, as diplomats, they need to represent and defend those national positions while bargaining with representatives of other member states. To some this is simple stuff. One Ministry of Justice official boasted: Working in EU settings is actually very straightforward. Everybody knows this but it is rarely ever said aloud. When you go to Brussels you say to your colleagues at home: ‘It will be tough to achieve this.’ When you are in Brussels you tell your fellow committee members: ‘I must be able to sell this at home.’ And so you always have an explanation for the result you achieve. The bureaucratic-diplomatic view of Eurocratic work corresponds closely to the traditional picture of the EU as a multilevel system of committee governance. We found this view prevalent among two groups of Dutch officials. First, among ministry officials of the kind labelled ‘policy bureaucrats’; that is, academically trained professionals charged with policy development and maintenance for particular issues (Page and Jenkins, 2005). Their involvement in European policy processes flows from their portfolio responsibilities and is issue-based, sporadic and often does not constitute a major part of their working week. They are not specifically interested in EU institutions and processes, nor have they received any formal training in their ways of working. They are just ‘following their dossiers’: to preparatory meetings within and between Dutch ministries, and occasionally to expert or working group meetings in Brussels. To many, acting on the European stage may be a regular but infrequent part of their jobs. Nor is it necessarily the most important part of their jobs. Much depends, as always, on the priority given to the topic by the departmental hierarchy. Often, these policy bureaucrats are not well-prepared for the new world they are about to enter when they are first assigned EU-related tasks. We cite two voices from a much bigger chorus: They just let you go to Brussels. It isn’t a very structured thing. You just go there and begin to operate. You learn by doing, and by observing others doing it.

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And: I stumbled into the European scene in 1985 because my portfolio required me to attend meetings in Brussels. Your older colleagues or your head of unit would give you some coaching. They would come with you once or twice and after that it was ‘you’re on your own now – good luck’. Some of these officials may continue to be charged with European portfolios for long periods of time. In the organisations we studied, officials at the Agriculture and Justice ministries were far more likely to have a long-standing interest in the EU than their colleagues at the Interior and Health ministries. Those that do stick around, build up considerable experience in the do’s and don’t’s of operating in Brussels. Their cumulative knowledge forms a potentially valuable body of rules of thumb and ‘survival techniques’ that could be codified and transmitted much more systematically from EU veterans to EU novices within the various departments. This learning does not happen. People are sent to courses at the Dutch Institute of International Affairs (Clingendael) or the National Government Training Institute (ROI). These courses are deemed useful by many because they give them some grip on the institutional framework of the EU, teach them intercultural negotiation and so on. Such formal training remains useful even for experienced officials, as one confirmed: After two years on the Brussels circuit I went to the Dutch Institute of International Affairs to do a course. Finally it was interesting to get the bigger picture about the entire EU project – how all the pieces of the puzzle are supposed to fit. If you are only attending committee meetings you don’t grasp this at all. But the courses are not about ‘being there’, e.g. the everyday practices of life in the Commission and its committees. The second group which practises and espouses the bureaucraticdiplomatic view of Eurocratic work are the ‘EU insiders’: EU coordinators at ministries, officials attached to the Permanent Representation, and high-level officials who chair delegations to high-level meetings. For all the differences between their ‘average working days’, all of these people describe their work as proceeding in more or less scripted, predictable fashion. Theirs is a world of institutionalised bargaining – both at home and in multilateral forums. In that world, which they regard as like

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that of other multilateral institutions such as the UN or the WTO, the scope of the possible is determined by existing treaties, agreements and regulatory frameworks, as well as by balances of power, veto players and coalitions. Knowledge about these things becomes widely shared among the participants, as all are socialised as EU insiders. Being effective in this world, these civil servants hold, presupposes astute insight into the institutional balance between Council, Commission, Parliament and Member States. Preparatory work may also involve ‘massaging’ key gatekeepers within EU institutions, especially Commission policy bureaucrats who are shaping the proposals, but also pivotal MEPs. It also requires smart ‘venue shopping’ among these constituent forces: talking to the right people in the right bodies at the right time in the right way. The EU working group, committee and Council meetings are seen as pivotal occasions for bargaining and issue by issue coalitionbuilding that build on this preparatory work. Those who do their homework ought not to be surprised by what happens there. They should be well-placed to shape decision-making, if only by short-circuiting them in advance (as became clear in some of the examples we gave above). Because of their institutional and tactical know-how, EU insiders are able to foresee how issues will play out, and take timely action to steer the process in desired directions. However, the sheer complexity of the processes makes foolproof prediction and control of the policy process difficult. In the domestic ‘back office’ of EU policy-making, Eurocratic work boils down to aligning departmental and interdepartmental policy coordination to the rhythms, procedures and routines of scheduled EU meetings. In these preparatory meetings ‘the national interest’ and therefore the ‘national position’ on any given topic on the EU agenda get defined. Civil servants attending these preparatory meetings formulate what the national interest is, often without clearly articulated ministerial preferences, let alone cabinet policy. They are flying blind much of the time. On touchy topics like data availability and information sharing in the criminal justice field ministers do formulate opinions, but on politically less salient issues the civil servants at the meeting construct a ‘national perspective’ by themselves. They brief Dutch delegation leaders in the working group or committee in Brussels on these positions. Delegation leaders then make their own judgements on how to interpret the instruction. They know that much of what The Hague feeds them does not come straight from the top, and thus can be adjusted.

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Discretion is central to this process. A representative in the Multidisciplinary Working Group on Organised Crime told us: Often it is individuals themselves who determine the national position. I think that is weird. If something does not have a fire-alarm character or very high priority you can decide yourself what to do. [The delegation leader] does that a lot of the time. But he also discusses it. When he decided no longer to defend a certain position in CATS he came by to tell me. That was a unique occasion. Generally you never hear about anything again    In the international arena your autonomy is bigger than in the national arena. That is because it has less priority. The national and the international are completely separated. A Head of Delegation to one of the committees echoed this: You must know your instruction well, but you should also know the entire process that produced the instruction in order to gauge the weight of the various interests involved. You try to achieve your instruction, and if that’s impossible you try to at least achieve its bottom line. However, the instructions are often useless, frankly. The official who actually attends the working group knows its dynamics best. You must not lose on the really vital issues. You have a lot of discretion, but you must of course anticipate The Hague’s reactions. The coordinators at ministries are at the hub, defining positions, drafting instructions and monitoring outcomes. As one put it: Most EU dossiers touch upon the work of two or more parts of this ministry: the EU’s way of dividing up policy issues does not correspond perfectly with the Dutch departmental division of labour. There is a need for a ‘sorting station’. That’s what we do. In some ministries (Justice, Agriculture) these units provide a comprehensive, centralised system of coordinating EU policy matters across the full range of the ministry’s portfolio. Others, such as the Ministry of Interior, have opted for a more hybrid system in which a central coordination unit focuses on procedural matters, while international sections deal with the substantive preparation for meetings in specific issue areas (such as policing and intelligence). Others, such as the Ministry of Health, have no such coordination unit at all. The domestic EU affairs

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coordinators we met agreed on two things. First, they have to get those who matter in one’s own department to give priority to the issues. This may be a struggle. In the four ministries examined here, differences in ministerial involvement were marked: low, passive and almost nonexistent in Health and Interior; the opposite in Agriculture and Justice. When ministers have other priorities than EU business, their ministry’s top officials will do likewise. The second part of a coordinator’s job is to develop a clearly articulated departmental position on any given issue, and making sure this position carries weight in interdepartmental coordination processes before EU meetings. Bureaucratic politics does not stop at borders: the domestic coordination of EU policy is a known bureaucratic battleground in many countries (Kassim et al., 2000). The Netherlands is no exception to this rule. Its ministries are big and internally heterogeneous. ‘Joinedup government’ has proven an elusive ideal. Where there is machinery for the interdepartmental coordination of EU affairs, it is an arena for repeated discussions and tugs-of-war between the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s department. As on any policy issue of significance, interdepartmental scuffles are no exception in the run-up to high-level European meetings. We at the Ministry of Interior often prepare texts to be delivered by our minister at the JHA Council. Sometimes our minister decides not to attend the meeting because of limited time, or when few of the decisions to be taken are in our ministry’s domain. Then he leaves it to the Minister of Justice to represent us. The Minister of Justice always does that very well. He values the international arena, and communicates well with his colleagues from other countries. But it weakens the position of the Ministry of Interior vis-à-vis the Ministry of Justice. Delegation leaders in Brussels are in the front line. Obviously they have leverage over the other departments whose interests are at stake in these meetings. That is why interdepartmental sensitivities like the one mentioned above were not hard to detect during our observations and interviews. Ministries whose top ranks do not accord high priority to European issues tend to lose the interdepartmental scuffles. It is hard for the EU coordinators in these ministries to get their organisation’s voice heard in the interdepartmental preparations for EU meetings. They lack their ‘prize-fighters’ who can be brought into the ring if other departments attempt to grab and wield power; for example, by securing Head

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of Delegation spots in crucial EU committees and working groups, and by dominating the crafting of Dutch positions on important issues. Street-level entrepreneurs The second species of Eurocrat is the street-level entrepreneur. They differ markedly from the bureaucratic-diplomats. Their main orientation is their profession. Their natural habitat is the field or ‘street-level’. Their main drive is to use the international and European stages to solve practical problems encountered in their everyday work. They are entrepreneurs because they seek out what works. Eurocratic work is experienced differently by people working in the Euregional Bureau or in TISPOL (see Box 6.1). Their entrepreneurial perspective leads them to forge street-level cooperation aimed at solving pressing problems in public service-delivery. Entrepreneurial Eurocrats are busy setting up cross-border investigations or aligning national road safety standards, enforcement measures and officer training programmes.

Box 6.1 TISPOL: the European Transport Police Network Mission Statement ‘The TISPOL Organisation has been established by the traffic police forces of Europe in order to improve road safety and law enforcement on the roads of Europe. Our main priority is to reduce the number of people being killed and seriously injured on Europe’s roads. We believe the enforcement of traffic law and education, where appropriate, will make a significant contribution to reducing the carnage on our roads. This is evident in a number of TISPOL member countries.’ The objectives of TISPOL

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1. To reduce road deaths and casualties on European roads. 2. To bring together the Roads and Traffic Police Forces in Europe to work together and exchange best practice. 3. Organising and co-ordinating pan-European operations and campaigns. 4. To encourage enforcement and education based on research, intelligence and information so as to establish an effective and targeted education and enforcement programme. 5. Initiating and supporting research on road safety. 6. Providing an informed and coordinated police opinion on road safety issues.

The dichotomy of national versus post-national identities that bureaucrat-diplomats struggle with does not capture the role orientation of these operational practitioners: they are, above all, experts in their field. Technical knowledge and professional skills are their stockin-trade, and form the prime lens through which they view and assess their foreign counterparts and the possibilities for cooperative ventures. Combining an expert’s knowledge with a zealot’s drive can get a national Eurocrat a long way in shaping policies with a small band of like-minded professionals, despite the limits imposed by the context of embryonic European institutions and policies. Police commissioner Ad Hellemons is the Director of European Affairs of the Transport Police Division of the Dutch National Police Agency. His description of a ‘typical working day on the European circuit’ gives a taste of the street-level entrepreneur’s life. My alarm clock goes off at 4 a.m. I live in Zeeland (south-west Netherlands) and can hop in and out of Paris in a day. I am in my car half an hour later and get to Paris in time to beat the rush hour. I reach the Gendarmeries’ headquarters well on time to share a coffee with the duty officers in the General’s secretariat. I know them from previous visits and since I am reasonably fluent in French I can chat a bit to get a sense of the mood of the day. I visit the French that day to get them to commit certain initiatives of TISPOL [see Box 6.1], which I helped found and was president of for many years. When I get there, I know that my immediate counterpart in the French traffic police division is already on board, but the French hierarchy dictates that the matter has to be taken all the way up to the very top before anything happens. I know I have to open the conversation with the

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General in such a way as to enable him to conduct himself in French without having to draw attention to his limited fluency in English. That hurdle taken, we make some small talk. Then I gently steer the conversation to the topic at hand. I stress the pivotal importance of French ‘leadership’, you know the stuff he likes to hear. In fact, it is not all that difficult to get people like the General to cooperate. They know I am not a loose cannon. TISPOL has a good reputation because since its inception the number of road deaths in Europe has started falling dramatically. An hour later my business is done. I hit the road and am back home in the early afternoon. Hellemons epitomises the ideal-type of the ‘other Eurocrat’ – the doers, the experimenters, the rule-benders, the venue shoppers. People like him were most conspicuous in the police cooperation field: police commissioners and public prosecutors in border regions, narcotics and road safety specialists, police educators. The open, non-supranational structure of third pillar policy-making invites this behaviour. The simple fact that the work is not highly institutionalised provides opportunities for cooperation. The officials of this ilk that we met and observed were mainly people driven to reduce transborder threats to safety affecting their forces’ day-to-day operations. They knew they could not possibly tackle such issues alone. They needed information and collaboration from foreign colleagues to do their core business. Cooperation for them is a means to a clear end. It is not the generic, continuous task of managing Dutch participation in the EU committee system and working group as it is for the bureaucrat-diplomats in ministerial offices and at the Permanent Representation. TISPOL, the object of Ad Hellemons’ Eurocratic entrepreneurship, is by all accounts successful. He explained how it came about: The problem of transport policing in Europe is that roads and mobility policy is made by our cousins in the first pillar whereas our family inhabits the Third Pillar. That third pillar is a monstrosity with unanimity rule and a serious lack of interest in policing matters. If it is not about terrorism or organised crime, they ignore it, but the reality is that no less than 30 per cent of all cops in Europe is involved in traffic one way or another. Contact between the first and third pillar on this issue is non-existent. When decisions are taken in your absence, all you get to do as police organisation is to clear up the mess afterwards – for example, having to enforce policies that are unenforceable or outright self-defeating. Activities in these two pillars

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should be linked, but that wasn’t happening. So we as traffic police forces have drawn an arrow from the third to the first pillar. That arrow constitutes my role orientation    we have set up three different networks, but the biggest and most developed is TISPOL. It has all the EU members on board as well as several candidate states and Switzerland and Norway. It is fully financed from first pillar money    for me it means driving a lot. Trips such as that one to Paris. They are about making contact, looking the other guy in the eye. Using old contacts as a stepping stone for making new ones. This network has been built and is now fully financed by the Commission. It is officially a British foundation. We have a president, financial director and executive board. I am the executive director. The owners are all the participating police forces. We have five working groups for exchanging information, develop joint training programmes, develop pilot projects and reporting systems, and plan joint operations. We are quite operational. We run 50 to 60 pan-European enforcement operations each year    To fund various projects we compete for Commission money by submitting proposals. We maintain good contacts with Commission officials and have had about 90 of our proposals funded. We compete for funding these projects Q: How did you get into the Commission on this? Very simply: you check on the Web who are dealing with traffic safety issues and you walk in. To give you an idea: there are only seven people in the entire Commission doing road transport and they all sit in adjacent rooms. Each of them is happy to do business with you. We feed them with ideas and proposals that help them achieve the stated Commission objective in this policy domain, which is to reduce road deaths in Europe by 50 per cent in 2010. The Commission put this on paper but had no idea how    At that time we stepped in and the Commission discovered that it needed the police, and needed the know-how from certain countries    And things are marching along beautifully now: we are at the midway point in the time line and we are right on schedule. And this is about a structural annual reduction in the number of road deaths of no less than 11 000. TISPOL’s director is clearly a man with a mission: to reduce traffic deaths and casualties by beefing up prevention and enforcement on a panEuropean scale. Operational necessity got it going, but trust among professionals across borders is what makes it tick. The same goes for

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all the other police cooperation networks we studied: with trust, they can be vibrant – as in the Epic case described above – but when trust is lacking – as in the Europol case – progress is limited. The following exchange with another senior Dutch police officer highlights this: Q: Is there such a thing as a policy framework that dictates whether or not you engage in cooperation with other countries’ police forces? Yes. It is very simple: do you trust someone or not? It begins with the people involved, and only after that it becomes a matter of organisations or countries. Q: What must I do to gain your trust? Be open and transparent. You get to know people through international committees and networks. It all starts with interpersonal relationships. Q: This trust appears to be very personal. Isn’t there some sort of guideline? There is a kind of division, for example through Interpol: we do business with so and so, and not with these others – there is a list of this kind. But most of it is individual. You do, however, look at the other person’s country’s democracy and all that. Q: What is the ultimate aim for the Dutch police when it comes to international police cooperation? It would be good if police officers and the mayors and public prosecutors who work with them take international cooperation as something that is self-evident. This implies that they should also be convinced that they should devote time to it and be courageous in doing it. It means they will cooperate on the basis of solid agreements and institutionalised trust. Most of all, it is about cooperation becoming taken for granted. Street-level entrepreneurs have no intrinsic commitment to the EU project and its main institutions. They try to work through these institutions, but often run up against legal and political constraints. These constraints are especially relevant in the third pillar, where development of EU-wide cooperation is slow and the main advocate for postnational policies, the Commission, occupies a weaker position vis-à-vis

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the Member States. Street-level Eurocrats in this domain are constantly confronted by the gap between their felt needs for deeper cooperation and the murky realities of EU practices – they want things for which there are no policies in place yet. Their coping strategy is one of circumvention: by-passing the obstacles of working within the EU institutions by developing alternative forms of cooperation, showing that these do the job, and over time trying to integrate them into the EU mainstream. They strive for autonomy, and regard the role of ministries as gatekeepers to participation in relevant EU networks as unhelpful meddling in affairs that could more effectively be settled among professionals. A police chief puts it this way: I don’t think that the current government’s orientation on putting the citizens first by letting the professional do their job is properly safeguarded by having us represented in Brussels predominantly by departmental bureaucrats. They are not sufficiently on top of the substance of the issues, which can be quite intricate. It is easy to get it wrong or gloss over the important ‘details’ if you’re not a professional yourself. Besides, it is much easier to build transnational rapport among professionals in a particular field. They are not comfortable with the world of instructions, mandates, interdepartmental coordination, procedural intricacies, forced inclusiveness and logrolling strategies that is part and parcel of the bureaucratic and diplomatic cooperation paradigm. They instead prefer to build cooperation from the bottom-up by nurturing personal and professional networks and creating prototypes of practical joint problem-solving that work. One police commissioner put it so eloquently that it is worth quoting him at length: Since the process of developing European regulation is so extraordinarily time-consuming in the third pillar, we at the operational level simply need to create movement in smaller entities. You must of course respect state sovereignty and all that, but within these boundaries you must create facts. Take the example of ‘joint hitting’ in serious crime investigations: we first formed a cross-border team and only asked for The Hague’s permission to do so after the fact    In a way it is all about seduction. Take a concrete shared headache first. You start with sharing information. You start small: concrete and feasible projects. And you take ‘safe’ forms of cooperation first, such as liaison officers and joint education and training. Then you just

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happen to organise a conference with your partners from other countries, and then you get the ball rolling    The trick is to transpose the operational sense of urgency towards the strategic level, the politicians and the very top of the civil service. If at all possible I try to keep the tactical level of middle-level officials out of it, since they tend to be the ones producing all the hurdles. They are more engaged in fighting one another about who gets to head the delegation to the Brussels committees than in facilitating practical cooperation. They are like a thick, impenetrable layer of clay that mutes every movement    They have another set of roles and responsibilities than we do. They are to safeguard the uniformity and coherence of Dutch law and policy; we represent the voice of professional service delivery to citizens. And it is a pity that ours does not get heard sufficiently directly in Brussels. This is why we are lobbying hard to establish a national ‘Police House’ in Brussels. We number 54 000 police officers in this country; if we are not prepared to invest in freeing up some 100 to 150 of them to deal with international cooperation and EU affairs in all their various manifestations, we will simply miss the boat.

Understanding national Eurocrats: conclusions and reflections In this chapter we have studied Dutch Eurocrats up close to understand the worlds they work in, and the ways in which they define and do their work. This has yielded a differentiated picture – there is no single, shared notion of ‘European policy-making’ and ‘Eurocratic work’, there are multiple ones which coexist. From our observations and interviews we distilled two such logics (see Table 6.1). We found bureaucratdiplomats at the ministries as well as in working groups and committees in Brussels, bargaining about national positions. We found street-level entrepreneurs building transnational coalitions of the willing, as they are confronted with transnational crime. These are, of course, stylised, ideal-typical pictures, whereas real-life officials may display these traits to different degrees and in all sorts of hybrid combinations. But we think the distinction is useful for analytical and policy purposes. In part, these different role conceptions simply reflect individual differences, and differences between ‘policy bureaucrats’ and operational ‘doers’. But they are also shaped by the differentiated nature of the European polity. European governance is produced in bundles of different types of policy networks, depending on the nature of the collaborative challenge at hand (such as exchange, regulation,

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Table 6.1 Dutch Eurocrats: two ideal-types

Natural habitat

Role orientations

Activity and contact patterns

Arenas and channels Measures of quality and effectiveness

Knowledge and expertise

Bureaucrat-diplomats

Street-level entrepreneurs

Formal working parties and committees and national preparatory process Preparing and representing national positions in multilateral forums Centred on scheduled national preparatory meetings and scheduled EU-level working group and committee meetings Mainly formal EU forums

Networks which exchange information and good practices and strengthen enforcement Getting things done

Shaping EU agendas and achieving EU policies following previously agreed-upon Dutch preferences Knowledge of formal and informal rules of the game in EU system ‘Classic’ diplomatic skills (intercultural empathy, language, negotiation, networking etc.) Broad network across the various EU institutions, particularly Commission and EP

Developing contacts and networks as the need arises and the opportunities for joint action present themselves Mainly emergent joint ventures Achieving tangible operational successes

Professional know-how Broad transborder and/or transnational network in own professional domain Knowing where to get money and how to overcome potential obstacles in EU system

Bureau-political skills and clout in the domestic preparatory coordination process Sound grasp of issue substances

enforcement, see Slaughter, 2004), the institutional context in which joint action is being shaped (for example, the position of the issue area in the EU pillar structure), and the level of action involved (policy-making versus operational collaboration). So, when compared to the ‘old’ and deeply institutionalised world of EU veterinary policy or the equally

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scripted world of the Brussels committee system, there are few precedents and rules to observe for those involved in developing European police cooperation from the bottom up. In that arena there is much scope for bottom-up agenda-setting and experimentation. There are no fixed loyalties; the challenge is to build coalitions of the willing and find resources to get them going. Bureaucrat-diplomats and street-level entrepreneurs clearly inhabit worlds apart. Street-level entrepreneurs complain about bureaucratdiplomats knowing too little about ‘the real work’, which is about preventing crime and catching criminals. Bureaucrat-diplomats complain about street-level entrepreneurs’ tunnel vision and zealous behaviour, disrupting the even-handed development of policy across the full range of the dossiers that together constitute the police cooperation portfolio. While departmental civil servants are focused on articulating and defending the national view in multilateral forums, operational zealots like Ad Hellemons seek to create vehicles for cooperation in a postnational fashion. Their sense of interdependence is strong, simply because the nature of the phenomena they deal with makes it impossible to belie this. Treading cautiously in the formal EU committee settings is not for them, and they seek to work around them. One way to do so is to draw on the ambitions and the fleshpots of the European Commission to gain support for smaller-scale ‘experiments’. A related way is to build informal ‘coalitions of the willing’ to find out if and how new forms of cooperation across borders can be made to work, both on the ground and in legal terms. In doing so, they hope to create irreversible facts. The Bureau of Euregional Cooperation in Maastricht is one such attempt. Currently, street-level entrepreneurs rather than bureaucrat-diplomats are the main engines of cooperation and ‘integration’ in the police cooperation dossier. This pre-eminence may not last. Paradoxically, dynamic and successful street-level entrepreneurs sow the seeds of their own demise. As the operational practices they create become more visible and elaborate, pressures to formalise, regulate and embed them in EU-wide institutional arrangements will grow. To make sure these formalisation processes unfold in desired directions is not something that street-level entrepreneurs are inclined or indeed equipped to do. It will be up to their bureaucratic-diplomatic counterparts to secure and consolidate the fruits of their labour. A few final reflections on the research experience itself. Our study of Dutch Eurocrats has an object that is ‘ultimately mobile and multiply situated’ (Marcus, 1995) and therefore cannot be described by doing

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ethnography in a single location. Marcus has coined the concept of ‘multi-sited ethnography’ for it. He describes several techniques which according to him may be understood as ‘practices of construction through (pre-planned or opportunistic) movement and of tracing within different settings of a complex cultural phenomenon given an initial, baseline conceptual identity that turns out to be contingent and malleable as one traces it’ (Marcus, 1995: 106). Two of its forms are: follow the people and follow the thing. To ‘follow the thing’ is closely related to ‘studying through’: that is, ‘tracing ways in which power creates webs and relations between actors, institutions and discourses across time and space’ (Reinhold, 1994, cited in Shore and Wright, 1997: 14). These policy connections between different organisational and everyday worlds may be traced, ‘even where actors in different sites do not know each other or share a moral universe’ (Shore and Wright, 1997: 14). In this research we did both: we followed the ‘thing’, being policy documents on data availability, and we followed the people, among them the civil servants who prepared national positions on this subject and who presented those in working groups and in committees. In this fashion we ‘studied through’ the relations between two types of Eurocrats in three types of networks. Our research took us from four different ministries in The Hague to five committees in Brussels, and to the offices of the people at the Permanent Representative in Brussels. It also took us from several police departments to the Euregional Cooperation Bureau, to Europol’s Management Board and to an information meeting for the industry organised by the Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. This following around made it possible for us to – sometimes – see more and other things than most of the individuals we followed were able to see. Observing preparatory meetings and meetings of working groups and committees revealed to us that apparently the process of discussing the ‘same’ policy document in supposedly successive meetings is not always as linear as would be expected from their descriptions on paper. Observing meetings of bureaucrat-diplomats and practices of street-level entrepreneurs made us see how and why these ‘worlds apart’ sometimes clash instead of complementing one another. Everywhere we had to gain access and trust from the people we wanted to interview or observe. We had to get to know them, and they had to get to know us. That was not always easy. This is of course one of the classic ethnographic problems. Anthropologists often write about how they arrive at unknown places populated with unknown people. Then

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they tell us how after some time people got to trust them and confide in them. For us it was this same process, only without a happy ending. Throughout the fieldwork period we were amazed how cautious and risk aware many bureaucrat-diplomats were about hosting us. We never ‘blended in’. They were concerned we might see the messiness of their working and their meetings. They even apologised to us: ‘Those texts arrive so late from Brussels that it is almost impossible to read them, let alone prepare a proper position on them.’ Or they were afraid that we might publicise the content of meetings which they thought of as confidential, but which we were not even interested in. Sometimes they made us feel like prying, and they seemed relieved when finding out that we did not confront them with criticism and were only interested in their opinions and experiences. One of them told us how glad he was to have this rare opportunity for reflection on his own practices – a common experience of elite researchers. However, at the next encounter, some of the same people were taken aback and on their guard in our presence all over again. How we affected their behaviour, how ‘intrusive’ we were, is hard to tell. The sheer variety of settings where we did fieldwork has probably protected us against systematic bias. In contrast, street-level entrepreneurs displayed the opposite mind-set. They were keen to advertise their work, and glad to have a captive audience in the researchers. It did not occur to them that we might not necessarily share their enthusiasm. They took all the time in the world to talk to us, show us around, introduce us to people and let us sit in at meetings. As a result, the opposite and equally classic ethnographer’s risk lurked in the background: ‘going native’. In some sense, this potential pitfall of ethnographic research is more insidious than the reluctance to cooperate and act spontaneously we encountered among the bureaucrat-diplomats. It is all too tempting for the researcher to take comfort in the warm blanket of hospitality offered and to swallow their ‘success stories’ uncritically.

