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The Temporary Commission Bureaucrat

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The Palgrave Handbook of the European Administrative System

Part of the book series: European Administrative Governance ((EAGOV))

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Abstract

The current economic and financial crisis has hit the European economies and their national public finances hard. In their efforts toward budget consolidation, many EU member states are trying to cut administrative expenditure. As in earlier times of substantial (financial) strain, government institutions facing fiscal austerity may tend to initiate budget cuts thereby downsizing permanent staff and upsizing short-term contracted staff (Hall, 2002). This trend — referred to in this chapter as a shift toward ‘contracted government — follows one of the curative prescriptions of the New Public Management (NPM) reform wave and is designed to promote greater flexibility in, and performance of’, public services (Laegreid and Wise, 2007). Although this trend has been extensively studied for national-level bureaucracies (for example, Hall, 2002; Lagreid and Wise, 2007), contracted government above the state has thus far escaped comprehensive analysis. Moreover, whereas NPM-inspired reforms mainly concerned outsourcing government capacities toward the private sector, ‘contracted government’ involves outsourcing public servants that already are ‘good bureaucrats’ from one government institution to another. Based on novel survey data, this chapter of fers a comprehensive analysis of contracted government at actor level — that is, among seconded national experts (SNEs) — within the Commission.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bremen, Germany

    Zuzana Murdoch (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)

  2. University of Copenhagen, Denmark

    Jarle Trondal (Honorary Professor)

Authors
  1. Zuzana Murdoch
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  2. Jarle Trondal
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. German University of Administrative Sciences, Speyer, Germany

    Michael W. Bauer (Jean Monnet Professor and Chair of Comparative Public Administration and Policy Analysis) (Jean Monnet Professor and Chair of Comparative Public Administration and Policy Analysis)

  2. Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder, Norway

    Jarle Trondal (Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, Professor of European Studies) (Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, Professor of European Studies)

  3. ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway

    Jarle Trondal (Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, Professor of European Studies) (Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, Professor of European Studies)

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© 2015 Zuzana Murdoch and Jarle Trondal

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Murdoch, Z., Trondal, J. (2015). The Temporary Commission Bureaucrat. In: Bauer, M.W., Trondal, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the European Administrative System. European Administrative Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339898_11

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