Forthcoming

Paul 't Hart, Understanding Public Leadership, Basingstoke: Palgrave 2010

The New Eurocrats: National Civil Servants in EU Policy Making, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008, co-author with K. Geuijen, S. Princen, and K. Yesilkagit.

Policies in the European Union are largely made by national civil servants who prepare, take and implement decisions in Brussels as well as at home. Despite the important role of national civil servants in EU governance, they form a ‘hidden world’ that has received little attention from both the media and academics. This book addresses a range of questions that are pertinent to this hidden world, focusing on one EU member state, the Netherlands. How many civil servants are actually involved in EU-related activities? What do these civil servants do when they engage with the EU? And how do they negotiate their dual roles as national civil servants and participants in European networks? These questions are answered through a wide variety of sources and research methods: a large-scale survey among Dutch civil servants, interviews with civil servants who participate in EU policy processes, and observations of meetings both in Brussels and in The Hague. In addition, special attention is given to national experts who are seconded to the European Commission by their government. This book thereby offers a unique and invaluable insight into the activities of national civil servants in the EU, and uncovers some of the secrets of this hidden world of EU governance. More at Bibliovault.

The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 180 pp., co-author with A. Boin, E. Stern, B. Sundelius. (Spanish Edition: La Política De La Gestión De Crisis. El Liderazgo Público Bajo Presión, Madrid: Institute for Public Administration, 2007, 205 pp.)

Crisis management has become a defining feature of contemporary governance. In times of crisis, communities and members of organizations expect their leaders to minimize the impact of the crisis at hand, while critics and bureaucratic competitors try to seize the moment to blame incumbent rulers and their policies. In this extreme environment, policy makers must somehow establish a sense of normality, and foster collective learning from the crisis experience. In this uniquely comprehensive analysis, the authors examine how leaders deal with the strategic challenges they face, the political risks and opportunities they encounter, the errors they make, the pitfalls they need to avoid, and the paths away from crisis they may pursue. This book is grounded in over a decade of collaborative, cross-national case study research, and offers an invaluable multidisciplinary perspective. This is an original and important contribution from experts in public policy and international security. More at Cambridge University Press.

Understanding Policy Fiascoes, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996, 170 pp., co-author with Mark Bovens.

During the last decades of the twentieth century a seemingly endless stream of political scandals and policy fiascoes burst into the open in most Western countries. Each was characterized by intense politicization of government performance following allegations of ineffectiveness, mismanagement, and misconduct in public programs and projects. Their scope was large, encompassing the full range of contemporary governance from defense to social security policy. Their cumulative impact has been to undermine the legitimacy of established institutions and modes of policymaking. This study tries to make sense of the rise of these policy fiascoes. Adapting an interpretive mode of policy analysis, it shows in great detail how not only "partisan" but also "scientific" discourse on policy events contains many biases that promote (or prevent) them being labelled as "fiascoes." These biases are not random occurrences: they reflect deep-seated views about the nature and standards of good governance, as well as certain epistemological commitments about the nature and role of science and knowledge in policymaking. More at Amazon.

Complexity in Urban Crisis Management: Amsterdam's Response to the Bijlmer Air Disaster, London: James and James, 1994, 170 pp., co-author with U. Rosenthal et al.

An in-depth case study of the city of Amsterdam's response to the crash of an El Al Boeing 747 into apartment buildings in an ethnically mixed, depressed neighbourhood in Amsterdam. It documents how what began as a major but straightforward emergency response operation evolved into a much more complex socio-political crisis, and analyses this process from a variety of vantage points. More at Amazon.

Groupthink in Government: A Study of Small Groups and Policy Failure, US paperback edition with a new introduction, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, 300 pp.

Why do groups of talented and experienced individuals make disastrously bad collective judgments, such as the Kennedy administration's flawed decision to proceed with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961? In his pioneering research on collective decision making, Irving Janis introduced the concept of "groupthink"--a deliberately Orwellian neologism--to describe such occurrences.
Now, in the first book-length study of groupthink since Janis's work, Paul `t Hart has provided a rigorous and systematic version of this influential theory which opens several new avenues for research. Groupthink in Government, available for the first time in paperback, examines the circumstances most likely to produce or counteract groupthink, and applies the theory to issues such as leadership style, risk taking, accountability, and prevention. ‘t Hart’s elaborate case study of the Iran-Contra scandal demonstrates the continuing relevance of groupthink theory in the examination of flawed decision making. More at Amazon.

Groupthink in Government: A Study of Small Groups and Policy Failure, Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1990, 300 pp.

This study deals with decision making in high-level policy-making groups. In particular, it analyzes an important cause of policy failure: groupthink. Groupthink causes errors in group decision making. It refers to the tendency for premature and extreme concurrence seeking among group members. It has been identified as one of the causes of major fiascoes in foreign policy, large planning projects and strategic management. This volume presents a comprehensive review of groupthink theory. The author takes the original notion of groupthink, developed by Irving L. Janis in 1972, and elaborates it into a revised model, using a broad range of studies on group dynamics and political decision making. The resulting theory is applied to analyze in detail the decision-making processes with regard to the secret arms-for-hostages deals between the United States and Iran, in which the Reagan administration was led into a disastrous succession of wrong decisions.