References Beyers, J. and Trondal, J. 2004. ‘How nation states “hit” Europe: ambiguity and representation in the European Union’, West European Politics, 27 (5), pp. 919–42. Christiansen, T. and Kirchner, E. (eds). 2000. Europe in Change: Committee Governance in the European Union. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Egeberg, M. Schaeffer, G. F. and Trondal, J. 2003. ‘The many faces of EU committee governance’, West European Politics, 26 (2), pp. 19–40. Haas, P. M. 1992. ‘Epistemic communities and international policy coordination’, International Organization, 46, pp. 1–35.

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‘t Hart, P., Geuijen, K., Mastenbroek, E., Princen, S. and Yesilkagit, K. 2008. Doing the Government’s Business in Brussels: The Europeanisation of the Civil Service Craft. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (in press). Kassim, H., Peters, B. G. and Wright, V. (eds) 2000. The National Coordination of EU Policy: The National Level. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcus, G., 1995. ‘Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multisited ethnography’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, pp. 95–117. McDonald, M. 1997. ‘Identities in the European Commission’, in N. Nugent (ed.), At the Heart of the Union: Studies of the European Commission. London: Macmillan. Page, E. and Jenkins, W. I. 2005. Policy Bureaucracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhinard, M. 2002. ‘The democratic legitimacy of the EU committee system’, Governance, 15 (2), pp. 185–210. Risse-Kappen, T. 1996. ‘Exploring the nature of the beast: international relations theory and comparative policy analysis meet the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 34 (1), pp. 53–79. Shore, C. and Wright, S. (eds) 1997. The Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London: Routledge. Slaughter, A.-M. 2004. A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Thedvall, R. 2006. Eurocrats at Work. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 58. Stockholm: Almund and Wiksell.

7 The EU’s Nomads: National Eurocrats in European Policy-Making Renita Thedvall

Introduction In the popular view of the EU, its bureaucrats are often seen as the epitome of what Herzfeld (1992: 71) identifies as the stereotype of a bureaucrat: a rigid, inflexible, boring person working for his bureau rather than its clients or society at large. EU bureaucrats are frequently associated with forming useless, interventionist policies, such as prescribing the size of a strawberry or the curve of a banana. Moreover, like its national counterparts, the EU bureaucracy is held to be a hierarchical system akin to that envisaged by Weber (1958: 196ff.) with its emphasis on rules, uniformity and compliance. The bureaucratic stereotype only goes so far in describing the real world of EU policy-making processes. As one is drawn into that world, it becomes clear that the individual bureaucrats who populate it are people of flesh and blood with different personalities and driven by different goals. Some of them are motivated by the urge to make the world a better place, some are just trying to do their job and perhaps climb the career ladder, some see themselves mainly as experts living up to the standards of their profession. Only a few of them match the stereotype of the bureaucrat strictly following the rules. Overwhelmingly, bureaucratic players in EU policy processes are, of necessity, flexible people (Albrow, 1997: 74). They don’t just apply rules. They take part in complex policy-making and organisational games. The skills they need to do well in these games vary markedly from the classic role description of the bureaucrat. In this chapter I describe how EU bureaucrats (from now on, Eurocrats) handle these games. I focus on those Eurocrats who have to accommodate the potentially conflicting roles of both national representative 160

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and member of an EU-level expert community. The notion of Eurocrat symbolises the entanglement (Callon, 1998; see also Hasselström, 2003; and Garsten and Montoya, 2004) of the Member States in the EU. If bureaucrats have mainly been studied in their settled environment of the national ministries or the European Commission, this chapter focuses on the nomadic life of the bureaucrats who travel to and from their home base and the EU meeting rooms in Brussels to design policies and make decisions. Studying Eurocrats at work in EU committees, working groups and councils in focus, highlights the clash between the national and the supranational in a multinational arena such as the EU. National participants in these arenas have their institutional home in one Member State, while regularly meeting with their peers from other countries in another – in this case the so-called city of Europe. They are bound by their national identification and their government’s official position. But when they meet with their counterparts from across the EU, it is to make common EU decisions. The travelling to these meetings here signifies a ‘liminal’ phase (Turner, 1969: 95), an in-between position. Literally as well as mentally, Eurocrats are moving from one part of their work – forming joint positions in the national bureaucratic arena characterised by interdepartmental fault lines and negotiations – to another part – that of being ‘national’ representatives in an arena characterised by international divisions and alliances. They have to shift their concentration and focus between these areas of work. This chapter focuses on EU issues and the way bureaucrats turn into real ‘Eurocrats’. I followed the Swedish as well as EU Commission Eurocrats around doing participant observation. First, I held a trainee position in the Directorate General of Employment and Social Affairs in the European Commission during the autumn of 2001. Throughout 2002, I became an ‘observer-member’ of the Swedish delegation to the EU Employment Committee. I attended its preparatory meetings at the Swedish Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication, I went on its trips to Brussels, and sat in on the Employment Committee meetings in Brussels. The EU Employment Committee is the ‘first’ committee, in a hierarchy of EU committees, working groups and council meetings, where the Member States and the Commission discuss and negotiate on EU employment issues connected to the EU Lisbon Strategy. It is there that most of the discussions and negotiations take place and in practice decisions are made before the formal decision is made in the Council of the European Union.

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Bureaucratic ‘entanglement’: shifting roles, lurking tensions The blurring of boundaries between the EU institutions and the member states has been described as ‘Europeanisation’. Most scholars portray Europeanisation as a process where the Member States’ national policies, identities, beliefs, norms and institutional structures are influenced to some degree by their involvement with the EU institutions (see for example Cowles et al., 2001; Featherstone and Radaelli, 2003; and Jacobsson et al., 2004). States become more Europeanised when the European dimension penetrates their national arenas of politics, policy and bureaucracy (Radaelli, 2003: 29–30). The idea is, in fact, used by the EU institutions as a way of enhancing their power by redefining national ideas of territory and citizenship (Borneman and Fowler, 1997: 487). EU membership in particular means that states surrender some of their independence to the EU institutions such as the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Community Court of Justice. The idea of the nation-state as controlling its people within a defined territory is also challenged by the movement of capital, goods, people and services without hindrance across the EU. Cooper (2003: 36–7) argues that the idea of transparency between the Member States has replaced national considerations about the balance of power and raison d’état as master ideas. In this way membership in the EU should make the Member States’ policies and political institutions more visible to one another and weaken grounds for suspicion. As a result, the arena for conflict becomes the meetings in the EU rather than the battlefields of war (Cooper, 2003: 35–6). So it is possible to argue that the nationstate is gradually taking on another form, based on multinational identities and accepting that state affairs are internationally transparent and ‘meddled’ in by other member states in the EU. As I have put forward elsewhere (Thedvall, 2006 paraphrasing Malkki, 1999: 53ff.), this may be seen as forming a post-national order. ‘Post-national’ refers to the notion that the nation-state – both nation and state – is losing sovereignty to the EU. A post-national community is emerging in Europe where the nation and nationalism no longer constitute the prime legitimising ground for its existence (Delanty and Rumford, 2005: 190). And yet the Eurocrats who convene at EU meetings are there as representatives of their nation-states and are expected by their superiors in the capitals to act in the ‘national’ interest. Jacobsson and Mörth (1998: 199) argue that, paradoxically, EU membership has forced the Member States to adopt a ‘national’ position in areas where until now they did not feel the need for one. In this way participating in

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the EU’s post-national project serves to uphold notions of the ‘national’ and the ‘nation-state’. Regardless of their aims, the way of working of institutions such as the EU assumes and even reinforces the national order of things (cf. Ben-Ari and Elron, 2001: 275–6). Nonetheless, the Eurocrats still have to agree on common EU decisions where they, in part, surrender and modify their ‘national’ interests to make possible an EU agreement. For Eurocrats therefore, it is not so much a question of being part of one or the other; instead their role as national or European agents shifts as the policy-making process evolves. Below, I seek to show the Eurocrats’ pendulum movements between acting in the interest of their (member-)state and acting on behalf of the EU making decisions that contribute to the process of Europeanisation. Even if the final decisions do not penetrate national policies, nonetheless they are forming a post-national EU community through these EU decisions. The contours of the national are continuously being negotiated in EU arenas, and the national communicates and negotiates with the post-national. Eurocrats are central to this process. It is their off-stage bureaucratic work as much as the on-stage politics of European leaders that fashions the EU identity.

Eurocrats at work What Eurocrats do Who are these Eurocrats and what do they do? In this case they are so-called experts on employment policies working to form a common European employment strategy with EU guidelines for employment and an agreed set of instruments to evaluate whether these guidelines are followed by the Member States. Broadly speaking, they are highly educated people with degrees in law, the social sciences and economics and with experience and expertise in labour market policy, labour law and econometrics. They are not street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1980) trying to implement policies. They are policy designers. As in classical bureaucratic theory, they offer advice to politicians, based on technical, politically neutral expertise. In reality, the implied difference between ‘politics’ and ‘administration’ becomes blurred (Weiss and Wodak, 2000: 76). The notion of expertise becomes especially problematic in the context of the EU since these Eurocrats have to act in the name of their nation-state presenting ‘national’ positions and argue in their Member States’ political interest. The EU meeting format of having to adopt national positions emphasises the national, compelling Eurocrats to

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make their contributions as representatives of a nation-state rather than as experts on employment policies. It politicises their work. Eurocrats handle their double roles as technocrats and politicians by acting as politicians but with the implicit understanding that they officially work according to the ideal of the Weberian-style bureaucrat (Thedvall, 2006). In the meetings I saw them use both expertise-based and political arguments. Yet the former were clearly privileged above the latter in the meetings. It was a pivotal part of their craft to identify technical if not scientific arguments that would work in the interest of their Member States’ political ambitions. As participants in meetings, the Eurocrats had to keep in touch with the other Member States’ political traditions and ambitions to understand their arguments. I also observed, however, that putting forward these differing national positions is only part of the policy-making game. It is most evident in the early stages of a policy process. When it came to collective decisions, Eurocrats put on their other hat. They worked towards compromise in order to arrive at a joint, EU decision. That done, they would switch roles again, reporting and explaining that decision back at their national ministries. In the sections below we follow the swings of the Eurocratic policy pendulum.

Fashioning a ‘national’ position In the lead-up to the EU committee meetings different activities took place within the national governments and the EU institutions. What happened at the meetings was connected to what had been discussed, written or thought of in other places. There were the Commission’s reports and the committee’s opinions that would form the basis for discussions in the meeting. And there were ‘national’ positions prepared in response to the reports and the opinions of the other Member States’ ministries. In the particular case reported here, the Member States’ and the Commission’s representatives were going to meet in the EU Employment Committee to agree on indicators for quality in work. They were to be used as instruments for evaluating the quality of Member States’ labour markets. The Employment Committee consisted of two representatives from every Member State with two alternates. These members were selected ‘among senior officials or experts possessing outstanding competences in the field of employment and labour market policy in the member states’ (Council of the European Union, 2000: 21–2). Most of the members, at least one of the two, came from the Ministry of Labour (of some sort) in their member state.

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In a preparatory meeting before an Employment Committee meeting a group of civil servants in the Swedish Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication met for a couple of hours to prepare national positions. The following day the Swedish delegation was to travel to Brussels. The Commission’s report on the ‘quality in work’ indicators had been sent to the Member States for the delegates to consider earlier. It was my second preparatory meeting in the Ministry. As I walked towards the office of Anders,1 a Swedish representative in the Committee, at the end of the corridor I exchanged pleasantries with Malin, another representative. When we arrived at Anders’ corner office in the old part of the Ministry Anders, Susanne and Peter, all Swedish representatives in the committee from the Ministry of Industry, were already seated around Anders’ meeting table. Also present were Hedda, an expert on health and safety at work in the Ministry of Industry; Tage, a Swedish representative in the Social Protection Committee from the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, and interested in the indicator on stress; and Erik, an expert on taxes from the Ministry of Finance there to discuss the indicators on tax-benefit systems (not part of the quality in work indicators). They began to discuss the different policy issues on the Committee’s agenda. What were the Swedish positions? Which position could conceivably be carried at the Committee’s meeting? One of the areas to be discussed in the Committee was a table and a possible composite indicator measuring the ‘flexibility and security’ facet of the ‘quality in work’ indicators. The Commission had proposed developing a composite indicator on the ‘extent to which part-time and fixed-term workers enjoy equivalent and commensurate entitlements to social protection and legal rights as full-time and permanent workers’ (Internal document from the meeting of the Employment Committee indicators group, 4–5 July 2002). During the previous year the Committee had agreed on an indicator in this area: ‘number of employees working part-time, voluntarily and involuntarily, as a per cent of the total number of employees and of those with voluntary and involuntary fixed-term contracts as a per cent of total number of employees’. The proposed new composite indicator was meant to complement that indicator. It would be derived from a form that Member States were encouraged to complete (see Table 7.1). Malin explained that the Commission now wanted to compile a table from the completed forms. She asked rhetorically if Sweden thought it was okay to draw up this table. She continued, saying she doubted Sweden wanted the Commission to distil a composite indicator from this table. She explained that the Commission wanted

166 Observing Government Elites Table 7.1 The Commission’s form on entitlements Social protection

Entitlement to Part-time workers as % of all part-time workers

Fixed-term workers as % of all fixed-term workers

Unemployment benefits (pro rata entitlements Retirement pension (pro rata entitlements Health insurance Average entitlement coverage (composite indicator)

to divide the number of people working part-time or having fixed-term contracts and who have access to unemployment benefits and other social entitlements by the total number of people working part-time or having fixed-term contracts. Anders asked Hedda if there had not been a change in the law recently. Should not all who work part-time have the same rights as those who work full-time? Hedda answered that this was the case. There was an EU directive to this effect. Anders replied that then it should be 100 per cent and the indicator would be unnecessary. Hedda answered that the law was written to prevent discrimination against part-time workers while allowing many different ways of interpreting the law. In which case, Anders replied, the indicator might be feasible after all since there will be different interpretations in different Member States. Nevertheless, he said they should be sceptical about the composite indicator. To develop the table was acceptable, but the arguments for developing a composite indicator were not convincing. It seemed impossible to measure reliably comparative entitlements. Malin also reminded us that at the last Committee meeting Sweden had said that parental leave should be in the table. Anders said that we would have to point that out at the next meeting. ‘It is a typically Swedish question’, he said. At the time, the Swedish Minister for Employment Policy was concerned about gender equality. Parental leave was a hot topic for her. Anders recalled the minister had even stressed the issue of parental leave in a recent EU speech. There was little sign of bureaucratic conflict in the discussions. The atmosphere of the meeting was collegial and bland. The Swedish representatives understood the issue was a priority for the Swedish Minister

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of Industry, Employment and Communication. There was no disagreement on how this should translate into a Swedish national position at next day’s Committee meeting in Brussels. When they reached this conclusion, the representatives from other ministries had already left. ‘Their’ questions had already been addressed and they had no concern with the bigger picture.

The Committee meeting: proposing ‘national’ positions Anders, Malin, Susanne and I entered the Commission’s conference centre in Brussels. We walked through the security check before taking the lift to the third floor. The conference centre has at least four meeting rooms on each floor in the five-storey building, and just before 10 a.m. there are always many people rushing to different meetings. In the hall on the third floor different languages were being spoken. People had flown in or taken trains or cars from their Member States to attend the meetings today. The meeting room’s furnishing met my stereotype of what a bureaucratic institution would look like. It had old-fashioned furniture and grey-beige-brownish surroundings. There were floor-to-floor grey carpets. The tables were made of fake mahogany and the chairs were covered with beige cloth of the ‘office chair’ variety. The interpreters sat in booths behind glass windows. Their presence along the walls revealed that the meeting was multilingual; the languages translated that day were English, French and German, as shown on a board in a corner of the room. I found a seat behind the Swedish delegation, where I would be out of the way. The members were seated in a circle in front of me, with the Member States in alphabetical order, taking the native spelling as the reference point.2 In front of each Member State’s row of seats was a sign showing that Member State’s name. The Secretaries of the Committee, the President, and the Commission were seated between the United Kingdom and Belgium; that is, at the apex of the circle. Behind the circle there were seats for observers, like myself, for alternates to the members, and for the Commission’s presenters. These presenters were Commission officials who had worked on particular policy issues. They would take their seat beside the Commission’s representatives when it was time for their issues to be discussed. The presenters thus changed often according to the items on the agenda. The national delegations and the Commission’s representatives arrived and the room slowly filled up. There was a constant buzz around

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me of members greeting and kissing each other. The interpreters were taking their place in the translators’ booths. I examined my headset and made sure that it was set to ‘English’. I looked around the room and saw that one-third of the members were women and that about half the delegations had brought an expert along. He or she would be an alternate member of the group who changed depending on the question under discussion. The members were taking their seats. At about 10.15 a.m., the President of the Committee rang the bell, everyone fell silent and the meeting began. In the afternoon, the group turned to the subject of ‘flexibility and security’ that I had seen discussed in the preparatory meeting of the Swedish delegation. The Committee agreed it was difficult to develop composite indicators and the Commission was invited to do more work on it. There was no time pressure. They had a few months before they had to make the final recommendations to the Council. Malin, the Swedish delegate, pressed for including ‘parental leave’ in the composite indicator, arguing that this component was as important as other benefits and social security schemes in the list. She said: Sweden supports the use of the complementary data in the table. We think the Commission can conclude the table but we should see it before the Employment Committee sees it. However, we believe that parental leave should be included in the table. (Employment Committee Indicators group, 4 July 2002) The Commission argued it would be too complicated. In addition, if it were to be included, conflicting ideas about gender equality politics in the Member States would come to the fore. The Member States had different institutional arrangements, reflecting different perceptions of gender roles and the responsibilities of men and women respectively. The Swedes certainly knew that Sweden would get an improved score if parental leave was included, but they also saw it as their responsibility to point out the omission whenever possible. The Swedish delegates, especially the women, spoke passionately about the issue of gender equality and work-life balance for both women and men. In the preparatory meetings as well as during lunches and dinner during the Committee’s meeting days they discussed among themselves the need to point out whenever a gender equality perspective was lacking. Clearly, they went beyond the call of duty; these Eurocrats’ personal passions and preoccupations coloured the amount of effort devoted to the issue.

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The same phenomenon occurred when the Indicators group discussed the use of a possible ‘labour market adaptability index’. The index was presented by a research centre that had worked on the index. In its report, one of the key adaptability indicators was labour mobility. It had measured transitions between different jobs as well as transitions to a job among people who had been studying or had not been working the year before. At some point the text of the report read: ‘   of those in education and women “fulfilling domestic responsibilities” the year before’ (Scientific report presented by a research centre in the Employment Committee Indicators group, 5 July 2002). Susanne, the Swedish delegate, signalled her wish to speak and the President of the Committee gave her the floor. Her voice was full of contrived innocence when she remarked: There seems to be a mistake in the study. It only says ‘women fulfilling domestic responsibilities’. (Employment Committee Indicators group 5 July 2002) The representative from the research centre replied in earnest: No, men are not in the graph. Men make up only 1 per cent so it makes no difference. (Employment Committee Indicators group, 5 July 2002) Susanne persisted and now said sturdily: Surely this varies between member states? (Employment Committee Indicators group, 5 July 2002) The representative from the research centre answered, now smiling: Yes, I agree that it is higher in the Nordic member states. It could have been in but the graphs would not be different. (Employment Committee Indicators group, 5 July 2002) Many of the Committee members sat there observing this dialogue, smiling as if they were thinking: ‘Okay, this is to be expected from the Swedes but we really do not take it seriously.’ Apparently, Susanne was acting out a self-assumed role of the Swedish representatives – relentlessly pointing out any gender-biased passages in the texts discussed at the Committee. Afterwards, Susanne, Malin and I had lunch and

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Susanne said that she was a bit irritated with herself that she had smiled back when they were smiling at her contribution. She felt that she had, by doing so, somehow degraded her own input. She said that this was the typical reaction as soon as she started to talk about gender equality (5 July 2002). However, the Swedish Eurocrats, interested in gender equality issues, wanted to make the point nevertheless – as they were expected to. As Anders pointed out, gender equality issues were regarded by the other members as a typically Swedish question, and it was understood that Swedish representatives would miss no opportunity to point these things out. Reporting back As the Swedish delegation returned to the Ministry of Industry they wrote a report about the meeting. They explained what the Swedish position had been and what had been agreed during the meeting. Long before that, however, the members of the Swedish delegation had begun to discuss how they had interpreted what had been said, to come to a similar understanding. In fact, they started doing so immediately after the meeting as we were walking back to the hotel. This conversation was important, because the game was not over. This particular session would not be the last Employment Committee Indicators group meeting before a formal decision had to be made in the Council of the European Union. There was a need to fine-tune the Swedish position before the next meeting. The Swedish delegation’s meeting report was sent to the relevant colleagues: about 10–15 people within the Employment Ministry as well as in other ministries such as Health and Social Affairs, Education and Science, and Finance. If any politically salient issues were discussed, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Industry would be briefed. In this case, a further briefing was deemed unnecessary. The Eurocrats were implicitly trusted to act in the interest of the Swedish government. Later on, when the Council meetings were impending, there were more frequent contacts between the Minister of Employment and the Employment Committee members; for example, Malin took part in the Swedish preparations for the Council meeting. Agreeing on an EU decision Back at the Committee meeting, on other issues, there were more obvious disagreements, with Member States sometimes changing their opinion during the meetings. They did so, for example, because new information was being disclosed. Or they were swung by the arguments

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put forward by other Member States. Or they had been lobbied during the breaks. Or there was horse-trading going on. The Swedes, for example, did not think that ‘days lost in strikes’ was a good measure of the quality of the ‘social dialogue and workers involvement’. They went along because another indicator (‘the percentage of employees covered by collective agreements’) liked by them but not by many other Member States was also included as a measure of ‘quality in work’. Sweden, with a relatively low number of strikes but with a high number of collective agreements, would score rather badly on the former but well on the latter. Sometimes Member States had to abandon their initial national position because there was an overwhelming lack of support. The Dutch delegation, for example, agreed to including indicators measuring transitions between permanent contracts, fixed-term contracts and temporary contracts even if it thought that doing so implied a certain prejudice against non-permanent jobs. For a Member State such as the Netherlands with a high number of employees with fixed-term and temporary contracts, this measure would not be in its best interest. Yet the delegation saw it had little support from other Member States and made the concession. Under the unanimity rule, states sometimes simply have to give up part of their national interests for the sake of reaching an EU decision. As this amendment bargaining was going on, the Secretaries of the Employment Committee, with the President, did their best to keep track of which member wanted changes, and which did not. When the members seemed to have exhausted their contributions and everyone fell silent, the President tried to suggest a ‘conclusion’. Some members were not happy with it, and the discussion continued. The President then tried again to conclude until everyone could agree. This way of agreeing is normally described as consensus decision-making, where issues are discussed until everyone is satisfied and convinced the best solution is on the table. That is not what happens, though. It was not a case of members discussing and deliberating until everyone actively supported a particular result. It was more of a ‘majority consensus’ emerging, forcing some members to compromise (Thedvall, 2006). This was made clear in one of the Employment Committee meetings when the Italian delegate did not get support from other members for Italy’s preferred, particular wording of the Committee’s opinion on so-called ‘national action plans’ for employment, drawn up by the Member States each year. He wanted the Commission’s opinion to note explicitly that only a majority of the Committee had supported that particular

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indicator. One of the British delegates answered that they understood the point, but that de facto most decisions in the Committee were decided by majority vote (Committee Meeting, 21 November 2001). The Italian delegate continued to insist on the committee dropping the paragraph on the national action plans in the opinion paper. However, he was isolated, and the suggested changes to accommodate Italy were rejected by the other members. Finally, he was forced to agree for the sake of reaching an EU decision. Cultures of conflict and compromise EU compromises are thus made by finding solutions that can be accepted by everyone, and – if need be – by producing majorities that are big enough to induce (potential) dissenters to cease resisting the emerging majority opinion. This process is not a linear one. Opportunities for consensus come and go. Yet there is a bottom line. According to the EU calendar, at the last meeting before the Council – where the political decisions are made – there has to be a final Committee decision on the issues up for discussion at the Council. These deadlines pressure the Committee’s decision-making process. No matter how unsure the Eurocrats felt about certain aspects of their report, they had to collectively submit it to the Council. Not achieving consensus meant burdening the ministers with delays and complications. Nobody wants to take that message home unless it involves the essential political priorities of the government. And so there is a subtle change in the dynamics of Eurocrats’ work during a series of Committee meetings on any given issue. The discussions and negotiations at the beginning of the policy-making process display a ‘culture of conflict’ (Ross, 1993, also see Thedvall, 2006). Eurocrats defended their national opinions and differences between national positions were highlighted not fudged. Later, when the process gravitated towards a decision and producing reports for the Council, conflict and compromise become two sides of the same coin and a ‘culture of compromise’ emerged (Abélès, 1993, also see Thedvall, 2006) in the Committee meetings. This culture of compromise makes it possible for the Eurocrats to agree, as ‘Europeans’, in making a common EU decision.

Observing Eurocrats: doing meeting ethnography The shifting between the roles as a national representative and a European representative also, in some ways, matched my own

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experiences of the fieldwork. My fieldwork among the Eurocrats moved between different localities: the Directorate General of Employment and Social Affairs in the Commission, the EU meeting rooms and the Swedish Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication. From the start of my fieldwork, when I had an internship in the Commission, I was moving between the Directorate General and the meeting rooms, while living in Brussels during that time. During the second part of my fieldwork, I was doing participant observation in the preparatory meetings of the Swedish Ministry of Industry and followed the Swedish delegation to the EU committee. I was yo-yoing (Wulff, 2002) in and out of the field, and back and forth to the meetings. In a sense I was moving between different roles of being an intern in the European Commission, an observer in the EU meetings and the Swedish preparatory meetings and being a researcher in a university environment. The different EU committee, working group and Council meetings became important for my research. It was there that the work of the European Commission (with the Member States) was debated, negotiated and decided on by the Member States and the European Commission. It was in the meetings that I was introduced to the work in the Commission that I could see existed on the intranet and knew was taking place but did not take part in myself. Thus, a substantial part of my field notes from my internship in the European Commission came from the EU meetings. My ‘strategically situated ethnography’ (Marcus, 1986: 177) was mainly based in a particular EU committee focused on EU employment policy, the Employment Committee. However, the field of the Employment Committee was made up of different localities. The central nodes in the network were the Employment Committee’s meetings, but for the meetings to work as intended, that is as decision-making arenas, other nodes in the network had to play their part. The Member States’ representatives had, for example, to adopt ‘national positions’ to be able to negotiate their case in the Employment Committee. In this way the negotiations and decisions made in the Employment Committee were influenced by discussions, negotiations and decision-making processes elsewhere. The view from the Employment Committee made it possible to see the different negotiations, discussions and decisions made by all the Member States. In this sense it became a multilocal fieldwork, but in one place. It enabled me to see how Member States were able to form decisions on the ‘quality in work’ indicators. To work in the Commission was important, since it was there that all the documents, papers and opinions were prepared before they were discussed in the Employment

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Committee. However, to better understand why members said what they did in the Employment Committee meetings, I also had to study how Member States prepared for the meetings. To do participant observation in all the Member States, I would have had to be in several different places at the same or nearly the same time to grasp all the participants’ perspectives on the same issue. This was physically impossible. To get at the process, I concentrated on following it through from the perspective of one Member State, Sweden. I shadowed the Swedish members in the Employment Committee. I took part in their preparatory meetings in the Swedish Ministry of Industry and then went with them to Brussels to Committee meetings. In this sense, my choice of field may be described as a ‘strategically situated multilocal ethnography’. Reinhold (cited in Shore and Wright, 1997: 14) uses the concept of ‘studying through’ to describe the method of following a policy. She argues that by studying through, the ‘webs and relations between actors, institutions and discourses across time and space’ will be revealed (Reinhold cited in Shore and Wright, 1997: 14). She suggests the study of policy should be carried out in the network in which the policy moves to capture the interaction between different places and levels in policy-making. To follow a policy process in this way is to use research techniques that pay attention to movement and tracing, such as following a people, a thing, a metaphor, a story or a policy (Marcus, 1995: 106ff.). Participant observation by following a policy process will thus have a different character from conventional, localised anthropological fieldwork. A policy process goes everywhere, and to follow a policy process therefore means to follow it through different localities. Marcus points out that: ‘empirically following the thread of cultural process itself impels the move toward multi-sited ethnography’ (1995: 97). It is important to point out that, although the concept of multisited or multilocal may give the impression of having separate fields, it is rather ‘several fields in one’ (Hannerz, 2003: 21), since a policy process may move across sites, but the parts remain connected in a single field.

Yo-yoing between Stockholm and Brussels Being an observer in the Swedish delegation made fieldwork somewhat different from when I worked in the Commission. I did what Wulff has labelled yo-yo fieldwork (2002: 117), the yo-yo symbolising the going back and forth, in and out of the field. My fieldwork then moved more significantly between different geographical spaces and made me aware of the significance as well as the insignificance of geographical as well as

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cultural borders. I went back and forth between Brussels and Stockholm on several occasions. I also moved to and from the field. During my internship in the Commission I had lived in the field for almost four months. Now, I moved between the field, my university life, the Ministry of Industry, the Employment Committee meetings, and then back to my university life again. This yo-yo fieldwork meant the excitements as well as the apprehension of entering the field were repeated at every entry. I mention apprehension because before every meeting I always imagined that they would have changed their minds and I would not be allowed to attend. Excitement refers to the sensation that my fieldwork was progressing and I would be learning more about the field. Yo-yoing also meant that I was not present in the field all the time. However, as pointed out by Wulff (2002: 122), the movement back and forth into the field did not mean that I left the field during the in-between periods. I was still in touch with the people through e-mails and lunches. I wanted to make sure I was not forgotten. And I wanted to get their perspective on questions I had after going through my notes and the documents from the Commission and the Swedish Ministry of Industry. I also followed what new policy areas were coming up on the agenda on the Directorate General’s website and read policy documents to keep myself informed about the policy area. In addition, we were all yo-yoing together: everyone else came to the EU meetings from a life elsewhere. The Swedish members had, for example, to varying degrees, other areas of responsibility they worked on as well as the work connected with the EU arena. So, my informants and I were in a similar position: hopping in and out of national and European issues and arenas, yet trying to stay on top of things.

Observing meetings In the meetings, my role was mainly that of an observer. I never took part as an active member. The role of an observer made it possible for me to give my full attention to all the members in the meetings instead of preparing my contribution or my response to the other members, as the regular members were doing. Nevertheless, if I had, for example, been working in the Secretariat of one of the Committee, I would have been more involved with what was happening both inside and outside the meetings. In fact, outside the meeting room was the most difficult place to do participant observation. It was impossible for me to follow all the delegates around.

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When I took part in the Committee meetings I sat in the back row, observed and took notes of what was said and what to whom. The meetings usually lasted two days and were hectic, not least because I tried to write down everything said. Of course, that was impossible, but at least I got a good sense of what was said. There were some difficulties, however. Sometimes I did not fully understand the discussion since they might be using concepts with which I was not familiar. At other times I was unable to follow the discussion because I was too busy writing what had been said before, so I missed the opening remarks of the next speaker. The fact that I followed the one policy issue on ‘quality in work’ indicators in EU employment policy was helpful. During the different meetings I gained a fuller understanding of the discussions and their implications. By the end of my fieldwork, I recognised arguments and sometimes knew how different Member States were going to react before they even took the floor. Another difficulty with the constant writing of what they said was that I did not have much time to see their facial expressions or bodily movements as they talked. However, their tone of voice often revealed their state of mind and I also got a feel for the atmosphere in the group and in the room that I would not have had otherwise. In addition, even if I did not see and analyse all the facial expressions and bodily movements that members used in the meetings, I was still among the action. An added problem was the language. When Member States spoke anything but English (or Swedish, of course) I had to listen to the interpreters. As Aull Davis (1999: 113) points out, translations are far from theoretically neutral. The interpreters did a remarkable job, but as I got to know the topic better I sometimes had to interpret their interpretation. They might, for example, have used another term than the one agreed on in the particular committee, working group or Council. However, what may be more challenging in a field this close to home is the overlapping of the emic3 and the analytical. At least on the surface, the informants have a similar type of language, an academic language, and a way of reasoning similar to mine. Policy development in the Commission is performed in dialogue with the social sciences. Concepts and ideas studied by the social sciences such as ‘governance’ are soaked up by the Commission and made its own through the process of writing Communications, White Papers or Green Papers, as well as the other way round. As Bourdieu points out, ‘[s]tate bureaucracies and their representatives are great producers of “social problems” that social science does little more than ratify whenever it takes them over as “sociological”

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problems’ (1994: 2). This makes it difficult to see the way meaning is made, which in turn makes it more difficult to analyse. Garsten (1994: 41) points out that fieldwork in an environment where the academic language is shared between the informants and the researcher needs an even more critical stance. Doing ethnography is also writing ethnography (see, for example, Aull Davis, 1999; Van Maanen, 1988). And part of writing ethnography is to analyse the material from a critical perspective, disengaging oneself from the everyday language, analysis and views of one’s informants. To reach this critical perspective needs distance from the field.

Conclusion: Eurocrats entangled in parallel worlds? This chapter has focused on Eurocrats and their work. I observed the bureaucratic games in EU committees, working groups and councils and Eurocrats’ shifting roles of defending ‘national’ interests and acting in the interest of the EU by making EU decisions. The ethnographic study of Eurocrats brings them to life as people, moving beyond the stereotype. Their shifting roles and subtle handling of bureaucratic rules and regulations becomes visible only when we use such methods as participant observation. It shows that following rules and making technocratic EU decisions are not options for these bureaucratic elites. They have to be flexible in handling their multiple roles and knowing when to play, and when to stop playing, the game of ‘consensus’ decision-making (cf. Egeberg, 2006). The roles Eurocrats play shift through the process; the pendulum between articulating and defending ‘national’ positions and acting in the interest of the EU swings back and forth. In this way, the Eurocrats’ shifting roles contribute to the process of Europeanisation. Eventaully, playing the game in Brussels forces them to put on the hat of a ‘European’ formulating post-national EU decisions at least some of the time. The role of the Eurocrats as ‘national’ representative is to a great extent limited to the meeting occasions and the preparatory meetings surrounding them. Their nomadic periods – going to and from the meetings – signify a time of preparation for being a true Eurocrat, and then withdrawing from it again. These Eurocratic practices fashion and construct the entity we know as the EU. Although one may debate whether these EU policy decisions are changing the Member States’ policies in any significant sense, there can be no doubt that, through the practices described here, these Eurocrats make decisions that go beyond the nation-state. In short, these practices

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are a significant part of the fabric of an emerging post-national European policy community.

Notes 1. All the names of the officials are fictional to ensure their anonymity. 2. In alphabetical order, they are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This study took place before the ten new Member States joined in 2003 and the EU-15 became the EU-25. 3. The emic is an anthropological concept that means informants have a different understanding of a concept or a phenomenon to that of the researchers.

References Abélès, M. 1993. ‘Political anthropology of the trans-national institution: the European Parliament’, French Politics & Society, 11 (1), pp. 1–19. Albrow, M. 1997. Do Organizations Have Feelings? London: Routledge. Aull Davis, C. 1999. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London: Routledge. Ben-Ari, E. and Elron, E. 2001. ‘Blue helmets and white armour: multi-nationalism and multi-culturalism among UN peacekeeping forces’, City & Society, 8 (2), pp. 275–306. Borneman, J. and Fowler, N. 1997. ‘Europeanisation’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, pp. 487–514. Bourdieu, P. 1994. ‘Rethinking the state: genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field’, Sociological Theory, 12 (1), pp. 1–18. Callon, M. 1998. ‘Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economics’, in M. Callon (ed.), The Laws of the Market. Oxford: Blackwell. Cooper, R. 2003. The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century. London: Atlantic Books. Council of the European Union. 2000. Council Decision 2000/98/EC. Official Journal of the European Communities. Cowles, M. G., Caporaso, J. and Risse, T. (eds). 2001. Transforming Europe: Europeanisation and Domestic Change. London: Cornell University Press. Delanty, G. and Rumford, C. 2005. Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanisation. London: Routledge. Egeberg, M. 2006. ‘Executive politics as usual: role behaviour and conflict dimensions in the College of European Commissioners’, Journal of European Public Policy, 13(1), pp. 1–15. Featherstone, K. and Radaelli, C. M. (eds) 2003. The Politics of Europeanisation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garsten, C. 1994. Apple World: Core and Periphery in a Transnational Organizational Culture. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 33. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. Garsten, C. and Montoya, M. L. de (eds). 2004. Market Matters: Exploring Cultural Processes in the Global Marketplace. Baskingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Hannerz, U. 2003. ‘Several sites in one’, in Thomas Hylland Eriksen (ed.), Globalisation: Studies in Anthropology. London: Pluto Press. Hasselström, A. 2003. On and Off the Trading Floor: An Inquiry into the Everyday Fashioning of Financial Market Knowledge. Stockholm: Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University. Herzfeld, M. 1992. The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy. London: University of Chicago Press. Jacobsson, B. and Mörth, U. 1998. ‘Europeiseringen och den svenska staten’, in G. Ahrne (ed.), Stater som organisationer. Stockholm: Nerenius & Santérus Förlag. Jacobsson, B., Lægreid, P. and Pedersen, O. K. 2004. Europeanisation and Transnational States: Comparing Nordic Central Governments. London: Routledge. Lipsky, M. 1980. Street-Level Bureaucracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Malkki, L. H. 1999 [1997]. ‘National geographic: the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees’, in A. Gupta and J. Ferguson (eds), Culture Power Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology. London: Duke University Press. Marcus, G. E. 1986. ‘Contemporary problems of ethnography in the modern world system’, in J. Clifford and G. E. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture: Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marcus, G. E. 1995. ‘Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography’, Annual Review in Anthropology, 24, pp. 95–117. Radaelli, C. M. 2003. ‘The Europeanisation of public policy’, in K. Featherstone and C. M. Radaelli (eds), The Politics of Europeanisation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ross, M. H. 1993. The Culture of Conflict: Interpretations and Interests in Comparative Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shore, C. and Wright, S. (eds) 1997. The Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London: Routledge. Thedvall, R. 2006. Eurocrats at Work: Negotiating Transparency in Post-National Employment Policy. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 58. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Van Maanen, J. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weber, M. 1958 [1946]. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated, edited, with an introduction by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. Weiss, G. and Wodak, R. 2000. ‘Debating Europe: globalization rhetoric and European Union unemployment policies’, in I. Bellier and T. M. Wilson (eds), An Anthropology of the European Union: Building, Imagining and Experiencing the New Europe. Oxford: Berg. Wulff, H. 2002. ‘Yo-yo fieldwork: mobility and time in a multi-local study of dance in Ireland’, Anthropological Journal on European Cultures, issue on Shifting Grounds: Experiments in Doing Ethnography, 11, pp. 117–36.

8 European Integration in Anthropological Perspective: Studying the ‘Culture’ of the EU Civil Service Cris Shore

Introduction The European Commission is typically portrayed as the ‘civil service’ of the European Union. However, its complex combination of executive, legislative, administrative and judicial powers and competencies make it unique among international bureaucracies. Unlike national civil services the Commission has policy-initiating powers and is centrally involved in EU decision-making at all levels. The Commission often defines itself as the ‘heart of the Union’, ‘engine of integration’ and ‘custodian of the Treaties’. Created in the 1950s, it is still a young organisation; multilingual, transnational and ‘supranational’ in character, yet subject to constant change with each new enlargement. Within the EU a key debate hinges on the Commission’s uniqueness as a public administration and how to create a distinctly ‘European’ model of civil service. At the head of the Commission is the ‘college’ of 25 national-government appointed commissioners, each of whom oversees a particular policy area. The Commission’s main headquarters are located in the Belgian capital of Brussels. At the time of fieldwork (1995–7) its staff numbered some 20 000 permanent officials spread over 24 Directorate-Generals (‘DGs’) and approximately 40 buildings mostly situated in the aptly named ‘European Quarter’ of the city. My study explored not only the effect of this cosmopolitan expatriate community on Belgian society but also the Commission’s internal dynamics. Behind my empirical research lay a deeper theoretical question: To what extent do Europe’s supranational institutions act as laboratories for creating a new type of European identity and subjectivity? 180

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‘Playing the game’: metaphors of European integration In the winter of 1984, shortly after completing my PhD in anthropology, I worked as a researcher (or ‘stagiaire’) for the European Parliament’s Research and Documentation Office in Luxembourg. Like many of my generation, I was interested in the ‘European idea’ and all that it stood for. Conventional wisdom held that the European Community was the living embodiment of the spirit of cooperation and ‘rapprochement’ that would make war in Europe unthinkable. Europe was building the architecture for a new political order that would ‘go beyond’ the nation-state and nationalism. But after three months in the job I had become increasingly puzzled by what that meant, how the workings of this remote outpost of European institutionalism related to those ideals, and what motivated the staff who worked there. My landlord, a former clerk from the British House of Commons, was the Director-General of one of the Parliament’s administrative divisions and paradoxically, as he informed me, an arch Eurosceptic. Driving to work through the Luxembourg snow one morning, he explained the European project: ‘What you have to understand, dear boy, is that the European Community is the outcome of French greed and German guilt.’ France, he explained, had ‘lost an empire and therefore needed somewhere else to send its young men’. The British, he added, were newcomers to the game – which was still run by the French.1 In the same week I asked my Head of Unit (a middle-ranking Scottish official in his late 50s, and selfprofessed Euro-idealist) to explain his job to me. His answer was that drafting Community policies was ‘like a game of semantics’. ‘The aim’, he continued, warming to his theme, ‘is to craft a resolution in such a way that it becomes acceptable to everyone – or at least enough MEPs to get it through Committee stage and then voted on in Strasbourg.’ Sometimes, he added wistfully, ‘You can spend months, even years, working on a resolution that is then rejected or dropped at the final hurdle. That’s the game; you have to get used to that.’ This was how two full-time career officials (fonctionnaires) explained to me the ‘rules of the game’ as they saw it. The use of gaming metaphors might suggest that a ‘rational choice’, ‘game theory’ or even ‘transaction list approach’ provides the most appropriate lens for analysing the behaviour of EU officials, or that policy-making might be conceptualised as a form of ‘deep play’ (Geertz, 1973b) and competitive bargaining. I recall Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, famously describing Council of Ministers negotiations as ‘like playing three-dimensional chess’. Alternatively, perhaps none of these theoretical lenses is appropriate:

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the ‘game’ metaphor might simply be the idiom used by local actors to make sense of their work and the challenges and frustrations it poses. As I learned later, the answer lay somewhere between these interpretations. EU officials did indeed see themselves as ‘players’ and ‘agents’, but in several parallel games with different sets of rules and rituals.

Studying the culture(s) of government elites: beyond positivism A central premise of this book is that traditional political science approaches to the study of top officials are inadequate for grasping the complexities and subtleties of everyday life inside government. While positivist approaches may be useful in defining the normative frameworks and structural parameters within which decision-making and organisational behaviour occurs, such detached, outsider/observer perspectives are remote from the actors involved and do little to help us understand the worlds of public officials as meaningful domains of social action. Put simply, traditional approaches based on quantitative methods, behaviourist assumptions, formal surveys or rational-choice models tell us little about the qualitative dimensions of elite cultures, the webs of informal rules and social relations, or the insiders’ perspectives that shape the worlds of top officials. Most anthropologists would agree with this argument, or at least the anti-positivist sentiment behind it.2 Anthropology as a discipline is concerned with worlds of meaning and subjectivity; it is fundamentally humanistic and reflexive in its attempt to understand and deconstruct those realms of human experience and intentionality and the social actions that derive from them. As Malinowski (1965 [1922]: 517) expressed it long ago, our aim is to understand what the world looks like from the ‘native’s point of view’; to grasp ‘his outlook on things, his Weltanschauung, the breath of life and reality which he breathes and by which he lives’. That goal is as pertinent for the study of policy professionals in complex European bureaucracies as it is for villagers in the remote islands of Melanesia. However, where there is less agreement is in the problematic question of how we should study these policy elites and their worlds, and what theories or methods provide the most effective tools for analysing the more intimate spaces of elite life. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among EU civil servants in Brussels, this chapter explores some of the epistemological and methodological challenges that confront us when we try to study EU officials ‘up close and personal’. More specifically, I examine how perspectives

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gleaned from symbolic anthropology (notably Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner) can help shed light on the character of the European Commission and its so-called ‘organisational culture’. While qualitative researchers in political science have increasingly turned to Geertz’s work for inspiration (Chabal and Daloz, 2006), I suggest that Turner’s approach offers a more useful framework for analysing elite cultures. My aim, however, is not to engage in introverted disciplinary debates over the relative merits of these two symbolic anthropologists. Rather, I simply want to highlight the importance of going beyond semiotics and ‘thick description’ by focusing on performance, ritual process and boundary maintenance behaviour, themes central to Turner’s work. Doing fieldwork in Brussels I discovered that elite life among European civil servants is highly ritualistic, performative, and concerned with boundaries (a fact reflected in the many turf wars for prestige and power between the different Directorates). EU officials, it seemed, were daily ‘performing’ European integration in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. There is a wider context that should be mentioned here. Since the allegations of fraud and corruption that led to the resignation of the Santer Commission on 15 March 1999, the ‘culture’ of the Commission has become an issue of major importance for both EU scholars and policy-makers (Cini, 2001). A key question often raised is how do we explain the extraordinary levels of cronyism and mismanagement documented by the European Court of Auditors and the Committee of Independent Experts (CIE, 1999; Macmullen, 1999; Shore, 2005)? Even before the scandal of 1999, the Commission’s ‘organisational culture’ had become a subject of considerable theoretical importance (Ludlow, 1992; Edwards and Spence, 1994; Page, 1997). For many integration theorists, the success of the EU’s project hinges on its capacity to forge a new European identity among its staff. The ‘functional integration’ of European officials and politicians within the EU’s organisational milieu has long been seen as an essential ingredient for creating a distinctly European civil service (Mitrany, 1998 [1966]). According to Monnet and Schuman, Europe’s ‘supranational’ institutions would act as crucibles for creating a new type of European political subject. From the institution chrysalis of the High Authority would emerge Homo Europaeus, or so Monnet believed:3 a creolised cadre of cosmopolitan post-national professional Europeans who would do for Europe what the pioneers of nationalism had done for the nationstate in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The role that European institutions play in shaping consciousness and identity continues to

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be debated, but whether one subscribes to this theory or not, the EU’s civil service can clearly be construed as a microcosm (and ‘macrocosm’) for the wider integration project (Peterson, 1997). The question of the Commission’s ‘culture’ has understandably become a compelling concern for EU analysts and policy professionals. If Europe cannot achieve unity here at the ‘heart of Europe’, what hope is there of forging such unity beyond Brussels and among Europe’s population at large? Do the social relations being forged within the EU’s institutions offer glimpses of the possibilities (or limits) of European integration in general?