Forthcoming

Mark Bovens, Deirdre Curtin, Paul ‘t Hart (eds), The Real World of EU Accountability: What Deficit?, Oxford University Press 2010

• A zip file of the (unedited) manuscript is posted here. Please do not cite until you have obtained permission from one of the editors to do so.

Paul 't Hart and John Uhr (eds), How Power Changes Hands: Transition and Succession in Government, Basingstoke: Palgrave 2010

Dispersed Democratic Leadership, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009. Co-editor with John Kane and Haig Patapan.

This book examines both the scope and consequences of the dispersal of the leadership role in democratic societies, a topic that has been relatively neglected by a political science literature dominated by studies of executive power. Individual chapters investigate the many loci of leadership found in modern democracies, some ancient and some newly emergent, some institutionalized and some ad-hoc, some self-consciously political and some avowedly a-political. In assessing the effects of leadership dispersal, the book argues that understanding how policies are shaped in a democracy requires balancing the usual person-centered approach with one that is more contextual, institutional, and relational. The public leadership role of people in business, the media, non-governmental organizations, bureaucracy, law, show-business and many other areas are instructively investigated to enhance our appreciation of the complexity of democratic political systems and to allow us to assess the effects, both good and ill, of democratic leadership dispersal. More at Oxford University Press.

Framing the global meltdown: Crisis rhetoric and the politics of recessions, Canberra: ANU E Press 2009. Co-editor with Karen Tindall.

The global economic downturn that followed the collapse of major US financial institutions is no doubt the most significant crisis of our times. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating, as have been its impacts on the employment and well being of tens of millions of citizens. It continues to pose major challenges to national policymakers and institutions around the world.

Managing public uncertainty and anxiety is vital in coping with financial crises. This requires not just prompt action but, most of all, persuasive communication by government leaders. At the same time, the very occurrence of such crises raises acute questions about the effectiveness and robustness of current government policies and institutions. With the stakes being so high, defining and interpreting what is going on, how and why it happened, and what ought to be done now become key questions in the political and policy struggles that crises invariably unleash.

In this volume, we study how heads of government, finance ministers and national bank governors in eight countries as well as the EU engage in such ‘framing contests’, and how their attempts to interpret the cascading events of the economic downturn were publicly received. Using systematic content analysis of speeches and media coverage, this volume offers a unique comparative assessment of public leadership in times of crisis.

• Free download at epress.

Public Leadership: Perspectives and Practices, Canberra: ANU E Press 2008. Co-editor with John Uhr.

‘Leadership’ is routinely admired, vilified, ridiculed, invoked, trivialised, explained and speculated about in the media and in everyday conversation. Despite all this talk, there is surprisingly little consensus about how to answer basic questions about the nature, place, role and impact of leadership in contemporary society. This book brings together academics from a broad array of social science disciplines who are interested in contemporary understandings of leadership in the public domain. Their work on political, administrative and civil society leadership represents a stock-take of what we need to know and offers original examples of what we do know about public leadership. Although this volume connects scholars living in, and mostly working on, public leadership in Australia and New Zealand, their contributions have a much broader scope and relevance.

The volume can be downloaded free of charge at epress.

Governing After Crisis: The Politics of Investigation, Accountability and Learning, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008, 300 pp., co-editor with A.Boin and A. McConnell.

The constant threat of crises such as disasters, riots and terrorist attacks poses a frightening challenge to Western societies and governments. While the causes and dynamics of these events have been widely studied, we know little about what happens following their containment and the restoration of stability. This volume explores 'post-crisis politics,' examining how crises give birth to longer term dynamic processes of accountability and learning which are characterised by official investigations, blame games, political manoeuvring, media scrutiny and crisis exploitation. Drawing from a wide range of contemporary crises, including Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, the Madrid train bombings, the Walkerton water contamination, Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia and the Boxing Day Asian tsunami, this is a ground-breaking volume which addresses the longer term impact of crisis-induced politics. Competing pressures for stability and change mean that policies, institutions and leaders may occasionally be uprooted, but often survive largely intact. More at Cambridge University Press.

Observing Government Elites: Up Close and Personal, Palgrave, 2007, 250 pp., co-editor with R.A.W. Rhodes and M. Noordegraaf.

Why study government elites? Because the decisions of the great and the good affect all our lives for good or ill. We want to know what ministers, bureaucrats and managers do, why, how, and with what consequences. In other words, we are interested in their reasons, their actions and the effects of both. To understand their reasons we need a political anthropology of government elites. Observing Government Elites studies top-level political office-holders, civil servants and public managers in different countries and the European Union. It describes their world through their eyes, focusing on beliefs and everyday practices. It analyses how such practices are embedded in political-administrative traditions; in webs of institutional rules, routines, rituals, and relations. It explores how their beliefs, practices and traditions create meaning in politics, policy making and public service delivery and it reflects critically on how to do this kind of field work; on being up close and personal. By being there and getting up close to elites in ways that social scientists hardly ever do, the authors provide unique insights into the everyday life of ministers and senior public servants. More at Palgrave.