What is ‘symbolic anthropology’? Why ‘thick description’ is not enough Symbolic anthropology refers to several different approaches the central theme of which is that ‘culture’ can be studied as a relatively autonomous entity, or a system of shared meanings that we attempt to unravel through the decoding and interpretation of key symbols and rituals (Ortner, 1973; Spencer, 1996). A second core assumption is that people’s actions are guided by interpretation and ‘understanding’ (in the Max Weber sense of verstehen), and that people’s beliefs, however incomprehensible, become intelligible when understood as part of a cultural system of meaning. While both Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner are recognised as the pioneers of symbolic anthropology, outside of anthropology Geertz’s work enjoys far greater appeal and notoriety. The reasons for this are not hard to fathom; the quality of his writing and flamboyant style and his creative use of literary and philosophical conceits has gained him public recognition in a manner that few anthropologists since Malinowski or Mead have attained. Geertz also introduced a number of novel analytical concepts based on literary theory and textual analysis, including ‘thick description’, ‘deep play’, the notions of culture as ‘webs of significance’ and ‘culture-as-text’, and what he claims is an ‘interpretive’ and ‘hermeneutic’ perspective achieved through a ‘restless oscillation between minutiae and generalization’, or ‘experience near’ and ‘experience far’ (Geertz, 1983). Geertz’s approach, which he defines as ‘essentially a semiotic one’, aims at understanding a culture through the study of signs and their meanings. Most action, he argues, is symbolic in nature, or infused with symbolic meaning. For Geertz, a culture is not some super-organic level of reality, nor is it something located ‘in the minds and hearts of men’ or in the invisible rules of language and taxonomies (Geertz,

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1973a: 11). Rather, it is the sum of all the different codes used to convey meaning within a particular group. These are the ‘webs of significance’ upon which all human experience is ‘suspended’ (Geertz, 1973a: 5). The object of a study of meaning is to grasp not simply ‘the native’s point of view’, but rather the ‘interpretations to which people of a particular denomination subject their experience’ (1973a: 15). This is a subtle but important distinction. Geertz’s stance is less an attempt to understand how the world is seen as how it is ‘seen to be seen’. This idea is based on the acknowledgement that anthropological interpretations are inevitably at two or more degrees of separation from that which they interpret; that is, our interpretations of their interpretations: Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of ‘construct a reading of’) a manuscript – foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries. (Geertz 1973a: 10) While interpretive anthropology can provide wonderfully evocative accounts of public events and the symbolic worlds that people inhabit, its dependence on textual metaphors, literary devices and highly subjective interpretations leads to some major shortcomings in its theory of culture and in its representations of ‘meaning’. Geertz’s ethnographic accounts often blur into narrative fictions (Crapanzano, 1986) and his ‘thick descriptions’ are curiously ‘thin’ when it comes to portraying real individuals or representing himself. There is little genuine reflexivity in Geertz’s ethnography; just enough to establish the authenticity of the author’s presence before he disappears from the narrative account. Interpretive anthropology claims to provide a window into the ‘ethos’ of a cultural system; that what we observe in public rituals is the externalisation of private sensibilities. But whose meanings are being portrayed in these interpretive accounts and who is to say that this is how the people themselves see or interpret their world (Schneider, 1987; Scholte, 1986)? How do we satisfy the demand for ‘verification’ that the insights gained from fieldwork are not simply the fruit of hearsay, subjective bias or fanciful speculation? This problem of ‘verification’ was one that I encountered repeatedly during fieldwork when trying to explain my research to EU officials (many of whom had their own convictions about how to conduct social research). As one senior official caustically remarked following my attempts to explain the ethnographic approach: ‘So anthropology is really just anecdotal. How can you prove anything when your research

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method is simply personal experience?’ This ‘burden of proof’ issue becomes even more troublesome when we ‘study up’ and try to gain access to the private worlds of public officials. To anthropologists it may seem axiomatic that much of the official behaviour observed in institutional settings is ritual and symbolic in nature, but to the officials concerned such a proposition may be anything but obvious. The selfimage of Western bureaucracy rests precisely on a classificatory system that pits its own inherent ‘rationality’ against the disorderly and irrational ‘Other’ (Herzfeld, 1992). Given that ethnographic narratives have little credibility with our informants, and still less with the more positivistic human sciences, writing persuasive accounts of government elites requires that we go ‘beyond ethnography’. The challenge is to combine ‘thick description’ and personal observations with other types of more tangible and verifiable data so we manage to portray those elite worlds from multiple vantage points.

The properties and functions of symbols: using Turner’s approach By comparison with Geertz’s textual approach, Turner offers a more sociologically grounded framework for analysing the symbolic dimensions of public behaviour, one that avoids the excesses of literary interpretation. Turner’s approach was developed in his work on ritual among the Ndembu of Zambia. His book The Forest of Symbols (1967) became one of the founding texts of symbolic anthropology. The book begins by noting the importance of rituals in Ndembu life; these seem to permeate every aspect of daily life in the villages. The challenge for Turner is to work out what these rituals and their symbols mean and what they do – which, as he points out, we can only gauge by looking at them in their social context: I found that I could not analyse ritual symbols without studying them in a time series in relation to other events, for symbols are essentially involved in social processes. I came to see performances of ritual as distinct phases in the social processes whereby groups became adjusted to internal changes and adapted to their external environment. (Turner, 1967: 20) These themes of ‘adaptation’, ‘performativity’, and symbols as vehicles for shaping action and moving people between social states are

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hallmarks of Turner’s approach. Ritual symbols, he argues, perform three functions: they condense objects and actions into a single formation; they unify disparate meanings, and they also polarise meanings – typically between ‘ideological’ and ‘sensory’ realms (Turner, 1967: 28). All ritual symbols, Turner proposes, are ‘collective representations’ that stimulate emotion and ‘channel desires and feeling’ according to the ‘norms and values that guide and control persons as members of social groups and categories’ (Turner, 1967: 28–9). So how does one recognise those particularly salient symbols that underpin a society? Turner’s answer is that a dominant symbol ‘encapsulates the major properties of the total ritual process’ (Turner, 1967: 30), and that the structure and properties of these can be inferred from three classes of data: (1) external form and observable characteristics; (2) interpretations offered by specialists and laymen; (3) significant contexts, which are largely worked out by the anthropologist. (Turner, 1967: 20) It is the second step that most differentiates Turner from Geertz. Whereas Geertz moves directly from thick description – via erudite philosophical musings – to general analysis and exegesis, Turner invites us to give serious consideration to the different interpretations of lay and expert observers and to the contexts in which action occurs. His third step goes beyond the first and second and may even contradict them. Like Geertz, he contends that explanation does not lie at the level of the actors’ frame of reference and that the best interpretation of a symbol or cultural practice is not necessarily the one you get from the ‘native’s point of view’. But this begs a deeper epistemological question: When anthropologists interpret the ‘meaning’ of a ritual, whose interpretations are these – the anthropologists’, their native informants’ and ritual specialists’, or the lay individuals’ participating in the ritual itself (Sperber, 1985; Spencer, 1996)? Who is to say ‘they are wrong: this is the explanation’? Turner’s answer, which he demonstrates using the example of puberty rituals, is that Ndembu informants are often unable to recognise the contradictions in their own accounts, and that it takes a professional observer to infer the way symbols connect with the wider social contexts in which they are situated. To argue that it takes a professional outsider with a more holistic view to discern the ‘wood from the trees’ in the metaphorical ‘forests of symbols’ might not seem contentious when applied to the culture of pre-literate tribal peoples, but can we apply such reasoning to

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government officials and policy professionals? What interpretive lens is appropriate for analysing the ‘culture’ of a civil service? In what follows, I explore how symbolic anthropology can help us understand the culture of the EU civil service. In many respects the fieldwork process was for me a ‘rite of passage’ not dissimilar to the ritual process described by Turner. As I hope to show, my own journey into the world of EU officials helped me to understand what ‘Europeanisation’ means in this complex bureaucratic milieu, and how it is that officials become socialised into the norms and practices of the EU’s administration.

Studying the ‘tribes of Europe’: reflections on fieldwork and method My initial interest in the EU civil service had little to do with rituals or symbolism. In 1992 I began work on a study of the European Community’s emerging ‘cultural policy’; that cluster of ‘cultural actions’ and information initiatives funded by the European Parliament that were aimed at promoting the Community’s external image and identity. While carrying out that research, however, I came across the ‘People’s Europe’ campaign and what appeared to be a ‘hidden history’ of European Community attempts to invent new symbols for Europe, from ‘harmonised’ passports, postage stamps and driving licences to the new EU logo, flag and anthem (Adonnino, 1985; Shore, 1996). Having studied the history of nation-state formation and the work of historians on ‘invented traditions’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983), I recognised the significance of what was at stake here. What fascinated me was not only what these symbols signified, but the assumptions (or rationality) that had given rise to their invention. I also wanted to explore how officials justified the need for creating European symbols and their blatant use of PR and marketing techniques, and how they saw themselves within this process of social engineering. From analysing EU policies aimed at ‘Europeanising’ the masses, it seemed logical to examine how EU elites themselves were being Europeanised.4 My ‘infiltration’ of the Commission was not the fruit of skilful networking or friends in high places. Despite two stints as a stagiaire (or intern) in the European Parliament, I had no network of contacts inside the Commission, no high-ranking patron, and no official pass giving me carte blanche access to go everywhere and talk to anyone at any level. I had to rely instead on a slower, more haphazardous entry. Doing fieldwork in government bureaucracies demanded a different strategy

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to the ethnographic approach described in the traditional monographs. Intensive participant-observation in a bounded local space (what some anthropologists term ‘deep hanging out’) is hardly feasible in a bureaucratic environment where security guards will escort any visitor off the premises if they are not wearing a valid official pass, and where staff require letters and follow-up telephone calls before granting you a brief appointment. Most interviews were conducted ‘off the record’ with informants insisting on ‘journalists’ rules’ (that is, ‘you can print what I tell you as long as the source remains anonymous’). Perhaps the most valuable ‘method’ was simply making the most of the desire of informants to talk and be listened to. As a sympathetic interlocutor eager to learn about the life-worlds of ordinary officials I had little trouble finding interviewees and what was typically framed as ‘Can I have half an hour of your time?’ would often end up as a deep conversation stretching far into the evening. I quickly learned that the best time to schedule meetings was late afternoon as officials tended to be more relaxed and garrulous in the postprandial hours. I also adopted the ‘snowball technique’; if the interview had gone well, I would ask informants who they would recommend I talk to for alternative perspectives on the issues discussed. I conducted over 100 interviews in this way, including with Parliament and Council officials, MEPs, journalists and lobbyists. Most interviews took place in the offices of my informants, but some occurred in the less formal settings, in canteens, cafés, coffee bars, or restaurants. The absence of official backing had advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand it meant that I was not granted free and unlimited access to officials or their meetings, but on the other hand it gave me complete independence and autonomy. This was particularly important. Shortly before I arrived in Brussels to conduct fieldwork, the Commission’s Cellule de Prospective – the ‘think-tank’ created by President Jacques Delors and headed by Jerôme Vignon – had employed a team of anthropologists (two French and one British), to investigate ‘the existence or not of specific Commission culture’ and to look at the ‘weight of different languages and national cultural traditions and their impact on working relationships, and how a European identity might emerge in such a context’ (Abélès et al., 1993: 1). Whereas members of that team had to overcome staff suspicions that they had been sent to spy on the organisation, I at least had no such baggage. However, identifying myself as an ‘anthropologist’ brought other problems. Typically, it provoked bemusement or jokes about coming to ‘darkest Brussels’ to study ‘the tribes of Europe’. I eventually gave up introducing myself as an anthropologist in favour of the more acceptable label of ‘social

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scientist’, although that then led several informants to ask me ‘what hypothesis’ was I testing and where was my questionnaire? Gaining familiarity with the organisation took time. I rented an office in a building occupied by several national research councils in Rue de la Loi, at the heart of the European Quarter of Brussels. One of my colleagues (a professional lobbyist), memorably described the Commission as ‘like a giant fish-tank’ and herself as ‘an outsider with her nose pressed against the glass, wondering what’s going on inside’. In my own case, I did manage to get beyond the glass exterior. The snowballing method worked well and I made friends as well as helpful acquaintances. I also joined a number of staff associations (including the Commission squash club), which gave me access to a network that spanned the different divisions – and an excuse to meet officials outside the workspace.

Inside the Commission In the Commission’s neo-classical nomenclature the major Directorates (which had grown to some twenty-three by 1996) were designated by Roman numerals. My research focused mainly on two DirectorateGenerals (or ‘DGs’); the first (DGX) was responsible for Culture, the second (DGIX) for Administration. DGIX had been recommended to me on the grounds that staff in this large, Francophone and most traditional of Directorates ‘knew where the bodies are buried’. Whereas DGX was a popular albeit politically minor unit, DGIX was described as a backwater; the ‘graveyard of careers’ and a place where ‘people were sent and never returned’. Within the DGs, staff are ranked hierarchically and labelled according to function. ‘A’ grades are university educated, perform ‘conceptual’ work and are the highest paid; ‘B’ grades are technicians and administrators; ‘C’ grades (by far the largest category and composed overwhelmingly of Belgian and Italian nationals) are secretarial and support staff, and ‘D’ grades are mainly security guards, van drivers, porters (huissiers) and tea persons. Among all grades promotions are allegedly based on merit and posts are filled irrespective of nationality. Reference to ‘national quotas’ was something of a taboo within the Commission. Yet in practice many sensitive senior positions were ‘reserved’ for particular nationalities (these were described as ‘carrying a national flag’; for example, the Director-Generals for Administration and Agriculture were reputedly ‘always French’). Member State governments kept a keen eye on the relative number of ‘A’ grades, and ‘respecting geographical

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balance’ was the accepted euphemism for the de facto national quota system in operation. ‘The Commission is a career civil service only up to level 4 of the A grade’, I was told. Promotion beyond that requires political allies and strong national support. The practice of placing national appointees into A1 and A2 positions (parachutage as it was termed) was a complaint I often heard, particularly from Union officials. Jacques Delors was allegedly ‘notorious for abusing the system, for ensuring that his henchmen commanded all the key posts’ and individuals who got in his way were either metaphorically ‘killed’, or shunted into the voi de garage (‘parking lot’). Three other factors were typically emphasised by staff when explaining the unusual character of the Commission: its independence from national government, its ‘uniqueness’ as a form of public administration, and its small size given the complexity and scope of its tasks. ‘Our job’, I was often told, ‘is to uphold the interests of the Community as a whole.’ ‘Community’ in the strict sense meant the European institutions and acquis communautaire, but was often used generally to refer to the EU and its citizens as a whole. The idea of standing ‘above’ the parochialism of national governments and promoting the wider ‘European interest’, with the belief that working in the EU somehow ‘denationalised’ individuals were recurring themes in the way officials talked about themselves. All of these ideas were epitomised in the concept of ‘supranationalism’ and in the normative assumptions that underpinned the Commission’s legal status as an independent ‘supranational’ body. The Commission’s role is to draft proposals for new European laws but it is also the EU’s executive arm responsible for implementing decisions of Parliament and the Council, managing the EU’s day-to-day business, implementing its policies, running its programmes and spending its funds. This unusual bundling of tasks also contributes to the Commission’s sense of ‘uniqueness’ and its claim to being an administration without precedent or parallel in history. That belief fuelled the strong sense of ‘mission’ that informed the way many staff saw their role. One of the appeals of being an EU fonctionnaire, officials often conceded, was the feeling of ‘making history’; of being a ‘pioneer’ and part of the wider project of European construction (la constructione européene).5 Not everyone expressed such idealism, however; for many the attractions of joining the EU civil service had more to do with the high status, job security and extremely generous salaries enjoyed by EU fonctionnaires. Nonetheless, as Willis (1982) observed two decades earlier, most European civil servants were self-selected and shared a strong sense of commitment to the ‘European ideal’.

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Finally, its small size and cosmopolitan character were two other distinguishing features of the Commission. Despite popular stereotypes about a vast organisation run by an army of anonymous bureaucrats, the Commission’s day-to-day running is done by a small (and surprisingly accessible) staff of administrators, experts, translators, interpreters and secretaries, numbering some 20 000 (‘less than the total number employed by the city council of Barcelona or Cardiff’ I was often told). This small size has led to a common ‘insider’s’ view of the Commission as a compact, efficient, dynamic organisation; ‘a lean machine’ composed of ‘Europe’s brightest and best’ (Williamson, 1994: 25). ‘The most efficient administration in Europe’ was how another informant described it. ‘What I like about this place’, one official enthused: is its multicultural character. Our head of unit is German, we have two Spaniards, a Belgian and an Irish secretary, two French, a Greek and a Dane yet no one cares about your nationality. You get into the lift and you hear five languages spoken  yet we all work together. Relations in the office are informal and friendly. This is what Europe means. Others were less sanguine. Sipping coffee in a Commission staff canteen one day, a veteran secretary of one of the most senior officials in the Commission mused over my research question. She hadn’t thought about whether the Commission reflected European integration on a wider scale. She supposed the star-fish shaped Berlaymont building, the Commission’s former HQ, was the most visible symbol for the EU. Then she laughed at the irony. For several years now the Berlaymont had stood empty and covered in a white tarpaulin since staff had been evacuated after health and safety officials had deemed the building unsafe for human habitation following staff complaints about leaking asbestos. Every night, under cover of darkness, shift-workers dressed in safety clothing and protective masks were working overtime to clear the building of its carcinogenic contamination. ‘Not a good symbol for Europe is it’, she beamed, ‘the “cancer at the heart of Europe” ’.

European integration and engrenage: performance or ritual process? To summarise all that I learned about the Commission’s ‘organisational culture’ is beyond the scope of this chapter.6 However, after a few months several key themes emerged. The first was evidence of a strong esprit de corps and shared consciousness-of-kind among staff. This was

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reflected in the frequent use of ‘house’ metaphors when referring to the Commission (another key symbol and boundary marker), the constant use of ‘We’ or ‘We in the House’ when referring to fellow Commission staff, and the EU’s shared, semi-private language composed of in-house phrases, bureaucratic acronyms and hybridised francophone neologisms (such as ‘going en missione’ or ‘holding a tour de table’). Although many officials would often describe their work as routine and bureaucratic (‘just like any public administration’) the uniqueness of the organisation and its mission were often stressed. The ‘Euro-idealism’ of the early generation of European officials may have waned (Ludlow, 1992), but it is clearly still evident. I noted an interesting degree of ‘spillover’ between official EU narratives about the Commission’s role in creating a new European order, and the way staff spoke about themselves as agents in that process. For some staff, working in the Commission was literally a ‘daily plebiscite’ and way of ‘performing’ the European idea. Several informants spoke passionately about their affection for the ‘House’ and how much they ‘love the Commission’. My research entailed lengthy ethnographic interviews with a number of current and former personnel directors. It was here, listening to them describing the Commission’s personnel policy and administrative culture (often with exasperation) that I made a key discovery and experienced one of those rare ‘aha’ moments of insight and epiphany. Despite the Commission’s claims to be forging a new and distinctly ‘European’ model of civil service, many staff spoke about the chronic lack of anything resembling ‘career management’ and a coherent personnel policy. One senior staff manager, who previously worked for the UK Cabinet Office, put it bluntly: ‘The most striking thing about the Commission’s personnel policy is that it doesn’t have one.’ ‘What we have instead’, he continued, ‘are the Staff Statutes’ – which he thought explained why staffing issues tended to be so individualistic and legalistic. As he saw it, his job was to ‘bring the Commission’s personnel policy into the twentieth century’, part of which meant getting it to recognise the concept of ‘personnel management’. These views were not confined to British officials. A senior French fonctionnaire and former Personnel Director with over twenty years’ experience in the organisation confirmed these criticisms. The Commission, he said, had never really developed an ‘Anglo-Saxon type of human resources strategy’ as ‘the high salary was deemed to be enough’. From the outside ‘it looks hierarchical and well structured, but in reality there are no rules. Many people can’t bear this. But that is what makes the Commission so great and so interesting.’ The concept of ‘human

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resource management’, I was told by another former Personnel Director, was alien to the Commission: There is no career management, personnel development or grading and promotion structure here: once you’re ‘in’ it is every man for himself. There is a system of two-yearly staff reports, but these consist of a derisory set of boxes to be ticked. To get ahead in your career you have to be an entrepreneur; play the game, make use of contacts. Unless you have patronage and a network of personal contacts you’re not going to get there. So there is a lot of disenchantment among older staff who haven’t been promoted.7 So how do new staff get inducted into the ‘House’? I asked. That develops through daily exposure to life in the institution. Working here changes people. You learn to make compromises, to cooperate, to look at problems and their solutions from a European perspective. I’ve seen it happen all the time. Even the most ardent nationalists become engrenagé after six months in the job. I cannot recall the first time I heard the word engrenage being used in this context, but over the next few months I became increasingly aware of its strategic importance, not only as local metaphor for describing how new staff get caught up in the Commission’s ‘way of doing things’ (that is, socialised into the Brussels milieu) but as theory of identity formation among European elites and an explanation of the process by which seconded national experts, politicians and technocrats come to redirect their loyalties towards the EU and its institutions. In its literal sense engrenage translates as ‘gearing’ (in the sense of ‘cogs in a wheel’), but as I found, it had become a common idiom among EU staff to describe the transformative process by which national officials (including lobbyists and journalists) come to acquire the mental habits and practices of ‘Europeans’. Warming to my discovery, I pursued this theme in further conversations. For EU officials, it seemed, engrenage was clearly a ‘dominant symbol’ in the sense implied by Turner (1967). It not only embodied the ‘European idea’ but also described the mechanism that linked individual participants to the wider ritual process of ‘European integration’ itself;8 namely, the journey through which individuals become ‘enmeshed’ or ‘entangled’ in the EU’s ‘web of meanings’. One Commission official I interviewed had even written a book about this phenomenon explaining

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how British Eurosceptic Labour MEPs, once elected to the European Parliament, rapidly became enthusiastic EU supporters. He called his theory ‘Cotta’s Law’ (Westlake, 1994). However, when I asked him whether ‘Cotta’s Law’ also applied to Commission officials like himself he seemed genuinely caught off guard. His reply was that engrenage didn’t apply to A-grade officials because they were ‘already committed to the cause’ and had ‘already demonstrated their belief’ by joining the Commission. Initial findings thus confirmed what integration theorists had long predicted: the EU’s institutions are catalysts for promoting cohesion among national officials and for engendering a distinctly European ethos and identity. The idea of engrenage is consistent with the ‘Monnet Method’ of European integration: integration understood as a steady incremental process of ‘functional spillover’. Monnet’s approach was to initiate an ‘action trap’ in which once actors embark on a specific course of action (for example, the harmonisation of regulations necessary for creating the Single European Market, or economic and monetary union) they find themselves obliged to take further actions which take them in directions they did not necessarily intend to go. It is unclear whether the term engrenage entered the lexicon of EU officials via Monnet’s writings or those of EU academics, but as I later discovered, it has also been used to describe processes of socialisation among officials in other EU institutions, including the Council of Ministers. There is a shared culture in the Council, in spite of the public and publicized tensions and agonistic positioning. Embedded in informal practices, as well as rooted in formal procedures, this is reinforced by forms of socialization and engrenage  Our study reveals that decision-makers, in spite of their national roots, become locked into the collective process, especially in areas of well-established and recurrent negotiation. This does not mean that the participants have transferred loyalties to the EU system, but it does mean that they acknowledge themselves in certain crucial ways as being part of the collective system of decision-making. (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 1997: 278–9) My study also found that officials become ‘locked’ into a collective process, one that entailed both the creation of a shared ‘consciousness of kind’ and a transfer of loyalties. However, I also found that the Commission’s emerging supranational political culture, with its

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informal methods, personal networks and incoherent management, bore little resemblance to the harmonious ideal-type that had been so keenly anticipated at its inception.

The Commission seen from other perspectives: insider, lay and expert views At this point I am reminded of Victor Turner’s advice that our analysis should consider contrasting lay and specialist interpretations. The work of other anthropologists and EU analysts might appropriately be classified within the category of ‘ritual specialist’. The Commission-appointed team led by Marc Abélès explored numerous aspects of Commission life including language use, the relevance of stereotypes, social relations at work, the impact of hierarchy, attitudes towards management, the relevance of North–South differences, and personnel policy. Their main conclusion was that the Commission had no overarching cohesive culture but was composed, instead, of a diversity of competing cultures constructed on the basis of language, nationality and departmental identities and allegiances that were closely tied to specific policy areas (Abélès et al., 1993). Curiously, their report makes little reference to the consequences likely to result from this, or to the history of the organisation and its enduring legacies; instead we are presented with an image of the Commission as an heroically disorganised, cosmopolitan entity based on a plethora of compromises that have been shaped by departmental loyalties, key personalities and intra-DG turf-war over prestige and resources. The Abélès study echoes sentiments about the Commission heard frequently in the field: ‘The surprising thing about the Commission is not that it works well, but that it should work at all.’ Bramwell’s study, although based on research carried out in the 1980s, also depicts an organisation cut through by difference, contradictory management regimes and intra-departmental rivalry. However, beyond the chaos and diversity there exist, Bramwell suggests, many characteristics and practices that stem from the Commission’s Francophone heritage. According to Bramwell, the main elements of the Commission’s ‘political culture’ include intense internal competition, powerful national and subnational enclaves (including Neapolitans, Corsicans and Welsh), and the prevalence of personal fiefdoms. What unites Commission staff, Bramwell suggests (1987: 75) is less supranational cosmopolitanism as a ‘defensive solidarity against the outside world’ combined with ‘an internal paranoia’. ‘The hoped-for emergence of a

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supra-national political culture’, Bramwell concludes, ‘does not seem to have taken place.’ The Commission rather presents a picture of irreconcilables, of intranational strife and of inter-nation clashes. The over-representation of some nationalities and minorities does, however, give the Commission a certain flavor, a sub-culture. It is that of collaboration. The big, strong countries form yet another occupying power. Resentful, uncharming, sour, but determined to survive, the Alsatians, Corsicans, Walloons, and so on, like the Cathars of old in the mountains, occupy the interstices of the institution, repelling boarders, invaders. It is their thing. Cosa nostra. They play cards by the boiler rooms, surrounded by beer bottles and pot plants. They gaze suspiciously at their British counterparts over the groaning dinner tables, utterly unconvinced by British charm, puzzled by British refusal to plot against them. (Bramwell, 1987: 77–8) Bramwell’s observations about the politicisation of the service and absence of a coherent human resources policy were echoed in the Committee of Experts report which also drew explicit links between the dysfunctional aspects of the Commission’s administrative culture and the prevalence of mismanagement, fraud and corruption. Two important fieldwork encounters underlined that connection. The first was in 1996 while interviewing a leader from one of the main staffing unions (Union Sindicale). Our conversation was interrupted by urgent Union business involving a dispute between management and staff at the recently created Committee of the Regions (CoR). The entire staff was embroiled in heated industrial action with management and were picketing and boycotting its meetings. But this strike was not over pay: the dispute was against the CoR leadership for allegedly violating EC rules and equal opportunities policies by appointing friends and supporters to highly paid permanent jobs within the organisation. A week later I joined a Union rally outside the European Parliament as a small crowd of officials (sporting red caps, banners and loud-speakers) handed out leaflets demanding that the Commission abide by its proper recruitment procedures and ‘stop using rigged concours’ and ‘titularisation exams’ to fast-track favoured ‘girlfriends and cronies’. I remember conveying my dismay at encountering such flagrant patronage to a former colleague now working in the European Parliament. She agreed they had a point and that such behaviour reflected badly on the EU, particularly in this most recently created EU institution (established by

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the Maastricht Treaty precisely to ‘bring Europe closer to its citizens’), but she refrained from condemning the CoR management. It was only later that she admitted having been one of the lucky few ‘invited’ to interview for one of those new ‘A-grade’ positions there. I subsequently discovered that these employment practices were not as uncommon as they might seem. David Spence is one of a number of EU analysts who occupy that curious space between ‘native/insider’ and ‘expert/outsider’. I met Spence several times during fieldwork and we talked at length about the Commission’s peculiarities as a public administration. Yet it was his chapter on Commission staffing and personnel policy that provided the clearest insight into the Commission as a ‘cultural system’. Spence argues there are two Commission administrative systems: a ‘formal’, legal-rational one, whose rules are set out in the Staff Statutes, and an informal one based on personal networks, covert methods and pragmatic codes of conduct. However, repeated failure to respect the Statutes and the increasing use of political appointees and non-statutory staff has fuelled a growing dependence on the latter. Within the Commission we have thus witnessed ‘the emergence of an almost parallel administrative regime with its own salary scales, promotion prospects and procedures’ (Spence, 1994: 65). This is a startling admission, as one of Spence’s colleagues remarked that Bernard Connolly, the Commission’s former expert on EMU, had been sacked for making far less critical or damaging comments.9 The Commission’s combination of a formal system comprising ‘rigid bureaucratic structures’ and legal rules and a pervasive ‘informal’ system based around personal networks and ‘flexible’ working methods was typically described as a legacy of the French tradition (Spence, 1994: 64).10 Indeed, many of the problems of mismanagement identified by Spence – including a ‘highly politicized senior management closely linked to the party in power’, the powerful Cabinet system, and the tendency to ‘use information as a constituent element of a bureaucratic and political power base’ – originate from the French system of public administration (Spence, 1994: 91). As a result, many dysfunctional practices – from cronyism (or piston), parachutage and posts reserved for certain nationalities, to ‘rigged exams’, seconding national experts, fly-by-night titular exams and various other back-door recruitment methods – have become virtually institutionalised (Spence, 1994: 92). Most of these practices came to light in the evidence submitted in the report of the Committee of Independent Experts (CIE, 1999), although they had been identified in the Spierenburg report (1979) published twenty years earlier. One of the worst cases of corruption the Committee

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of Independent Experts found was in the Commission’s Security Office, which reports directly to the President. The report’s comments on the shadowy world of corruption and collusion that existed between the Security Office staff and the Belgian police echo Bramwell: There was a peculiar complicity within the security system and between the Security Office and other circles in the Commission that created a ‘regulation-free-zone’, where existing laws and regulations were regarded as cumbersome barriers to various forms of arbitrary action rather than as rules to be respected. The security system appears to have been undermined by a sub-culture which was characterized by personal relationships, a system of ‘give-and-take’ and a withdrawal from the overall system of control and surveillance. The question must be asked as to how such a sub-culture could develop, exist and prevail in a section of the European civil service without being detected from within, brought to light only when a newspaper published the allegations. (CIE, 1999: 102)

Conclusions: the Commission in anthropological perspective It would be tempting to try to conclude with a sophisticated exegesis that illuminates the ‘deep structures’ beneath the enigmatic surface phenomena described above. What I have tried to show instead is that understanding a ‘cultural system’ – or even an ‘administrative system’ – requires multiple vantage points and recognition that there are competing lay and specialist perspectives to consider, not to mention competing anthropological interpretations. I have loosely applied a Turneresque approach in what I hoped would be a corrective to the current fascination with Geertz’s seductive interpretive analysis. Unlike Geertz, Turner’s work reminds us that the events and processes we observe have no fixed or unambiguous meanings. Indeed, ambiguity (about its character, its legal competencies and its role in history) are arguably defining features of the European Commission. What I have tried to show is that empirical studies of political elites based on anthropological fieldwork and symbolic analysis have clear advantages over those more conventional political science approaches based on abstract models and dry institutional comparisons, most of which tend to be shot through with universal assumptions and teleological premises. One of the advantages is simply that fieldwork allows for an element of surprise to shape the research process. Observations and insights arise that were never part of the original research design

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and could never have been anticipated. When we study people ‘up close and personal’ we learn to see them as social actors and cultural agents, with ‘warts and all’. Participant observation (‘being there’) also allows researchers to be more responsive to the unexpected – to serendipity – and better equipped to follow events on the ground as they develop, often with little knowledge of where they might lead. In my case, what began as an enquiry into the European Commission’s ‘administrative norms’ and ‘organisational culture’ and whether these might be promoting integration among policy elites, broadened into an exploration of the ‘centrifugal’ forces leading to disunity and fragmentation within the EU civil service. I did not set out to study fraud or corruption in the EU, but what I discovered about the Commission’s ‘personnel policy’ undoubtedly helps explain the events that precipitated the downfall of the Santer Commission. ‘To understand the Commission’, I was told one night by a veteran ‘A-grade’ Belgian official, ‘you should read the history of the middle ages.’ The CIE report asked ‘[h]ow did such a sub-culture develop and exist    without being detected?’ It is certainly curious that, until the scandal broke, virtually none of the many hundreds of policy analysts, journalists or EU scholars had written about the problems of fraud, nepotism and cronyism detailed in the CIE report. How did the internal life of this most public of administrations remain so private? Could it be that such phenomena were invisible to all those pundits and professionals, many of whom owe their reputations – and careers – to their expertise in EU affairs? ‘The journalists here are all part of the system’, several shrewd officials had said. To echo Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Yet part of the explanation for this willing myopia also lies in the systems of classification that European governments use to judge organisational ‘rationality’ and ‘efficiency’. For years, the pragmatic modus operandi of the Commission, with its ‘informal practices’ and networking dynamics, was not merely tolerated by Member State governments and officials but actually celebrated (Middlemas, 1995). This was the source of the EU’s dynamism and efficiency, or so it was argued. What made Delors, Kohl and Mitterrand such celebrated ‘European statesmen’ was their ability to ‘get things done’ in order to advance the integration project. The scandal of 1999 showed that those who believe the ‘ends justify the means’ should also consider the unforeseen consequences that such calculations entail. While the close ties, fluidity and networking within the EU administration rendered it dynamic and flexible and capable of taking enormous

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initiatives during the Delors era, those same features also engendered an environment that was conducive to the informal practices and personal politicking that resulted in the Commission’s downfall. I have also tried to make the case for going beyond ‘thick description’ and why we need narrative accounts that combine ethnography and personal experience with other kinds of persuasive data, including official reports, archival sources, memoirs and other testimonies. Turner’s work provides a model for how different kinds of viewpoints (both lay and expert) can be used to triangulate such evidence. This gives a robustness to research findings that is usually absent from interpretive and purely symbolic approaches. It means that when we hear evidence of collusion and corruption that concurs with what local experts and insiders report, our findings cannot so easily be dismissed as subjective, biased or ‘merely anecdotal’. Turner also provides a useful model for helping us to identity which symbols are socially significant and why. Rituals, he argues, often function to convert the ‘obligatory’ into the ‘desirable’ by aligning ethical and juridical norms with strong emotional stimuli. As he puts it: ‘The basic unit of ritual, the dominant symbol, encapsulates the major properties of the total ritual process which bring about this transmutation’ (Turner, 1967: 30). As I learned through fieldwork, that alignment of norms and emotional stimuli was potently expressed in the term engrenage, a concept that embodies all the core elements of the ideology and practice of European integration. ‘Supranationalism’ was another dominant symbol whose meanings only became evident from a grounded empirical perspective. I found the term was full of normative assumptions about the EU’s ‘mission’ to rescue Europe from the dark, irrational forces of nationalism by forging a higher political order based on reason, progress, and all those other desirable Enlightenment ideals that the EU claims to be heir to. Yet while the EU’s supranational organisations may function to ‘enmesh’ individuals within its institutional webs of meaning, the nature of those webs and the identities they create are not necessarily what the integration theorists envisaged. The homme européen being forged in the Commission’s institutional milieu bore little resemblance to Monnet’s supranational ideal-type. The other side of supranationalism is a deterritorialised yet politicised elite of entrepreneurial individualists adept in the skills of networking, but also preoccupied with internal status games, rituals and boundary maintenance work. This is also consistent with Turner’s observation that dominant symbols have the contradictory function of condensing and unifying actions and meanings, but also polarising them.

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The scandal of 1999 led to calls for a ‘root and branch’ overhaul of the EU civil service. In the post-scandal era, the new Commissions headed by Romano Prodi and José Manuel Barroso have introduced a swathe of new managerialist reforms with ambitious slogan-like titles such as ‘Sound and Efficient Management’ and ‘A Culture Based on Service’. Whether these reforms will succeed remains to be seen. Among senior officials there is both optimism and scepticism. As one veteran fonctionnaire recently described it to me: These people arrived from ‘Planet Audit’ and started to use PowerPoint to tell everyone how things should be. Kinnock tried. There was lot of management-speak about ‘performance management’, ‘audit’, ‘transparency’ and ‘targets’. Has it changed the culture of the Commission? Yes, it has made it more bureaucratic. From being too financially lax the Commission has become extremely inflexible. People don’t want to spend money now because it’s just not worth the bother. For the Commission and its staff, and contrary to what most anthropological studies have shown, the European Commission clearly has a tangible ‘organisational culture’ that can be directed, managed and improved on. But that is what Monnet, Schuman and Delors believed too. Notes 1. On France’s domination of the early European Commission see Denman, 1996; Grant, 1994; and Ross, 1995. 2. For recent anthropological studies of elites, see Pina-Cabral and de Lima, 2000; Shore and Nugent, 2002. 3. Homme européen was the phrase used by Jean Monnet, 1978. 4. My anthropological fieldwork in Brussels between 1995 and 1996 was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (project number R000236097). I wish to thank the ESRC for its generous support. 5. McDonald (1998: 7) made similar observations: ‘We are still the ones making history!’ she was told by one smiling official on the first day of her research in the Commission. 6. For more detailed accounts see Abélès et al., 1993; Spence, 1994; Shore, 2000. 7. Fieldwork interview, 15 February 1995. 8. Ortner (1973) suggests there are five ways to recognise ‘key symbolism’: the importance local people attach to it, its influence in arousing local sentiment, its prevalence and representation in different contexts, the cultural elaboration and images that surround it, and the rules surrounding it.

The EU Civil Service 203 9. This is not quite true. Connolly’s book, The Rotten Heart of Europe, was a scathing attack on EMU which, he suggested, could bring Europe to the brink of war. 10. Alongside these French administrative traditions exists a third, German model: ‘more legalistic and rigid, formed the basis of the European Audit Office, which followed the design of the “Bundesrechnungshof” ’ (Spence, 1994: 64).

References Abélès, M., Bellier, I. and McDonald, M. 1993. Approche anthropologique de la Commission Européene. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. Adonnino, P. 1985. ‘A people’s Europe: reports from the Ad Hoc Committee’, Bulletin of the European Communities, Supplement 7/85. Luxembourg: OOPEC. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Bramwell, A. C. 1987. ‘Dans le couloire: the political culture of the EEC Commission’, International Journal of Moral and Social Studies, 2 (1), pp. 63–80. Chabal, P. and Daloz, J.-P. 2006. Culture Troubles: Politics and the Interpretation of Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cini, M. 2001. ‘Reforming the European Commission: an organizational culture perspective’, Queen’s Paper on Europeanisation, No. 11. See: http://www.qub.ac.uk/shcoolofpoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/File storeEuropeanizationFiles/Filetoupload5285.en.pdf. Accessed 4 January 2006. Committee of Independent Experts (CIE). 1999. First Report on Allegations Regarding Fraud, Mismanagement and Nepotism in the European Commission. Brussels: European Parliament and Commission of the European Communities. Crapanzano, V. 1986. ‘Hermes dilemma: the mask of subversion in ethnographic description’, in J. Clifford and G. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, University of California Press, pp. 51–76. Denman, R. 1996. Missed Chances: Britain and Europe in the Twentieth Century. London: Cassell. Edwards, G. and Spence, D. (eds) 1994. The European Commission. Harlow: Longman. Geertz, C. 1973a. ‘Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture’, in C. Geertz (ed.), The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp. 3–30. Geertz, C. 1973b. ‘Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight’, in C. Geertz (ed.), The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp. 412–54. Geertz, C. 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Gellner, E. A. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Grant, C. 1994. Delors: Inside the House that Jacques Built. London: Nicholas Brealey. Hayes-Renshaw, F. and Wallace, H. 1997. The Council of Ministers. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Herzfeld, M. 1992. The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy. New York: Berg. Hobsbawm, E. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds) 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

204 Observing Government Elites Ludlow, P. 1992. ‘The European Commission’, in R. Keohane and S. Hoffman (eds), The New European Community: Decision-Making and Institutional Change. Boulder: Westview Press. Macmullen, A. 1999. ‘Political responsibility for the administration of Europe: the Commission’s resignation March 1999’, Parliamentary Affairs, 52 (1), pp. 703–18. Malinowski, B. 1965 [1922]. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. McDonald, M. 1998. ‘Anthropological study of the European Commission’. Brussels. Unpublished report for the European Commission. Middlemas, K. 1995. Orchestrating Europe: The Informal Politics of the European Union, 1973–1995. London: Fontana Press. Mitrany, D. 1998 [1966]. ‘A working peace system’, in B. Nelson and A. Stubb (eds), The European Union: Readings in the Theory and Practice of European Integration. Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 93–113. Monnet, J. 1978. Memoirs. Translated by R. Mayne. London: Collins. Ortner, S. 1973. ‘On key symbols’, American Anthropologist, 75 (5), pp. 1338–46. Page, E. 1997. People who Run Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Peterson, J. 1997. ‘The European Union: pooled sovereignty, divided accountability’, Political Studies, 45, pp. 559–78. Pina-Cabral, J. de and Lima, A. P. de (eds) 2000. Elites: Choice Leadership and Succession. Oxford: Berg. Ross, G. 1995. Jacques Delors and European Integration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Schneider, M. 1987. ‘Culture as text in the work of Clifford Geertz’, Theory and Society, 16, pp. 809–39. Scholte, B. 1986. ‘The charmed circle of Geertz’s hermeneutics: a neo-Marxist critique’, Critique of Anthropology, 6 (1), pp. 5–15. Shore, C. 1996. ‘Transcending the nation state? The European Commission and the (re)-discovery of Europe’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 9 (4), pp. 471–94. Shore, C. 2000. Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration. London: Routledge. Shore, C. 2005 ‘Culture and corruption in the EU: reflections on fraud, nepotism and cronyism in the European Commission’, in D. Haller and C. Shore (eds), Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto. Shore, C. and Nugent, S. (eds) 2002. Elite Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Spence, D. 1994. ‘Staff and personnel policy in the Commission’, in G. Edwards and D. Spence (eds), The European Commission. Harlow: Longman, pp. 62–94. Spencer, J. 1996. ‘Symbolic anthropology’, in J. Spencer and A. Barnard (eds), Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Routledge. Sperber, D. 1985. On Anthropological Knowledge: Three Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spierenburg, D. 1979. Proposals for Reform of the Commission of the European Communities and its Services. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. Turner, V. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. London: Cornell University Press. Westlake, M. 1994. Britain’s Emerging Euro-Elite? The British in the European Parliament, 1979–1992. Aldershot: Dartmouth.

The EU Civil Service 205 Williamson, D. 1994. ‘The looking-glass view of Europe’, Financial Times, 15 December. Willis, V. 1982. Britons in Brussels: Officials in the European Commission and Council Secretariat. Studies in European Policy, vol. 7. London: Policy Studies Institute (European Centre for Political Studies) and the Royal Institute for Public Administration.

9 So What? The Benefits and Pitfalls of Being There1 R. A. W. Rhodes, Paul ‘t Hart and Mirko Noordegraaf

Introduction It does not take much to appear unconventional and odd. Compared with the established toolkit of political science, ethnography is unconventional and odd (see for example such standard texts as Burnham et al., 2004). It is the preserve of anthropology, organisation theory and sociology, not political science. As Fenno (1990: 128) comments, ‘not enough political scientists are presently engaged in observation’. We know that for colleagues in disciplines such as anthropology and sociology and for those who work in such interdisciplinary fields as organisation studies, police studies and leadership studies, observation is a common research method. We recognise there are exceptions in political science. But we insist that generally, in political science, being there, especially observation, remains conspicuous mainly by its absence. This book set out to show the manifold uses of the ethnographic toolkit for research in political science. What do we learn from observing public elites up close that we would not learn using more conventional methods? In this chapter, we answer the ‘so what?’ question and enumerate the benefits of observation. We also reflect on the lessons we have learned about observing. We describe the fun of observing elites. We recount the surprise findings. We explore our mistakes and problems. It is a commonplace observation that people find it hard to take advice and insist on making their own mistakes. We could rely on secondary sources and read anthropology texts to learn from their mistakes. We provided a brief survey of the main pragmatic, professional and philosophical pitfalls identified in our survey of the literature in Chapter 1. But we prefer to learn from our own mistakes. Lessons are clearer when they have an obvious, relevant application. 206

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A government department is not a native village, no matter how useful the metaphor. Moreover, we think some of our lessons are specific to political science. We work with and talk to the powerful in countries where we live, not with villagers in a foreign land that we will leave. For example, we doubt the Balinese participants in Clifford Geertz’s (1973: chapter 15) famous cockfighting tale got to comment on his English language manuscript prior to publication. So, we give the reader our observations about the pitfalls of observing politicians and bureaucrats at work.

So what? We need to be careful about our terminology. Ethnography encompasses many ways of collecting qualitative data about beliefs, interactions and practices. For example, Cris Shore’s (2000: 7–11) cultural analysis of how EU elites sought to build Europe defines ethnography to include participant observation, historical archives, textual analysis of official documents, biographies, oral histories, recorded interviews, and informal conversations as well as statistical and survey techniques. There is a conventional stereotype of ethnography that sees the researcher moving to a single location for a long period of time. But as it spread beyond social and cultural anthropology, ethnography came to encompass more varied forms of field involvement. Following the established practice of latter-day ethnographers, we undertook ‘yo-yo fieldwork’; that is, we repeatedly went back and forth, in and out of the field (Wulff, 2002: 117). We also went to more than one fieldwork site because we were ‘studying through’: that is, following a policy process through the ‘webs and relations between actors, institutions and discourses across time and space’ (Shore and Wright, 1997: 14; see also Marcus, 1995). Most of the research reported in this volume uses a combination of elite interviews and fieldwork observation conducted during repeated visits to several locations.2 In Van Maanen’s (1978: 346) evocative phrase, as observers we were ‘part spy, part voyeur, part fan and part member’. We also travelled a lot. Observation may be a simple word but it has the layers of an onion. And it comes with many and various qualifying prefixes. To begin with most of us were ‘observers as participants’, which is a detached role with no enduring relationship between observer and observed. However, we did affect the research setting. We were not invisible. Also, in two cases, chapter authors were members of the organisation. ‘t Hart was an insider, acting as ‘peripheral member’ of the intelligence agency. Norell was a

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‘complete member’; that is, he was a ‘native’ of the organisation. So, we talk of observation in its various guises and see it as ethnography’s defining but not sole method (see Adler and Adler, 1987 for a detailed discussion of the terminology). Also, anthropologists can suffer from great angst over the problems of and limits to observation. We incline to Fox’s (2004: 4) practical and pragmatic assessment: While participant observation has its limitations, this rather uneasy combination of involvement and detachment is still the best method we have for exploring the complexities of human cultures, so it will have to do. So, what do we know from such ethnographic research, from being there and focusing on everyday practices, that we do not know from existing research or our experiences of working in any organisation? First, this question reflects the bias of mainstream political science to ostensibly ‘hard’ evidence and the answer is obvious. ‘Thick descriptions’ in particular and case studies in general are well-established tools in the social sciences, valuable both in their own right and as a corrective to approaches that read off beliefs from social structure. It is as foolish to dismiss thick descriptions as survey methods. As Agar (1996: 27) comments, ‘no understanding of a world is valid without representation of those members’ voices’. Similarly, knowledge of one’s own organisation is not the same as evidence about the beliefs and practices of another organisation. No one would dream of mistaking one’s own organisation for the universe of organisations. We study organisations to identify both the common and the unique. Second, an ethnographic research strategy, when allied to an interpretive approach (see Chapter 1), resolves the theoretical difficulties that beset more positivist versions of government. An interpretive approach uses ethnographic methods to decentre institutions, avoiding the unacceptable suggestion that they fix the behaviour of individuals within them rather than being products of that behaviour. Rhodes’ observations of how ministers and civil servants play their parts in the daily dramas of departmental life show that their overall roles are laid out for them by their place in the Westminster system. However, it is individuals’ understandings of these roles, shaped by their personalities and experiences, which breathe life into the system, and determine the nature and quality of the collaboration between politicians and bureaucrats. Similarly, Noordegraaf’s public managers made a difference because they played a central role in developing the content of

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policy issues through the process of making contacts. Ethnographic study of public elites leads one to unpack catch-all phrases such as ‘path-dependency’ and ‘context’ with an analysis of stability and change which is rooted in the beliefs and practices of individual actors as they struggle to (re)negotiate established policies and practices in the face of changing circumstances. And yet it allows political scientists to offer aggregate studies by using the concepts of tradition and rules of the game to explain how they come to hold those beliefs and perform those practices (see Bevir and Rhodes, 2003). Third, ethnographic research has two long-established principal features as a source of data. It gets below and behind the surface of official accounts by providing texture, depth and nuance, so our stories have richness as well as context. Also, it lets interviewees explain the meaning of their actions, providing an authenticity that can only come from the main characters involved in the story. Face-to-face, in-depth elite interviews and non-participant observation are central to producing thick descriptions. Geuijen et al.’s chapter on Dutch Eurocrats illustrates the point well. Compare their ideal-types of ‘bureaucrat-diplomats’ and ‘street-level entrepreneurs’ in the conclusion with the mix of traits displayed by officials in the rest of the chapter. Observation also uncovers the meaning behind the obvious. So, committees receive the same documentation. On the face of it, we are in for another tedious discussion. But the purposes of meetings vary if the documents do not. That purpose is often not to decide but, for example, to keep everyone up to speed, include ‘outsiders’, build an agreement over a series of meetings, present a public façade of widespread consultation while taking the real decisions in informal inner circles and so on. As Thedvall shows, ‘consensus decision-making’ does not mean making everyone happy but discussing a topic until there is a ‘majority consensus’. Likewise, ‘t Hart’s chapter on the Dutch intelligence service gets us inside an organisation that routinely avoids scrutiny, let alone allows social scientists to study their leadership and associated power games. It brings to life the dilemmas faced by members of an organisation whose environment has altered drastically in a short period of time. They know their Cold War paradigm has become obsolete as a basis for grounding their work, but they do not know what to replace it with. The chapter documents their struggle to accept and internalise the alternative story offered to them by their reformist leader. Fourth, the ethnographic approach admits of surprises, of moments of epiphany, which can open new research agendas. It accepts serendipity

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and happenstance. It is fruitful, progressive and open. Although we focus on elites, it opens a wide range of new areas and styles of research about the beliefs, preferences and practices of any political actor – from Prime Minister to individual citizens – as they preserve and modify traditions and practices – from Toryism and Parliament to, say, New Age travellers and forms of protest. The catchphrase of Harold Geneen, former head of ITT, was ‘no surprises’. He should never do observational research because we all had our moments of epiphany. For ‘t Hart, it was ‘How do I know what I don’t know?’ in an organisation where knowledge is the most prized yet jealously guarded and thoroughly compartmentalised possession of all. For Rhodes it was the role of the mundane in managing hassles and crises. Cris Shore records his ‘moment of epiphany’: it was engrenage. New staff are inducted into the ‘House’ through engrenage or ‘enmeshing’ in the sense of ‘cogs caught in a wheel’. This process describes the transformation of national officials into ‘Europeans’ who ‘love’ the Commission. It leads individuals to perform the ‘European idea’. For Geuijen et al., it was the discovery that there was a place for entrepreneurial opportunism and improvisation in the allegedly dull, stifling, technocratic world of EU governance. Shore argues that the absence of an effective personnel policy created a management vacuum that encouraged precisely the kind of ‘entrepreneurial opportunism’, individualism and interdepartmental turf wars and empire-building discussed by Geuijen et al. In the case of the Commission, Shore’s main discovery was that the lack of internal coherence and effective staff management were key factors behind the fraud and corruption scandal of 1999. It helped to create a culture of collusion and individualism that was the antithesis of the Jean Monnet’s ideal of a disinterested supranational administrative elite. This example is clear demonstration of how ethnography opens up new windows for analysis. Shore did not set out to explore corruption. It emerged during the fieldwork encounters because it was important to the officials – hence, the value of serendipity and surprise. Noordegraaf’s fieldwork with policy managers highlights a facet of administrative life that no one else comments on in this book – the effects of time. He points out that public servants constantly refer to past experiences when dealing with current issues. Their language is infused with time. They refer to precedents, the timing of meetings, the timing of consultation, and the stages of a decision. There are classic phrases: ‘the time is not ripe’. We are used to public officials using the language of the new public management. But if, as Rhodes argues, a key task of public servants is to routinise crises, then the language of time is all too

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relevant. Questions such as what worked last time, when to act, and when to delay are integral to the exercise. Fifth, the ethnographic approach helps us to see and analyse the symbolic dimensions of political action. Most political behaviour has a strong symbolic dimension. Indeed, symbols are the bedrock of everyday political life with even our most basic political concepts such as the ‘state’, ‘nation’, ‘government’ and ‘the people’ constructed through symbols. Symbols do not simply ‘represent’ or reflect political ‘reality’, they actively constitute that reality. By drawing out the negotiated, symbolic and ritual elements of political life, ethnographic analysis draws attention to deeper principles of organisation that are not visible to empiricist or positivist approaches. We provide several examples. Shore describes Homo Europaeus, the creolised cadre of cosmopolitan, post-national professional Europeans. In both the UK and the Netherlands, ministers are heirs to a royal tradition and it shows in the present-day practices. Rhodes describes the homage paid to the Queen’s minister. Noordegraaf talks about the omnipresence of ‘the minister’. Although the minister was absent most of the time, everybody talked about the minister’s wishes, weaknesses and prestige all the time. When the minister was ill, ‘everybody’ knew about it within 30 minutes! There was an ever-present fear of damage to the minister’s standing in the government and with the electorate at large. The department’s routines and practices remained the same but whenever the minister was around there was a marked change of atmosphere, in the pace of work, with a quantum leap in the sense of urgency and stress. This reaction was not to the person. Indeed, officials made negative, critical comments about the individual. It is a reaction to the office, a symbol of authority in and a cornerstone of government. Finally, the ethnographic approach forces researchers to come to terms with the challenges of their research roles and the limitations of their data. The usual methodological caveats found in standard positivistic accounts pale into insignificance. The frailty of the elite research enterprise cannot be hidden when researchers are forced to negotiate, and often repeatedly renegotiate, access to the corridors of power. Cleaning a data set is nothing compared to doors literally being shut as elites decide to draw a veil over what they allow the observer to see. Or there is that sinking feeling when elites turn on you after you submit a draft of your findings. They are embarrassed by how close you have come to capturing on paper what they do and why they do it, including the mundane nature and hypocrisy of life at the top (see below).

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So far, so general. What, however, do we know about elites and their beliefs and practices that we did not know before?

Key findings Two seemingly contradictory findings shine from most of the studies; the ordinariness of it all, and public servants and ministers as performers. The contradiction is more apparent than real. Everyday practices are ordinary. The lifestyle is prosaic. It is so familiar we can overlook it. It is made up of meetings, paper pushing and staring at desktop screens. In the Dutch intelligence service, ‘t Hart observes the myth of ‘operations’; the ‘real’ world of spies in the field. Although that world certainly exists and provides a raison d’être for the organisation, it is also a disguise, a veneer of excitement, and a justification for endless days compiling reports and attending tedious meetings. Rhodes, too, comments on the culture of long hours, the office routines and the ever-present, time-consuming committee meetings where the clear and present danger is boredom. He also identifies the role of gossip, humour and politeness in sustaining these routines. In the political science literature, everyday practices are often described as routines, which are well known and unremarkable features of bureaucracies (Inbar, 1979). It is governed by rules (or red tape) and underpins the standardisation of service delivery. But that is not its function in these cases. It is a way of making a complex and often anarchic world seem manageable. The break-up of the Soviet empire is reduced to economic reports and time series data by the Dutch intelligence service. It is a way of containing rapid changes and constant stress. Rhodes and Noordegraaf show that ministers living in the goldfish bowl created by the mass media are cocooned by their rule-driven departments. Civil servants are socialised into the kinds of gossip, humour and politeness that sustain this everyday world. It is not taught in business school MBAs, yet the British government unthinkingly recruits outsiders. Ministers strive to reduce risk and uncertainty while calling for less risk-averse behaviour by civil servants. Do they really mean that civil servants should increase the uncertainties in the minister’s life, because it is him they seek to protect? They know not what they ask, preferring the allure of ‘modernisation’ and ‘results-driven government’ to the certainties and safety offered to their otherwise exceedingly chaotic and dangerous existence by the routines of the ‘bureaucracy’ they are expected to criticise in public.

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This world of routines is also a closed world. Decisions are made by small groups of elite actors, as exemplified by Norell’s picture of Karlstad politics. Such groups have several functions: think tank, command centre, sanctuary, conflict management, organising anarchy, convey meaning, acting as a smokescreen (‘t Hart et al., 1997: 12–24). Such small groupings can induce a marked degree of conformity without becoming group think where all members think as one. Everyday life may be ordinary but in elite groups with embedded routines sustained by long-standing socialisation practices, domesticity can have significant consequences. In Karlstad, it led to a closed power structure dominated by two civil servants and a handful of politicians. They were able to control the town’s politics in a low-key fashion for decades. In the UK such routines reduce the Iraq war to a level playing field for commercial contracts. Group think means that ministers do not have to instruct their civil servants because they know what is expected before it is spoken. They get ‘anticipatory compliance’ (‘t Hart, 1994), as the closed world imposes severe punishments on insiders, such as Clive Ponting and David Kelly, who go public. Politicians and bureaucrats perform on both public and private stages. For Rhodes, the minister is a combination of royalty and celebrity. He is an actor on several public stages with the ability to wear the various masks his role demands. For ‘t Hart, Docters was a transformative leader, larger than life, imposing himself on all around him, inside and outside the organisation. Bureaucracy may be synonymous with rules and routines but its leaders are not the faceless, grey men of Kafka legend. Even the more invisible top officials who operate in mundane, routinised administrative worlds, still ‘perform’. As Noordegraaf, Norell and Geuijen et al. show, they experience exciting times or moments. Issues might be explosive, people might be angry, and reputations might be at stake. By using certain discursive mechanisms or adopting certain behavioural scripts, they are able to influence and alter the flow of events, although this behaviour is almost literally invisible. However, the administrative world is often about undoing things, which still requires performative acts. So, performing is not only about public, visible and even exciting performances, but it is also about the ordinary, everyday performances of not-so-public figures.

Lessons from the field In Chapter 1 we identified several pragmatic, professional and philosophical pitfalls of elite ethnography. Here we revisit these challenges

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of observation and in-depth interviewing. Drawing on our collective fieldwork experience, we discuss eight themes: speaking truth to power, secrecy and spies, we are not journalists, maintaining standards, working together, don’t talk, just listen, what do we know, and I want to tell you a story. Speaking truth to power – coping with powerful ‘subjects’ Aaron Wildavsky’s (1979: 402) epigrammatic story about speaking truth to power summarises our point: The King said: ‘Venerable Nagasena, will you converse with me?’ Nagasena: ‘If your Majesty will speak with me as wise men converse I will; but if your Majesty speaks with me as kings converse, I will not.’ ‘How then converse the wise, venerable Nagasena?’ ‘The wise do not get angry when they are driven into a corner, kings do.’ It might be useful for Rhodes to use the metaphor of ‘village’ to describe Whitehall but the parallels with anthropology stop there. As Shore and Nugent (2002: 11) observe, ‘Anthropology, by definition, is the study of the powerless “Others”.’ But when studying elites, the research participants are more powerful than the researchers. Ministers and permanent secretaries are powerful men and women. They can refuse interviews, deny access to the organisation, declare documents secret, and insist on anonymity for both themselves and their organisation. All the interviews and periods of observation took place with informed consent but as the work unfolded we had to negotiate constantly to keep that cooperation. Consider the following letter by a highly placed person to one of the authors: I am afraid I was completely dismayed to read your draft. You assured me – and my permanent secretary – that this was a serious piece of research and that the participants would not be identified or identifiable. In fact, both I and the Department are clearly recognisable and as a result, I believe that many of your quotations and observations will inevitably be used in a way that neither of us intended, or believed you intended, when we agreed to participate. The result, I am afraid, is extremely unfair to our departmental colleagues. I am therefore not prepared to give my permission either for my name to be used or for the quotes to be attributed.

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This quote tells us something about the cast of mind elites adopt when reading comments on their beliefs and practices by outsiders. A degree of self-serving, self-important defensiveness creeps in. Politicians know they are public figures, comparable to celebrities. They act to defend that public image irrespective of whether the comments are accurate. To be fair, their personal support staff can be even worse, defending their boss come hell or high water. On one occasion the boss used the word ‘troops’ to describe the staff. The interview was recorded. The boss used the word several times. The staffer objected to the word, claiming the boss never used it and that it was demeaning. It had to be removed. This experience is not specific to studying government elites; for example, ‘horror stories’ from the field abound in sociology (see Bell and Newby, 1977; Burns, 1977; Punch, 1986). Speaking truth to power is never easy. The ethnographic study of elites holds up a particularly acute mirror to them. It shows them not just their on-stage but also their ‘off-stage’ or ‘back stage’ behaviour. It echoes their ways of ‘making sense’. It would be naïve to think that they are invariably delighted to look into such a mirror. And they have the power to complicate the research effort. The important point is that such trepidation and tensions are there to be managed, not avoided. For example, knowing the sensitiveness of elites, Rhodes’ interviewing and observing took place in departments that were roughly similar. If there were problems with attributing quotes and describing the behaviour of named officials and politicians, then the research could be used to write a composite portrait of ‘the department’ and ‘its minister’. The composite would not be believable if it involved, for example, a domestic service minister, the Treasury and the Foreign Office. So, it is based on three middle-ranking, domestic service ministries. In effect, the composite was imposed by the elites and is a clear example of the control they can exercise over research involving them. Their insistence on anonymity is as unsatisfactory as it is unwelcome but the ‘citation but not for attribution’ rule nonetheless meant the research could be published. Every researcher in this volume had to manage elite reluctance and ‘second thoughts’ about publication and strike their own compromises. For both Rhodes and Noordegraaf not only was anonymity a condition of access but also the ministers and public servants insisted on commenting on the individual case studies as well as the complete manuscript. Such controls can impose lengthy delays at a high cost, particularly to younger researchers. Their career advancement depends substantially if not quite exclusively on their publications record. Few

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ignore the ‘publish or perish’ maxim. As an established scholar, Rhodes could afford to wait until the end of the second Blair Parliament before seeking to publish, so he agreed to this condition. But even then he incurred ministerial displeasure (and for an even more dispiriting story see Punch, 1986). Any young scholar would be well advised to have a second, concurrent project that was not subject to elite scrutiny.

Secrecy and spies – going ‘undercover’ Whether spy-like behaviour to get to the bottom of things is defensible admits of no easy answer. On the one hand, we deal with the powerful, not the dependent. We confront a stacked deck. In the era of spin, ‘truth’ is negotiable and negotiated. Covert behaviour is one way of redressing the imbalance of power. On the other hand, if we are deemed to have ‘cheated’, then we could make life more difficult for future researchers. The clearest example of this dilemma was ‘t Hart’s stay at the Dutch intelligence service where his role as temporary brain power for the organisation disguised his role as a researcher into the organisation. He had a second, covert role as researcher. He resolved the ethical issue by waiting for more than thirteen years before seeking to publish and then only after consulting Docters van Leeuwen, the main subject of his account. His account is now of a different era and does no harm to anyone with whom he worked. The other side of this coin is official secrecy. It is commonly argued that ethnographic research on the powerful encounters the endemic secrecy of government. It permeates everything; for example, permanent secretaries in Britain are not supposed to talk publicly about their membership of the honours committees in case they get lobbied. To breach the veil, covert behaviour may be the only means ‘open’ to us. The problem should not be overstated. Virtually everyone was willing to speak on tape. At the end of most long interviews, the elite were relaxed, willing to chat about anything, historical or present-day. Many have a need to talk. As Rawnsley (2001: xi) observes, ‘they have to tell an outsider because they are so worried about whether it makes sense or, indeed, whether they make sense’ or, in Mark Twain’s famous phrase, ‘How can you know what you think until you open your mouth and hear what you say?’ The interviewer is cast in the role of providing reassurance, if not a form of therapy for the stressed-out, the frustrated, the humiliated, as ‘t Hart et al. (2002) discovered when they interviewed high-level Dutch civil servants about their relations with their political masters.

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In studying the powerful, therefore, we are spies to the extent they are secretive. For much research, most of the time, there is no issue. When problems arise, they win. Acquiring information by covert means is our equivalent of guerrilla warfare (and on social scientists, subversion and the powerful see: Hammersley, 2000; Punch, 1986). It signals the end of trust and consensual access and heralds the arrival of exit strategies and the stance and tactics of investigative journalism.

We are not journalists – building and keeping trust A leading UK journalist in his book on Tony Blair’s first government ‘chose to conduct all interviews on a background basis’ because on-therecord interviews would suffer from a lack of candour (Rawnsley, 2001: xvii–xviii). He quotes a senior UK minister, Robin Cook, on the art of the interview: ‘to talk for an hour without saying anything too interesting’. Jeremy Paxman (2002: 207) is a prominent UK television journalist and interviewer. He encountered a similar lack of candour when seeking to shadow Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health. Despite innumerable letters and phone calls, Paxman not only failed to get a day on which he could shadow the minister, he could not even get a decision. After six months, he was granted a day, six weeks after the deadline for his book. That is not our experience. Paxman and Rawnsley are reporting the lot of the journalist, not the academic. There are significant differences between us. As observed above, ethnographic researchers are to some degree ‘spying’ on elites, but our aims are different from those of investigative journalists. Our starting point was cooperation, not spying. We assumed good intentions, not secrecy. We assumed good faith, not deception and duplicity. We allowed respondents to comment on our work. Interviewees had transcripts of their interviews to check any quotes. Interviewees read a draft of the manuscript, commented on our interpretation and approved all attributed quotes. We publish long after the events described, striving for accuracy and not the banner headline. We focus on ‘everyday life’ and the commonplace, not the feeding frenzy of a crisis beloved of journalists. Everyday detail adds flesh to their story. For us the detail is the story. These differences mean we can be trusted, but trust is not a constant. It has to be constantly renegotiated. The experience of Geuijen et al. is not unusual. Not being insiders in the world of civil servants, the research team were amazed how cautious and risk-aware the bureaucratdiplomats were about the research process. The team never quite ‘blended in’. The civil servants were concerned that the researchers

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might see the messiness of their working processes and their meetings. They even apologised to the team: ‘Those texts arrive so late from Brussels that it is almost impossible to read them, let alone prepare a proper position on them.’ Or the civil servants were afraid that the team might publicise the content of meetings which they thought of as confidential, but which the researchers were not even interested in. Sometimes the civil servants made the team feel they were prying. They seemed relieved the team did not criticise but sought only their opinions and experiences. One civil servant told the team how glad he was to have this rare opportunity for reflection on his own practices – a common experience of elite researchers. However, at the next meeting the same people were taken aback and on their guard in the team’s presence yet again! Trust is fragile. Patience is not a virtue – it is a necessity. The lack of trust can also be threatening for the research team. One organisation got through three heads in less than two years. Access had to be renegotiated on each occasion. Of course, there was never any explicit threat to terminate the existing agreement. It was a simple invitation to brief the newcomer and discuss where we go from here. The problem is that there was always somewhere new the head wanted to go. Also, the emphasis here is on access. Trust is also essential when we try to leave the organisation and write up our results. Exit is also negotiated.

Maintaining standards – safeguarding reliability and validity As we argued in Chapter 1, we can show that our approach is both thorough and systematic by reporting such details as the number and length of interviews and the total hours of observation. We had three main sources of information: ‘the pattern of practice, talk, and considered writing’ (Oakeshott, 1996: x). We checked the veracity and reliability of this data in three ways. First, we interviewed many officials and politicians, allowing us to crosscheck their varying accounts. Second, we had access to the written records of both individuals and organisations. Finally, all the projects observed elites at work and observation is an essential complement to interviews. Thus, interviews recorded at a different time from observation are a way of corroborating the claims of a speaker. When comparing public pronouncements with interviews, it is important to allow for the context – for the record imposes a language and limits. The problem with this approach to reliability and validity is that it assimilates our approach to mainstream political science. As we

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argued in Chapter 1, this book showcases the utility of ethnography for those wishing to pursue an interpretive political science. Ethnographic tools are not just a softer, even inferior, version of quantitative techniques. They are different in both aims and evaluation. We adopt a comparative, anthropological approach to assessing research findings and defend accounts of ‘objectivity as inter-subjective agreement’ by comparing rival narratives. What are the criteria for such comparisons? The debates of the political science community define and redefine the criteria by which we judge rival stories and the knowledge claims of individual members of that community. This process is not self-referential because the knowledge claims can be ‘reconfirmed’ by encounters with practitioners and users. So, we translate abstract concepts into conversations in fieldwork. These encounters and their conversations produce data which we interpret to produce accounts which are then judged by evolving knowledge criteria of the political science community. Reconfirmation occurs at three points. 1. When we translate our concepts for fieldwork: that is, are they meaningful to practitioners and users and if not, why not? 2. When we reconstruct narratives from the conversations: that is, is the story logical and consistent with the data? 3. When we redefine and translate our concepts because of the academic community’s judgement on the narratives: that is, does the story meet the agreed knowledge criteria? Concepts are redefined by academic judgements and again translated for new encounters, conversations and stories (see Giddens, 1993: 170). Through such comparisons, we arrive at objectivity as inter-subjective agreement. We can illustrate this argument with ‘t Hart’s account of his encounters with Docters van Leeuwen. He sent him an early draft of his chapter for comment. Perhaps Docters’ reply was ‘predictably selfserving’ but it highlighted two versions of the same story. For ‘t Hart, it is a story of ‘larger than life’ leadership: Docters was a towering figure in the BVD, yet too big for many people’s comfort. He was feared by some, who complied. He was respected and considered enigmatic by many others, who did what he urged them to do because they identified with him, not necessarily with what he aimed for.

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For Docters, this story ‘really only gives voice to the internal doubters and dissidents’ and produces a cliché image of a likable bully vis-à-vis a number of intimidated employees. In quantitative terms, you may have a point. I estimate that about a fourth to a third of the people really made the move. But the majority that did not, were not among those that made something really special happen within and to the organisation. That side of the story you miss, perhaps because of your research method. For me, the story of that era is one of a successful salvage operation, succeeding by the unleashing and combining of internal and external positive and negative sources of energy. These contrasting stories lead ‘t Hart to a reflexive section on the limits to his research. He notes the constraints – for example, he could not wander freely as if in a native village – and he admits to nagging doubts about ‘How do I know what I don’t know?’ It is precisely this process of reflexive, iterative reconfirmation that lends credence to his story. Finally, although Geertz may be an influence on several contributors to this book, no one limits their analysis to his webs of significance. Most combine practice, talk and considered writing. Most compare and contrast practitioner and academic accounts. So, when Cris Shore argues (after Turner, 1973: 20) that our interpretation should draw three classes of data: ‘(1) external form and observable characteristics; (2) interpretations offered by specialists and laymen; (3) significant contexts, which are largely worked out by the anthropologist’, he advocates a similar anti-foundational process of verification. So we struggle with detachment and objectivity and ‘while we can never attain the latter, we never risk losing the former’ (Adler and Adler, 1987: 86).

Don’t talk, just listen – getting elites to ‘open up’ Interviews are said to be an unreliable source of data because interviewees ‘unselfconsciously project an official self-image’ (Lee, 1995: 149– 50) and politicians are seen as self-serving to the point of misleading: The author frequently had reason to wonder whether some former ministers had served in the same administration, so at variance were their accounts of the way coordination took place at the heart of Whitehall. (Seldon, 1995: 126)

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We have to decode the official self-image and politicians’ management of their public image. We do so in two ways. First, we locate the official ethos and language in its historical context by comparing texts, whether they are official publications, files or interview transcripts. Second, all of us during our everyday lives develop skills in interpreting what others mean when they speak to us. Thus, we judge whether someone is lying by many verbal and body cues. We do not leave such skills at the door of the interview room. Every interview involves such judgements. It is a commonplace that, to get openness in interviews, interviewers have to establish rapport and trust with their interviewee.3 There are different ways to establish rapport. Perhaps the most common one is for the interviewer to demonstrate their credentials; that is, establish their credibility as a knowledgeable observer. The first minimum requirement is a reputation for dispassionate, reputable and independent assessment. The second is an understanding of the ‘realities’ of the interviewee’s world; the shared knowledge that the interviewer and interviewee have equivalent experience. Two other attributes are desirable: local knowledge and empathy (or some sense of ‘you will know what I mean, I don’t need to tell you’). Affable banter about where you were born, the football team you support, is an important means of narrowing social difference and distance and putting the interviewee at ease. The trick here is to persuade the interviewee you are knowledgeable, not an idiot academic who ‘knows n’owt’ about ‘real life’ in government, while convincing them they have much to tell you. There is a fine and subtle line between perceived understanding and perceived ignorance. An alternative strategy is to play the ignorance card: ‘I am a novice, teach me’, and being the novice is not without its advantages. The interviewer presents him or herself as generally competent, not yet knowledgeable about the world of the interviewee. The interviewer can appear both harmless and eager to learn. Rapport is achieved not by seeking to establish a quasi-peer relationship, as in the first strategy, but to set up an implicit mentoring relationship. The aim is to induce the interviewee to drop any defensive behaviour and act responsibly by educating the interviewer. Once this pattern is established, the interviewer, our youthful but well-prepared researcher can out him or herself by asking questions that reveal mastery of the subject, pushing the pleasantly surprised interviewee to go beyond the surface story. All interviews are a performance during which the interviewer interprets and records simultaneously. And they do not end when you leave the room. There is always some conversation after the formal interview and the tape has been switched off. Such off-the-tape asides provide the

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context for an interview and should be noted as soon as possible. Rhodes, for example, usually located a café or coffee bar near the interviewee’s place of work and went straight there for note making. Above all, the interviewer is active not passive. Not for us the forensic humiliation of the duplicitous politician by the television interviewer. Rather, we seek to relax and encourage, although even the most experienced interviewer cannot establish rapport on every occasion.

Working together – managing ‘rapport’ It is all too easy to affect the relationship between yourself and the observed, causing them to behave differently. The aim of the socalled ‘non-participant’ observer is to remain the outsider. However, for lengthy on-site visits and extensive repeat interviews, you have to have a conversation and relate to the people around you. You have to establish rapport. You are sucked into events, even if it is only casual badinage to ease tension. Rhodes’ stay in the department provides several examples. The permanent secretary (PS) gave Rhodes a copy of his diaries. The analysis of his engagements and committee work showed he was spending about one-third of his time on corporate civil service business outside the department. He was surprised. He had no clear picture of the distribution of his workload. Immediately, he began to reduce his corporate commitments. Sometimes the effects of the observer are unintended and unpredictable. Rhodes asked one principal private secretary why he sat facing the wall with his back to the rest of the office. The next day when he arrived, the desk had been turned around. Even worse, over the next few days, it became clear the office staff resented being in full view all the time. There were dark mutterings and the atmosphere changed for the worse. What had Rhodes done? He had asked a simple question and started a chain of events he could not anticipate. Inevitably, the observer empathises with the observed. From the start, Rhodes tried to blend in with the wallpaper. He dressed in a dark suit and carried a notepad like any private secretary accompanying a minister or a civil servant. He was always an object of some interest as he travelled between meetings and the private office and we suspect the more Rhodes appeared like them, the more they sought to engage with him. Rhodes found he began to talk about ‘my’ permanent secretaries. During a crisis, one permanent secretary treated him as a confidant. He was not interested in Rhodes’ opinions. He was thinking aloud and he wanted someone to listen. It is a tricky balancing act to remain both distant and to keep their confidence; to keep critical detachment and empathise.

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There is also the danger of going native. Geuijen and colleagues found their street-level entrepreneurs keen to advertise their work, and glad to have a captive audience. It did not even seem to occur to them that the team might not share their enthusiasm. They took all the time in the world to talk to them, show them around, introduce them to people and let them sit in at meetings. It is all too tempting for the researcher to take comfort in this warm blanket of hospitality and to swallow their ‘success stories’ uncritically. The ‘going native’ pitfall of observation is perhaps more insidious than the reluctance to cooperate. That said, the ersatz native eventually withdraws from the field and a reflexive stance to one’s work should enable the researcher to become again the professional stranger. The complete observer has a different set of challenges (see Adler and Adler, 1987: 78–84). It is not a matter of ‘blending in’, it is a matter of ‘standing outside’ or, if you will, ‘rising above’ the world one lives and works in – but inconspicuously so in order not to confuse or put off peers who also happen to be the object of research. It is an awkward balancing act. For colleagues in the organisation it is a bit like dealing with a politician who one knows is going to write his memoirs and has a tape recorder running in his office all the time: not a great incentive for frankness. That dilemma only arises, however, when the insiderobserver’s colleagues know about the dual mission. In many instances, this is not the case. Often, insiders who end up using their experiences as research data only decide to do so years after entering the organisation. In this volume, Norell highlights some of the issues. Disengagement is an acute problem for the complete member. The role is ‘highly charged with subjectivity and emotion’ and a residual loyalty to former colleagues. Distancing oneself is hard and Norell experimented with several social science theories as a way of looking back at himself and his former colleagues (see Adler and Adler, 1987: 80). If one of the advantages of privileged access is richer data, the downside is the personal obligations incurred. One is no longer the professional stranger but a colleague and friend. There are limits to the stories that can be told without giving offence but richer data is worthless if you cannot write it up. Another drawback of the complete observer role is that fieldwork may remain underdeveloped, driven out by the demands of the job, with the observer ending up working from memory and a personal archive of documents rather than from contemporary, systematic research notes. This need not be fatal. Norell, for example, followed up his period inside the organisation with a series of in-depth interviews conducted after he

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had left, now acting squarely in the researcher role but benefiting from his in-depth knowledge of his long-standing ties with the main players. Alternatively, the insider-observer never tells his colleagues inside the organisation that he will be wearing two hats all the time. This presents the researcher with an ethical dilemma: he is not observing, he is spying, as discussed at some length in ‘t Hart’s chapter. Finally, getting up close may be daunting. The junior scholar may fear his inexperience will embarrass him when face to face with the high and mighty. The senior scholar may resent the status loss that comes from putting oneself into the role of some add-on observer rather than that of ‘well-regarded expert in the know’. Both may have reason to fear that the vast investment of time and energy spent on observation may come to naught when their powerful objects of research don’t like what they see in their draft reports and decide to make their life difficult (see for example Burns, 1977: ix–xviii; Punch, 1986: chapter 3 and p. 77). Such fears may compromise the relationship-building effort; they may even paralyse the entire research effort. All of the authors in this book have felt tensions of this kind one way or another. They are part and parcel of leaving the relative safety of the ivory tower of distant, impersonal ways of studying politics. They are the scholarly equivalent to what you feel in the dentist’s waiting room. It pays to remind ourselves that once in the actual dentist’s chair, the fear tends to evaporate (at least for most of us). We have taken the plunge, and we benefit from it (provided we are in the hands of a competent dentist). So it is with ethnographic research, daunting but rewarding when pursued with vigour. And, in sharp contrast to the dentist’s chair, a lot of the time it is great fun.

What do we know – doing ‘theoretical generalisation’ It is claimed that ethnography’s idiographic thick descriptions preclude generalisations. Thus, in mainstream political science, case studies were often criticised as of little or no almost no scientific value because one cannot use them either to test hypotheses or to generalise (see for example, Blondel, 1981: 67; Dogan and Pelassy, 1990: 121). Such claims are now widely seen as outmoded and inaccurate (see for example, Eckstein, 1975; Flyvbjerg, 2006; George and Bennett, 2005; Rhodes, 1993; and Yin, 2003). Over thirty years ago, Eckstein (1975: 116) demonstrated that case studies can be used to test theories, and he was working with the natural science model of the social sciences. Flyvbjerg (2006: 224) is of the interpretive persuasion and argues:

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Predictive theories and universals cannot be found in the study of human affairs. Concrete, context-dependent knowledge is, therefore, more valuable than the vain search for predictive theories and universals. The common error is to equate generalisation with the formal generalisation associated with natural science model of research. Yin (2003) contrasted this kind of ‘empirical generalisation’ requiring some form of statistical sampling with ‘theoretical generalisation’, where the selection of a case study and the interpretation of its findings are guided by prior theoretical decisions. So, we select cases that are ‘critical’, ‘deviant’, ‘most similar’ or ‘most different’ to develop or test a theory using a (single or comparative) case study design (see also George and Bennett, 2005). Geertz (1973 and 1983) describes ethnography as a soft science that guesses at meanings; assesses the guesses; and draws explanatory conclusions from the better guesses. And it is thus possible to make general statements. Theory provides a vocabulary with which to express what symbolic action has to say about itself. Political scientists can offer accounts that explain practices and actions by pointing to the conditional connections between beliefs, practices, interactions, traditions and dilemmas. And these ‘informed conjectures’ (Bevir, 1999: 239) are stories, understood as provisional and unfolding narratives about possible futures.

I want to tell you a story – writing up ethnography Writing occurs in stages. The first steps are interview transcription and field notes. Nobody is ever prepared for the length of time it takes to prepare a decent transcript. Even if the research grant includes money for a professional transcription service, that transcript has to be checked against the tape. A conservative estimate would be three hours to check one hour of tape. And beware background noise. The splendid grandfather clock in the corner, with its tick-ticking pendulum and chiming bells on the hour, will drown out the conversation and drive you mad after about 15 minutes. Even with a tape recorder, it is wise to take notes. Such notes can map the contours of the interview, record body language, and, on the rare occasion when the technology fails, act as a fallback record of the event. Field notes have their own challenges (and a good discussion can be found in Emerson et al., 1995; and especially Sanjek, 1990). In this volume, Thedvall notes the challenge of observing committee

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meetings and trying to write everything down. You do not always understand the discussion, especially if they talk acronym. You can miss the opening comments of a speaker because you are busy writing what has been said before. You have to divide your time between what is spoken, how it is spoken, body language and the interaction between committee members, some of which will be taking place as someone speaks. And if your research site is the EU, there is the further complication of language. As Thedvall points out, translations by interpreters are far from theoretically neutral and you end up interpreting their interpretation. Geuijen et al. found that some Eurocrats know about and utilise the pivotal role of translators. Some cultivate relations with interpreters to get the edge in debates. They provide after the fact comments about nuances of phrasing and delivery used by a foreign speaker. Just as interviews recede from memory quickly, so do one’s recollections from the field. It is important to check, and where necessary clarify the next day, notes taken at the time. With interviews and field notes duly written up, the next step is immersion. Some colleagues like the software program NVivo and its clever filing system but it too requires you to read and reread your several texts to identify the organising categories. There is no alternative to immersion in your interview and fieldwork notes. Equally you need distance. The brain can find patterns when you are not knowingly thinking about the data: the long walk, the shower, the moment of clarity during half-sleep can all stir ‘the little grey cells’. Everyone needs distance but the ways to it are many and varied. We can now turn to that most intractable of problems; ‘how is such unruly experience transformed into an authoritative written account?’ (Van Maanen, 1988: 2; see also Clifford, 1983; Clifford and Marcus, 1984; Geertz, 1988: chapter 6; Hammersley, 1990). Van Maanen’s (1988: 35) ‘war whoop’ of an answer is to declare ‘there is no way of seeing, hearing, or representing the world of others that is absolutely, universally valid or correct.’ His aspiration is to find ‘more, not fewer, ways to tell of culture’. He uses the term ‘tale’, ‘quite self-consciously to highlight the presentational or, more properly, representational qualities of fieldwork writing’ (Van Maanen, 1988: 8 and 14) and he identifies several ways of telling: realist tales, confessional tales and impressionist tales. Realist accounts are dispassionate, third-person documentary accounts of everyday life. The story is told from the native’s point of view but the author has the final word, both selecting the points of view and pronouncing on the meaning of their culture. Van Maanen (1988: chapter 3 and pp. 54 and 64–6) concedes that realist ethnography has

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‘a long and by-and-large worthy pedigree’, although its writing conventions are now seen as ‘embarrassing’. The characteristics of a confessional account are that it is an autobiographical, personalised story, which tells the tale from the fieldworker’s perspective, and aims for naturalness and getting it right in the end. Confessional tales are first person and anecdotal. All too often the storyline is that of ‘a fieldworker and a culture finding each other and, despite some initial spats and misunderstandings, in the end, making a match’ (paraphrased from Van Maanen, 1988: chapter 4 and p. 79). Impressionist tales take the form of a dramatic storyline, with a fragmented treatment of theory and method, because they focus on characterization and drama (Van Maanen, 1988: 103–6). Impressionist tales ‘highlight the episodic, complex and ambivalent realities that are frozen and perhaps made too pat by realist or confessional conventions’. Their accounts are ‘as hesitant and open to contingency and interpretation as the concrete experiences on which they are based’ (Van Maanen, 1988: 119). The confessional and impressionist facets can be seen in all the chapters. We are present in our several accounts, whether it is Rhodes reflecting on his regional accent, ‘t Hart on his covert role, or Norell on his ethical dilemmas as a complete member. The worlds we present are complex, episodic, ambivalent and contingent. Rhodes confesses to nervousness in writing his chapter and writing up the fieldwork did pose several challenges. Everyone had to interrogate their fieldwork. Everyone had to decide the extent to which they should be present in their story. Normally, we seek refuge in the language of social science and avoid talking in the first person. The first challenge is to write an account with narrative drive in both everyday English and the language of those being watched. The second challenge is to incorporate the narrator as an observer both of him or herself and of the inhabitants. We accept we are present in the text but each author in this volume found it hard to strike the balance in deciding how much personal reflection to include if any. We have to tread warily between the ‘diary disease’ (Geertz, 1988: 90) and ‘the doctrine of immaculate perception’ (Van Maanen, 1988: 74). Too little reflection and there is no point. Too much reflection and there is the danger of provoking the response, ‘I don’t care what you think.’ The best guide were colleagues at the workshop where we presented the first drafts of our chapters. They told us when the personal reflections began to jar and get in the way of the main account. So, the simplest rule is indulge yourself, defend what

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you did and why but, ultimately, let your colleagues delete you. We agreed to include ourselves in the story whenever, in our judgement, it was helpful or inevitable. Doing so made it clear it was our account of the elite’s story and not the ‘only’ (i.e. the ‘real’) story to be told. In effect, this technique encourages the reader to compare stories much more actively than is the norm with the traditional impersonal, scholarly accounts. The reader is continuously made aware of the ‘uneasy combination of involvement and detachment’ that is highlighted in ethnography, although it is present in every scholarly attempt to make sense of politics in all its many shapes and forms. The other side of this coin can be seen when the observed are also social scientists and talk your language. Thedvall comments that having a shared academic language ‘requires an even more critical stance’ and ‘a period of distancing from the field’. The words may be shared, giving ‘the impression that we share perspectives’, but the meaning is not. Recognising shared assumptions, then teasing out the differences, is hard.

The lessons of being there This chapter has argued that ‘thick descriptions’ add texture, depth, nuance, authenticity and surprise to our accounts of government elites. They ought to be embraced as a welcome addition to the political scientists’ toolkit. To a large degree, they are inextricably connected to an interpretive approach to political science. This approach is at one and the same time marginal and actively denounced by the mainstream but it is gaining currency and respectability. The interpretive approach to understanding politics does not reject institutions or their perceived imperatives but it assumes people not only inherit beliefs but actively shape and change them during negotiated encounters and policy practices. Routinised, taken-for-granted structures go hand in hand with spaces for action, making a difference, and changing the course of events. Studying actors up close, whether elites or ordinary citizens (Brett and Moran, 2006), using observation as a key method for recovering these beliefs, interactions and practices is essential to an interpretive political science. The previous chapters represent a significant part of our collective experience of fieldwork. So, we seek to draw lessons for those tempted to follow in our footsteps. We identify four key lessons. First, the aim is to see the world through the eyes of the manager, top civil servant and politician; to make our construction of their construc-

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tion of the world. It is built up through the accounts of its members. Researchers should not make assumptions but ask questions and listen to the reply. As academics we are used to the sound of our own voice. In fieldwork, our voice can be the equivalent of static or white noise – it interferes with reception. Second, trust is essential – ‘being nice to people and trying to see the world as they see it. You need to be patient, come on slow, and feel your way along. Two handy hints: Go where you are driven; take what you are given; and, when in doubt, be quiet’ (Fenno, 1990). We would add be patient and stick around. Gradually you become part of the furniture. However, the rules of thumb could induce a manipulative cast of mind. The injunction to be an actor could imply you behave in an inauthentic way. It is as well to remember that we act out several roles in our everyday life. The forensic skills of an academic seminar can offend in everyday life. The injunction to act is, therefore, an injunction to self-awareness, not duplicity. It also advises sensitivity to context, not the manipulation of circumstances for personal advantage. Both insufficient, and too much, rapport are problems. A professional relationship can slip into a personal friendship. ‘I did not want them as friends – only respondents.’ If they invite you home, you cannot refuse but don’t take notes. Switch off as a researcher and forget what you hear. Third, when in the field and when writing up, be critical of yourself. Observing has its costs. You get tired, you forget quickly and interviews produce anxiety. Your notes are selective, a reconstruction. ‘The data is not better then quantitative data. It is just different.’ Moreover, there are sound criteria for judging the work. The subjects of the research make a judgement on whether they recognise themselves and their world. The academic community also makes a judgement about whether the research rings true and says anything new and insightful (Rhodes, 1997: 190–2).4 Fourth, writing up is not the end of research but the start of a new phase that is just as challenging. In effect, we seek detachment and distance by trying to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. We turn a critical eye not only on our material but also on ourselves as we write our part in the story. We have to beware of ‘secondary ethnocentrism’: that is, we cannot accept that our informants give us a higher order of truth or accuracy. Rather we must think about why people say and do the things they do. We have to twist and turn the data as we interrogate our fieldwork.

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Conclusions Social scientists discussing methods can err on the side of the abstruse. As a first conclusion, therefore, we distil our reflections on observation into the rules of thumb in Box 9.1. They are not rocket science but they should help any researcher who wants to get in the field and practice being there. Our second conclusion is that we need to do more observation of politicians and public servants at work and that means more studies using ethnographic methods (Rhodes, 2002, 2005). People continue to matter in a technological, globalised and bureaucratised world and we need ways of getting at the human face of governance. Political psychology is a subfield of political science that is devoted to putting people first. There are pockets of public administration that explore top-level and street-level bureaucrats. However, most of this work remains within the positivist epistemology. Consequently, much of it fails oddly to get ‘up close and personal’. We have shown that such work is possible. We have also tried to describe it ‘warts and all’.

Box 9.1

The rules of thumb for observation

Take what you can get Be flexible and go where you are led and follow up unanticipated leads See the world through their eyes and focus on their interests Be polite Be honest Trust them and be trustworthy Establish rapport, but neither too much nor too little Be critical of yourself and your work Be an actor Look behind the data: compare what people say they do, what they think they do, and what they actually do Ask why they say and do what they do Post-fieldwork – be reflexive; compare, contrast and criticise your data Post-fieldwork – be detached, from the people and the place

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Observation is not only odd but it is also risky. However, the game is worth the candle because it ‘leads to a thoroughgoing revision of our understanding of what it is to open    the consciousness of one group of people to    the life-form of another’ (Geertz, 1988: 143). Developing political ethnography with observation at its methodological core is about ‘edification’ – a way of finding ‘new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking about’ politics and government (Rorty, 1980: 360). It involves ‘enabling conversation’ and enlarging ‘the possibility of intelligible discourse between people quite different from one another in interest, outlook, wealth and power’ (Geertz, 1988: 147). That was our ambition when decentring institutions and being there to identify the beliefs and everyday practices of government elites. Notes 1. We would like to thank all of our co-authors for their advice, comments and textual contributions to this chapter. We also benefited from the advice of Mark Bevir, Jenny Fleming, Brian Hardy, Carolyn Hendriks and Alison Procter. We thank them, with the usual disclaimer that we are responsible for any remaining errors of fact or judgement. 2. On observation see: Adler and Adler, 1987; Fenno, 1990; Geertz, 1973, 1983; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983; Punch, 1986; Sanjek, 1990; and Van Maanen, 1988. 3. On elite interviewing see: Dexter, 1970; Lilleker, 2003; McPherson and Raab, 1988; Richards, 1996; Weiss, 1993, and the symposium in PS: Political Science and Politics, 35 (4), 2002: 663–88. The origins of several of our comments can be found in Rhodes, 2002. They were developed in correspondence between Rod Rhodes and Brian Hardy (Nuffield Institute for Health, University of Leeds). We would like to thank Brian for his help. 4. The best discussion of observation by a political scientist for other political scientists is Fenno, 1990 and the quotes in this section are from his chapter 3.

References Adler, P. A. and Adler, P. 1987. Membership Roles in Field Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Agar, M. 1996. The Professional Stranger. 2nd edition. San Diego: Academic Press. Bell, C. and Newby, H. (eds) 1977. Doing Sociological Research. London: Allen & Unwin. Bevir, M. 1999. The Logic of the History of Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. 2003. ‘Interpretation and its others’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 40 (2), pp. 169–87. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. 2006. Governance Stories. Abingdon: Routledge. Blondel, J. 1981. The Discipline of Politics. London: Butterworth. Brett, J. and Moran, A. 2006. Ordinary People’s Politics: Australians Talk about Life, Politics and the Future of their Country. Melbourne: Pluto Press.

232 Observing Government Elites Burnham, P., Gilland, K., Grant, W. and Layton-Henry, Z. 2004. Research Methods in Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Burns, T. 1977. The BBC: Public Institution and Private World. London: Macmillan. Clifford, J. 1983. ‘On ethnographic authority’, Representations, 2, pp. 118–46. Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (eds) 1984. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dexter, L. 1970. Elite and Specialised Interviewing. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Dogan, M. and Pelassy, D. 1990. How to Compare Nations: Strategies in Comparative Politics. 2nd edition. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House. Eckstein, H. 1975. ‘Case study and theory in political science’, in F. I. Greenstein and N. Polsby (eds), Handbook of Political Science. Volume 7. Strategies of Inquiry. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, pp. 79–137. Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I. and Shaw, L. L. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fenno, R. F. 1990. Watching Politicians: Essays on Participant Observation. Berkeley, CA: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California. Flyvbjerg, B. 2006. ‘Five misunderstandings about case studies’, Qualitative Inquiry, 122, pp. 219–45. Fox, K. 2004. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, C. 1983. Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, C. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press. George, A. L. and Bennett, A. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Giddens, A. 1993. New Rules of Sociological Method. 2nd revised edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hammersley, M. 1990. Reading Ethnographic Research: A Critical Guide. Harlow, Essex: Longman. Hammersley, M. 2000. Taking Sides in Social Science Research: Essays on Partisanship and Bias. London: Routledge. Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. 1983. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Routledge. ‘t Hart, 1994. Groupthink in Government: A Study of Small Groups and Policy Failure. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press ‘t Hart, P., Boin, A. C. W., Dijkstra, G., Meer, F. M. van der and Zannoni, M. 2002. Politiek-Ambtelijke Verhoudingen in Beweging. Amsterdam: Boom. ‘t Hart, P., Stern, E. K. and Sundelius, B. (eds) 1997. Beyond Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy Making. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Inbar, M. 1979. Routine Decision Making: The Future of Bureaucracy. Beverly Hills: Sage. Lee, M. 1995. ‘The ethos of the Cabinet Office: a comment on the testimony of officials’, in R. A. W. Rhodes and P. Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive. London: Macmillan, pp. 149–57. Lilleker, D. G. 2003. ‘Interviewing the political elite: navigating a potential minefield’, Politics, 23 (3), pp. 207–14.

Benefits and Pitfalls of Being There 233 Marcus, George E. 1995. ‘Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography’, Annual Review in Anthropology, 24 (1), pp. 95–117. McPherson, A. and Raab, C. 1988. Governing Education. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Oakeshott, M. 1996. The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism. Ed. Timothy Fuller. New Haven: Yale University Press. Paxman, J. 2002. The Political Animal. London: Michael Joseph. Punch, M. 1986. The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Rawnsley, A. 2001. Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour. Revised edition. London: Penguin Books. Rhodes, R. A. W. 1993. ‘State-building without bureaucracy’, in I. Budge and D. McKay (eds), Developing Democracy: Research in Honour of Jean Blondel. London: Sage, pp. 165–78. Rhodes, R. A. W. 1997. Understanding Governance. Buckingham: Open University Press. Rhodes, R. A. W. 2002. ‘Putting the people back into networks’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 37 (3), pp. 399–415. Rhodes, R. A. W. 2005. ‘Everyday life in a ministry: public administration as anthropology’, American Review of Public Administration, 35 (1), pp. 3–26. Richards, D. 1996. ‘Elite interviewing: approaches and pitfalls’, Politics, 16 (3), pp. 199–204. Rorty, R. 1980. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Oxford: Blackwell. Sanjek, R. (ed.). 1990. Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Sanjek, R. 2000. ‘Keeping ethnography alive in an urbanizing world’, Human Organization, 59 (3), pp. 280–8. Seldon, A. 1995. ‘The Cabinet Office and coordination, 1979–87’, in R. A. W. Rhodes and P. Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive. Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 125–48. Shore, C. 2000. Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration. London: Routledge. Shore, C. and Nugent, S. 2002. Elite Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives. ASA Monographs 38. London: Routledge. Shore, Cris and Susan Wright (eds) 1997. The Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London: Routledge. Turner, V. 1973. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. London: Cornell University Press. Van Maanen, J. 1978. ‘On watching the watchers’, in P. K. Manning and J. Van Maanen (eds), Policing: A View from the Street. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear. Van Maanen, J. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weiss, R. A. 1994. Learning from Strangers: Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies. New York: Free Press. Wildavsky, A. 1979. The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. London: Macmillan. Wulff, H. 2002. ‘Yo-yo fieldwork: mobility and time in a multi-local study of dance in Ireland’, Anthropological Journal on European Cultures, 11 (2), pp. 117–36. Yin, R. K. 2003. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. 3rd edition. London: Sage.

Index NB: Page numbers in bold refer to boxes, figures or tables Abélès, M. 172, 189, 196 Aberbach, J. D. 1, 5 access 100, 132, 157 restricted 83–4 acronyms 42, 136, 193, 226 Adler, P. A. 106, 208, 220, 223 Adonnino, P. 188 advisers external 67–8 political 89 security 70 special (Spads) 25, 29, 31, 35–7, 46 Agar, M. 208 agreement, reaching 170–2 see also consensus Albrow, M. 160 Allison, G. T. 1, 5 Alvesson, M. 3, 11, 80 ambiguity 80, 101 analysts 65, 68, 70, 71 Anderson, B. 188 anthropologists 10, 157, 182, 189, 219 anthropology 206 definition of 214 ethnographic approach of social 2 European Commission perspective 199–202 interpretive 185 symbolic 183, 184–6, 186 archives 106, 201, 207 assumptions 64–5, 95, 229 Atkinson, P. 2, 7 Auden, W. H. 21 Aull Davis, C. 176–7 autocrats 71–2, 75 back stage 3, 142, 215 Baring, A. 2 Barnes, Julian 21 Barroso, José Manuel 202

Beckett, Margaret 44 behaviour boundary maintenance 183 change in 222 elite 5 ‘being there’ 1–14, 22–5 see also benefits and pitfalls belangendragers (end-users) 60, 70 Bell, C. 215 Ben-Ari, E. 163 benefits and pitfalls 8–11, 206–31 in fieldwork 213–28 lessons 228–9 overview 13 Bennett, A. 224–5 Berger, P. L. 3 Bevir, M. 4, 7, 110, 121, 209, 225 bias 8, 9–10, 106, 158, 208 Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD) see Dutch Intelligence Service Blair, Tony 24, 39–40, 47, 217 Blondel, J. 224 Blunkett, David 44–5 Bobrow, D. B. 4 Boin, R. A. 52 Borneman, J. 162 Bouckaert, G. 81 Bourdieu, P. 106, 176 Bramwell, A. C. 196–7, 199 Brett, J. 7, 228 Brown, Gordon 37–8, 44 Brown, P. 45 Brunsson, N. 3, 109 Bryman, A. 106 Budget Committee (Karlstad) 109, 113, 116–17, 119, 123 buildings 57–8, 81, 180 ministerial 83 Bureau of Euregional Cooperation 140

234

Index bureaucracy acronyms 193 off-stage 163 bureaucrats 131–3 -diplomats 142–8, 148–9 entanglement 162–3 policy-making 131–3, 142–8, 162–3 private stage 213 Burnham, P. 206 Burns, T. 215, 224 Buys, Admiral 74 Cabinet 24, 36, 37–8 Cabinet Office 24, 41 Callon, M. 161 case studies 132, 208, 224 CATS (Comité de l’Article Trente-Six) committee 136–8, 142, 146 ‘cauldron of Spads’ 36, 46 celebrity 28, 39, 41, 46, 47, 215 central administration (Karlstad) 119 Centre Party (Swedish) 111 Chabal, P. 183 change agents of 67–8 BVD 51–3, 63–5 cultural 57–8, 73 environmental 57–8 opinion 170 organisational 72–4 societal 51–3, 107–11 stability and 104, 111–21, 121–5 Christiansen, T. 141 Cini, M. 183 civil servants 24, 132, 137–8, 141, 145, 156 see also European Commission Clarke, Charles 44 Clifford, J. 226 coalition building 141–2 new, in Karlstad 119 red–green 118, 119, 123 Cohen, M. D. 80 Cold War 51–3, 54, 60–1, 63, 69 Comité de l’Article Trente-Six (CATS) 136–8, 142, 146

235

Comité de Représentants Permanentes (COREPER) 136 commissioners 121, 180 Committee of Independent Experts (CIE) 183, 197–9 committees 43–4, 119, 141 expert 133–6 governance 143 high-level 136–8 communication see meetings; talking Communist Party Dutch 51–2 Swedish 111, 118, 121 comparative approach 219–20 complete member 106, 208, 223 confessional accounts 23, 227 conflict 166, 172 management 80 Connolly, Bernard 198 consensus 114, 116, 134, 166–7, 172 culture 113, 123 majority 209 considered writing, pattern of 22, 218 constructivist epistemology 3, 7 content analysis 1 contacts and 97 control 214–16 Cook, Robin 217 Cooper, R. 162 cooperation 150, 222–4 police 133–6, 138–9, 139–41 practical 153–4 coordination units 146–7 coping mechanisms 72, 98 corruption 183, 197, 198, 200, 210 Cottam, M. 5 Council of Ministers (JHA) 134, 136, 137 Cowles, M. G. 162 Crapanzano, V. 185 Criminal Intelligence (CRI) (Dutch police) and BVD 65, 69 crisis economic/fiscal 105, 113, 117 meetings 84, 87 situations 91 criticism 11, 229

236 Index cronyism 183, 198 Crossman, Richard 27 cultural systems 198 practices 187, 188 stories 3, 21 culture shock 59, 66 cultures administrative 200 change 57–8, 73 civil service 183–4, 189, 198 compromise 172 conflict 172 consensus 123 government elite 182–4 organisational see organisational culture political see political culture ‘webs of significance’ 184–5 Dales, Ien 69–70 Daloz, J.-P. 183 data availability 133–41, 145 collection 56, 66 qualitative 207 systems 139, 140 decision-making 99, 123 formal procedures 108 processes 104, 107, 112, 173 Delanty, G. 162 Delbridge, R. 44 deliberation, debates and 219 see also decision-making; meetings Delors, President Jacques 189, 191, 200–2 departments cocoon 26–9 Finance (Karlstad) 103, 107–9, 109, 112, 114 public image 30 relations with 87–8 representing 46–7 running 43–5 see also Ministries detachment 107 critical 222 engagement and 105 diaries 1, 25–6, 44, 222 ‘diary disease’ 227

engagement 26 secretary 28 dilemmas 63–5, 121–2, 124, 142 diplomats, bureaucrat- 142–8, 148–9 Directorate-Generals (DGs) 83, 161, 180, 190 Director-Generals (DG) 25, 34, 45, 82–90 passim, 181, 190 Directors (Netherlands) 83, 87 discretion 45, 146 Docters van Leeuwen, Arthur 52–7, 213, 216, 219–20 as autocrat 71–2, 75 as change agent 67–8 as ‘intellectual giant’ 66–7 as leader 62–3, 63–5, 73–4 leadership image 65–72 politics and 68–70 reflections of 74–6 documents 80, 99, 209 classified 2 Dogan, M. 5, 224 Downs, A. 1 dress code 36, 103, 134 Dryzek, J. S. 4 Dunleavy, P. 1 Dutch Institute of International Affairs 144 Dutch Intelligence Service (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst, BVD) 51–76 need for change 51–3 ordinariness of 59–60 overview 12 reform of 52 in transition 57–62 Dutch Senior Public Service (ABD) 99 Eckstein, H. 224 Edwards, G. 183 Egeberg, M. 141, 177 elites cultures of 182–4 political 104 social 109–10, 111 studies of 1–2, 4–5 Elron, E. 163 Emerson, R. M. 225

Index employment policies 163–4 practices 197–8 Engelen, D. 51 engrenage 192–6, 201, 210 Epic (police cooperation unit) 140–1, 152 epiphany, moments of 101, 209–10 episodes 78, 93, 95, 97–8, 100 epistemology ‘communities’ 141 constructivist 7 positivist 230 equal opportunities 197–8 ethics of observational research 53–6, 216–17 ethnographers 2–3, 7–8 ethnographic research 11 fieldwork 182 fragility of 74–6 immersion 2, 3–4, 7, 59, 101, 226 key findings 212–13 multi-sited 23, 157, 173, 174 on the powerful 216 strategically situated 173 strategies 7–8 see also benefits and pitfalls ethnography 185–6, 206 definition 207–8 retrospective 106 social anthropology and 2 Eurocrats 131–58 bureaucrats and 131–3 data availability 133–41 ideal types 141–54, 155 overview 13 policy making 160–78: at work 163–72; bureaucratic entanglement 162–3; observing 172–7; parallel worlds of 177–8 understanding national 154–8 European Commission 136–7, 152, 162, 165, 180–203 anthropological perspective 199–202 culture 183–4, 189, 198 employment practices 197–8 features of 190–2

237

infiltration of 188–90 insider, lay and expert views on 196–9 metaphors of integration 181–2 overview 13 personnel policy 198 procedures 137 Security Office 199 European Community Court of Justice 162 European Court of Auditors 183 European Justice and Home Affairs institutions 133 European Parliament 162, 188 Research and Documentation Office 181 European Union (EU) 131, 137 Council of Ministers 161, 164, 195 Employment Committee 161, 164–5, 168, 173–4 Lisbon Strategy 161 Member States 133, 153, 161, 170–1 ‘Europeanisation’ 133, 162, 188 Europol 138–9, 152 Management Board 139 events 54, 228 breakfast 29 critical 104, 113, 115, 117, 119 episodes and 78, 93, 95, 97–8, 100 issues and 110–11 pace of 44, 79, 87, 91 sequence of 80, 93–4 Executive Committee (Karlstad) 103, 112, 116, 118–20, 124 expert advice 110, 133–6, 163–4, 196–9 legal 140 facts 11, 64–5, 94, 96, 104, 124 political 99 webs of 80 Faucher-King, F. 4 Featherstone, K. 162 Feldman, M. S. 7, 80 Fenno, R. F. 7, 206, 229 fieldwork 9, 53–4, 101, 188, 188–90 benefits and pitfalls 213–28 ethnographic 182

238 Index fieldwork – continued multi-site 23, 157, 173, 174 notes 225–6 ‘yo-yo’ 23, 173, 174–5, 207 Fischer, F. 4 Flaubert, Gustave 21, 22 Flyvbjerg, B. 48, 224 fonctionnaire 191, 193, 202 formality 113, 123 Fowler, N. 162 Fox, K. 44–5, 208 France 181, 198 fraud 183, 197 ‘Fresh Blood’ (BVD project) 63–4 game playing 181–2 organisational 160 policy work 99 Garfinkel, H. 3 Garsten, C. 161, 177 gate-keeping 108, 114, 145, 153 Geertz, C. 3, 7, 22, 207, 220, 225–7, 231 European Commission and 181, 183–7, 199 Gellner, E. A. 188 gender-bias 169–70 Geneen, Harold 210 General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) 54 see also Dutch Intelligence Service generalisation 9, 224–5 George, A. L. 224–5 Germany 181 Geuijen, K. 209–10, 213, 217, 223, 226 Giddens, A. 219 Glad, B. 6 going native 106, 158, 223 Goldfinch, S. 73 gossip 36, 38, 44–5, 46, 80, 120, 212 governance 176 committee 143 European 141–2, 154 systems 131–2 Governing Council (Netherlands ministries) 82–3 government

joined up 118 local see Karlstad Member States 190, 200 positivist 208 Green Papers 176 Green Party (Swedish) 103, 110–12, 114, 116, 118–19, 121–3 grounded theory 9, 101 Haas, P. M. 141 Hajer, M. A. 2, 4, 7 Hamilton, V. L. 73 Hammersley, M. 2, 7, 217, 226 Hannerz, U. 174 Hasselström, A. 161 Hay, C. 4 Head of Secretariat (Karlstad) 108 Hellemons, Ad 149–50, 156 Hennessy, P. 2 Hersh, S. M. 2 Herzfeld, M. 160, 186 Hewitt, Patricia 44 Hill, Reginald 21 Hobsbawm, E. 188 Hoekstra, F. 51, 69 Homo Europaeus 183, 211 Hood, C. 81 ‘horizontal values’ 118, 121 humour 7, 44–5, 63, 113, 212 Hurd, Douglas 181 identity 180, 183–4, 194 image 221 leadership 65–72 immersion 3–4, 7, 101, 226 ‘deep’ 2, 59 impressionist tales 23, 227 Inbar, M. 212 infiltration 53–6, 75, 100–1, 188–90 informality 134, 142 information operational 75 sharing 80, 139, 145 transnational 133–41 insider 42, 113, 158, 223–4 -outsider 58–9, 105–7 European Commission 196–9 European Union 144–5

Index institutionalised bargaining 144–5 institutions 109 key 119 of Member States 168 integration engrenage 192–6 metaphors 181–2 theorists 195 inter-subjective agreement 11, 219 interpretation 184–5, 187 interpreters 134, 176 interpretive approaches 2, 3–4, 11, 184, 208, 228 political science 219 interviews 1–2, 106–7, 220–2 exit 56 lengthy 193 ‘off the record’ 189 open-ended 132 as a performance 221 issue management 86–92 retracing 92–7 issues 104 energy 111 environmental 111 finance 114, 123–5 meeting-driven 98 multiple major 85–6 political 110 rhythms 86–7 with status 110 Jacobsson, B. 162 Janis, I. L. 5 Jary, C. 25, 41–2 Jenkins, W. I. 143 journalists 2, 200, 217–18 junior ministers 24, 96 Kan, M. M. 73 Karlstad 103–27 observation, politics 105–7 old regime 107–11 overview 12–13 political evolution 103–5 stability and change 111–21: 1980s 111–13; 1990s 113–19; 2000s 119–21; understanding 121–5

Kassim, H. 147 Kaufman, H. 4, 5, 80, 84 ‘Keep in Touch’ meetings (KiTs) 42, 43 Kelly, David 213 Kelly, P. 2 Kelman, H. C. 73 Keohane, R. O. 10 Khan, Dr 52 King, G. 10 Kinnock, Neil 202 Kirchner, E. 141 KiTs (‘Keep in Touch’) meetings 42, 43 Kohl, Helmut 200 Kunda, G. 2 language 104, 176, 210 academic 176–7, 228 buzz words 74 code 74 consultants 34 known verbal formulas 135 military 93–4 of officials 46 rules of 184 semi-private 193 of social science 227 temporal 95 of time 210 traditional 41 see also talking languages different 167 Member State official 134 study on different 189 Lasswell, H. D. 7 Latour, B. 2 lay observers 187, 196–9 leaders 1–2 Docters van Leeuwen, Arthur 62–3, 63–5, 73–4 team 71–2 leadership 7, 32, 104 administrative 104, 120, 123 challenges 63–5 clumsy 60 group 111 images 65–72

239

29,

29,

240 Index leadership – continued local 107 organisational 54, 72–4 reformist 53 style 115–16 Left party (Swedish) 111, 121 Levinson, S. 45 Liberal Party (Swedish) 111 Lipsky, M. 6, 163 listening 229 talking and 220–2 long hours 47, 87, 98, 200 Luckmann, T. 3 Ludlow, P. 183, 193 Lynn, L. 80, 99 Macmullen, A. 183 Malinowski, B. 182, 184 Malkki, L. H. 162 management 43, 80 boards 25, 31–5, 139 consultants 34 teams 73–4, 83 Manning, P. K. 6 March, J. G. 80, 101 Marcus, G. E. 156–7, 173–4, 207, 226 Martin, J. 3 Maynard-Moody, S. 6 Mead, M. 184 meaning 209 creation of 3–4, 8, 93, 95, 177 media 1–2, 31, 36, 46, 99 see also press coverage Meer, F. M. van der 5 meetings 134, 164 back-to-back 39 collegial 166 committee 167–70 crisis 84, 87 driving policy 86 Eurocrats 172–7 Europol Management Board 139 expert 132 high-level 136–8 informal 125 ‘Keep in Touch’ (KiTs) 29, 42, 43 layered structure of 112–13 management team 73–4 with minders 36–8

nature of 80 office 29–31 one-to-one 42 pointless 39–40 police cooperation 134–5, 142 preparatory 120, 123, 138, 145, 161, 165, 168 purposes of 209 rituals of 135 visitors 38–9 Member States 138, 162, 190, 200 metaphors 99, 193–4 of integration 181–2 methodology 53–6, 100–1, 156–8, 172–7, 184–6, 188–90 team work 55 see also benefits and pitfalls Middlemas, K. 200 Milburn, Alan 44, 217 Miles, M. B. 10 Ministers 42 advisers to see special advisers (Spads) Code 24 everyday life of 21–49 with minders 36–8 in outside world 46–7 overview 12 shadowing 25–40 under stress 47–8 working with 45–6 Ministries Industry, Employment and Communication (Swedish) 161, 173 Interior (Dutch) 132, 133–4, 137 Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) (Dutch) 134, 136, 137–8 Treasury (UK) 24 Mintzberg, H. 80 Mitchell, R. G. 9, 53 Mitrany, D. 183 Mitterrand, François 200 Moderate Party (Swedish) 110, 111, 113, 116, 121 moments of epiphany 101, 209–10 Monnet, Jean 183, 195, 201, 202, 210

Index Montoya, M. L. 161 Moran, A. 228 Mörth, U. 162 Mouritzen, P. E. 1 multi-site fieldwork 23, 157, 173, 174 multinational arena 140, 141, 161 Musheno, M. 6 narratives see stories nation-states 162–3, 163–4 National Government Training Institute (ROI) 144 national perspectives 137, 164–7, 167–70 new public management 34, 41–2, 210 Newby, H. 215 newspaper articles 80 9/11 attacks 54 post- 60 Noon, M. 44 Noordegraaf, M. 79, 81, 84, 99 benefits and pitfalls 208, 210, 212–13, 215 Norell, P. O. 207, 213, 223, 227 Nugent, S. 214 Oakeshott, M. 10, 22, 218 objectivity 7–11, 94 obligations 122 observation 186 benefits and pitfalls 206, 207–8, 228 ethics and 216–17 infiltration 53–6, 75, 100–1, 188–90 insider-outsider 58–9, 105–7 limitations 157–8 research strategy 7–8, 9, 11, 100–1 rules of thumb 230 theory and 84 value of 40 see also ‘being there’; shadowing observers complete 106, 208, 223 lay and expert 187

241

non-participant 7–8, 209, 222 participant 7–8, 161, 172–7, 189, 207 ‘off-stage’ 2, 163, 215 Olsen, J. P. 101 ‘operational’ cult 61–2, 67, 68, 138–9, 156 opinion change of 170 surveys 30 organisational culture 192, 200, 202 change 72–4 diagnostics 106 European Commission 183–4, 189, 198 practices 2 storylines 81 theory 206 Ortner, S. 184 ‘Others’ 58, 186, 214 outsider 1, 31, 41, 135, 215–16, 222 BVA and 55, 61, 66 -insider 58–9, 105–7 pace of events 44, 79, 87, 91 Page, E. C. 1, 143 Paige, G. D. 5 paper-driven issues 86, 98 papers see documents parental leave 166, 168 Parliamentary Secretaries (ParlS) 24, 29, 31 Parry, K. W. 73 Paxman, Jeremy 217 Pelassy, D. 224 ‘People’s Europe’ campaign 188 performance 100, 183, 192–6, 213, 221 -fear 81 Permanent Secretary (PS) 24, 27–9, 32–6, 38, 42, 45 personal presence see ‘being there’ personnel policy 193–4 Peterson, J. 184 pitfalls see benefits and pitfalls places meetings as 80 see also environment

242 Index police cooperation 133–6, 138–9, 139–41 case study 132–3 Police Cooperation Working Party 134 policy bureaucrats 131–3, 142–8, 154, 162–3 data availability and 133–41 managers see public policy managers networks 153, 154 practices 2 processes 104 ‘relevant’ 62 studies 4 transitional 133 politeness 26, 44–5, 55, 135, 212 political culture 110, 196 anthropology and 48 practices 2 supranational 197 political psychobiography 6–7 political psychology 230 political science 3–4, 206–7, 219, 230 everyday 48 interpretive 10, 219, 228 mainstream 208, 218, 224 traditional 1, 182 political scientists 2, 8, 11, 48, 124, 206, 209 ‘political secretary’ (Karlstad) 119–21 politicians 104, 213 politics 46 action 211 advisers 89 ‘antennae’ for 124 formality and 121 issues 110 leadership and 104 on-stage 163 standpoints 94, 163 Pollard, S. 44 Pollitt, C. 81 Ponting, Clive 213 positivism 3, 6, 8, 181–2, 211 epistemology and 230 versions of government 208 post-national order 142, 162

power and truth 214–16 PPS see principal private secretary practice everyday 212 pattern of 22, 218 Prescott, John 44–6 press coverage 31, 36, 52, 87, 91 Press Office 29, 30 principal private secretary (PPS) 24, 27–9, 31–2, 36, 38, 43, 46 Private Office 24–5, 27–8, 30, 34, 36, 43–4, 47 ‘prize-fighters’ 147–8 procedures 80 decision-making 108 European Commission 137 European Union (EU) 137 institutionalised 104 security 108 workable 140 Prodi, Romano 202 professional skills 149 Prottas, J. M. 6 psychobiography, political 6–7 public administration see Karlstad public image 30, 221 Public Order and Safety (Dutch) 52 public policy managers 78–101 access to 83–4 issue management 86–92, 92–7 organisational structure 81–3, 82 overview 12 reflections 97–100, 100–1 shadowing 84–6 tangible work of 80–1 Punch, M. 9, 53, 59, 61, 215, 217, 224 Putnam, R. D. 5 qualitative methods 3, 7, 10, 207 ‘quality in work’ indicators 165, 173 quantitative methods 3, 10, 219 Radaelli, C. M. 162 Ranger, T. 188 rapport 221–2 Rawnsley, A. 2, 216, 217 realist accounts 23, 226–7 recordings 215–16, 221, 225

Index records meeting 176 minute-taking 104 red box (ministerial) 43–4 red–green coalition 118, 119, 123 Reeves, S. P. 59 reform 202 ‘consolidation’ of 74 major 73 see also Dutch Intelligence Service relationships 104, 110, 122, 127 reliability 9, 11, 218–20 research reflections 100–1 fears 224 see also benefits and pitfalls Rhodes, R. A. W. 1, 4, 5, 7, 28, 110, 121 benefits and pitfalls 208–16, 222, 224, 227, 229–30 Richardson, L. 21, 22 Risse-Kappen, T. 131 rituals 11, 104, 141, 182–3, 186, 194–6, 211 of bureaucracy 44 daily 58 initiation 56 of meetings 135 symbols 187–8 tea drinking 28, 30, 33, 39 Roborgh, L. J. 5 roles contradictory 47 shifting 162–3 Rombach, B. 109 Rorty, R. 231 Ross, M. H. 172 routines 11, 44, 55–6, 212–13 routing 96–7 rules 11, 212 European Commission 197, 197–8 of the game 181–2, 209 of language and taxonomies 184 Rumford, C. 162 Sanjek, R. 10, 225 Santer Commission 183 Schneider, M. 185 Scholte, B. 185 Schuman, Robert 183, 202

243

Schwartz-Shea, P. 8 Schwartzmann, H. B. 80 secrecy 48 spies and 216–17 see also Dutch Intelligence Service Secretariat (Karlstad) 109 secretaries diary 28 Employment Committee 171 parliamentary (Parls) 24, 29, 31 permanent (PS) 24, 27–9, 32–6, 38, 42, 45 political 119–21 principal private (PPS) 24, 27–9, 31–2, 36, 38, 43, 46 Secretary of State (SofS) 24 Secretary-General (SG) 82, 83, 85 security 70, 108, 121 Seldon, A. 220 Selznick, P. 52, 109 semiotics 183, 184 Senior Public Services (SPS) 99 serendipity 209–10 shadowing 132, 174 ministers 25–40 policy managers 84–6 Shaw, George Bernard 35 Shore, C. N. 4, 7, 157, 174, 183, 188 benefits and pitfalls 207, 210, 214, 220 sites, multi fieldwork 23, 157, 173, 174 Sköldberg, K. 11 Slaughter, A.-M. 155 ‘snowball technique’ 189–90 Social Committee (Karlstad) 116 Social Democratic Party (Swedish) 107, 110–11, 114, 116–18, 121–3 social sciences 3, 6, 176, 208, 224 social scientists 189–90, 230 social standing 109–10, 115 sociology 206 organisational 3 SofS see Secretary of State special advisers (Spads) 25, 29, 31, 35–6, 36–7, 46 speeches 23, 80 Spence, D. 183, 198 Spencer, J. 184, 187

244 Index Sperber, D. 187 Spierenburg report 198 spies and secrecy 9, 216–17 see also Dutch Intelligence Service standards, maintaining 218–20 stereotypes 160, 167 stories 7, 76, 105, 209, 225–8 coherent 66 ‘complete’ 89 historical 107 organisational 81 see also tales street-level bureaucrats 6 street-level entrepreneurs 148–54 stress, tensions and 162–3 structural change 72–4 studies of elites 4–7 limitations of 5–6 ‘study tours’ 123 studying down 6 studying through 157, 174, 207 studying up 6, 186 supranational institutions 87, 183, 196–7, 201 surprises 209–10 surveys 1, 132 Svara, J. 1 symbolic anthropology 183, 184–6, 186 symbols 2–3, 7, 46, 91, 194, 211 buildings 53–4, 192 new for Europe 188 properties and functions 186–8 ritual 187–8 systematic approach 7–11 ‘t Hart, P. 73, 132, 207–13 passim, 216, 219–20, 224, 227 tales 7 confessional 23, 227 impressionist 23, 227 realist 23, 226–7 see also stories talking 41–2 listening and 220–2 patterns 22, 218 truth to power 214–16 Taylor, C. 6

teams 73 ‘experimental’ multinational 140 leaders 71–2 methodology 55 tensions 162–3, 215 terminology see language texts 2, 80, 99 see also documents Thedvall, R. 133, 141, 162, 164, 171–2 benefits and pitfalls 209, 225–6, 228 theory 11, 84 ‘thick descriptions’ 3, 7, 22, 40–1, 76, 183–6, 201 benefits and pitfalls 208–9, 224, 228 time, effects of 210–11 TISPOL (European Transport Police Network) 148–9, 149–51 ‘total immersion’ 59 traditional political science 1, 182 traditions 41, 63–4, 104, 209 transnational information sharing 133–41 travel 113, 161 triangulation 10, 23 trust 138–9, 152, 157, 221, 229 building 217–18 truth, power and 214–16 Turner, V. W. 7, 161, 183–4, 194, 196, 199, 201, 220 symbols and 186–8 unit heads

83, 90–2

validity 9, 11, 218–20 van Eeten, M. J. G. 4 van Gogh, Theo 54 Van Maanen, J. 3, 6, 23, 60, 177, 207, 226–7 van Thijn, Ed 69–70 Verba, S. 10 Vignon, Jerôme 189 Vos, C. 52 Wacquant, L. 106 Wagenaar, H. 2, 4, 7 Walter, J. 6 Weber, M. 160, 184

Index Weberian bureaucrat 164 Weick, K. E. 3, 101 Weiss, G. 163 Weller, P. M. 5 Westlake, M. 195 Whitehall 38, 45, 49n, 214, 220 Wildavsky, A. 116, 214 Williamson, D. 192 Willis, V. 191 Wodak, R. 163 Woodward, B. 2 words see language; talking working groups 141 hours 47, 87, 98, 200 with ministers (booklet) 41 rhythm of day 86

245

Working Party on Police Cooperation 133–6 Wright, S. 4, 157, 174, 207 Wright, V. 1 writing considered 22, 218 fieldwork notes 225–6, 229 stories 225–8 Wulff, H. 23, 173, 174–5, 207 Yanow, D. 4, 8, 10 Yin, R. K. 224–5 yo-yoing 23, 173, 174–5, 207 Youth House 111, 119 Zelikov, P.

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