Success and Failure in Public Governance: A Comparative Analysis, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001, 700 pp., co-editor with M. Bovens and B. Guy Peters.

Why do some policies succeed so well while others, in the same sector or country, fail dramatically? The aim of this book, now available in paperback, is to answer this question and provide systematic research on the nature, sources and consequences of policy failure. The expert contributors analyse and evaluate the success and failure of four policy areas (Steel, Health Care, Finance, HIV and the Blood Supply) in six European countries, namely France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain and Sweden. The book is therefore able to compare success and failure across countries as well as policy areas, enabling a test of a variety of theoretical assumptions about policy making and government. The book also sheds more light on the legitimacy of governance in Western Europe and goes beyond understanding the concepts of success and failure to explaining their genesis empirically. Success and Failure in Public Governance will be of interest to academics and researchers of political science, public policy and public administration as well as to practitioners of public policy. More at Amazon.

Flood Response and Disaster Management in Europe: A Comparative Analysis, New York/Heidelberg: Springer Verlag 1998, 250 pp., co-editor with U. Rosenthal.

The most recent floods in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany demonstrated once again the continued vulnerability of modern societies to natural hazards. The floods of 1993 and 1995 provide a near-perfect laboratory experiment for crisis management. The main objective was to enhance systematic understanding of national differences and similarities in flood management. Chapters two to five present the French, Belgian, Dutch and German experiences. In the concluding chapters, the national experiences will be compared and discussed in view of the disaster management literature. In the appendix, an overview of recent flood events in Europe is provided, as well as detailed accounts of sources used.

Public Policy Disasters in Western Europe, London: Routledge, 1998, 220 pp., co-editor with P.D. Gray.

In recent years Europe has witnessed some spectacular failures in government policy, which have, in some cases, contributed to the downfall of governments. Public Policy Disasters in Western Europe considers these failures in policy-making, asking what is meant by policy 'disaster', the different forms that they can take, and why they have occurred. The study opens with an overview of the trends in the explanation of ‘disastrous’ policy and examines the problems that arise when policies are evaluated. These issues are explored in nine contrasting cases drawn from both the European Union and its member states. These include: the devastating crisis in the Belgium political system following the exposure of a paedophile ring; the crisis in the Dutch fight against drugs; ‘mad cows’ and the ‘Arms to Iraq’ affair in the UK; monetary union between West and East Germany; the Swedish monetary crisis of 1992; Italian policy towards the South and the EU's Common Fisheries Policy and policies towards civil war in Yugoslavia. Drawing common strands from these cases, the contributors argue that broader trends towards increasing social and technological complexity render policy failures more likely. They show how some ‘successful’ government policies can become ‘failures’ when exposed to the mass media and a less deferential public opinion. This book is an excellent study of how and why policies can go wrong, and it highlights the limits of what governments can achieve in Western Europe. More at Routledge.

Beyond Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policymaking, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997, 330 pp., senior co-editor with E.K. Stern and B. Sundelius.

Strategic issues and crises in foreign policy are usually managed by relatively small groups of elite policymakers and their closest advisors. Since the pioneering work of Irving Janis in the early 1970s, we have known that the interplay between the members of these groups can have a profound and, indeed, at times a pernicious influence on the content and quality of foreign policy decisions. Janis argued that "groupthink," a term he used to describe a tendency for extreme concurrence-seeking in decision-making groups, was a major cause of a number of U.S. foreign policy fiascoes. And yet not all small groups suffer from groupthink; in fact many high-level bodies are handicapped by an inability to achieve consensus at all. Beyond Groupthink builds upon and extends Janis's legacy. The contributors develop a richer understanding of group dynamics by drawing on alternate views of small-group dynamics. The relevant literature is reviewed and the different perspectives are explored in detailed case studies. The contributors link the group process to the broader organizational and political context of the policy process and stress the need to develop a multi-level understanding of the collegial policy-making process, combining the insights drawn from micro-level theories with those derived from study of broader political phenomena. The contributors include Alexander George, Sally Riggs Fuller, Paul D. Hoyt, Ramon J. Aldag, Max V. Metselaar, Bertjan Verbeek, J. Thomas Preston, Jean A. Garrison, and Yaacov Y. I. Vertzberger. More at Amazon.

Coping with Crises: The Management of Disasters, Riots and Terrorism. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1989, 514 pp., co-editor with U. Rosenthal and M.T. Charles.

This is a collection of analytical case studies of crisis development, crisis response and post-crisis learning, covering events of the seventies and eighties including the Heysel Stadium Disaster in Belgium, the Brixton Riots in the UK, the MOVE conflict in Philadelphia, the Mississauga petrochemical disaster in Canada, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor crisis in the Soviet union, the South-Moluccan Hostage Takings in the Netherlands, and the Ethiopean famine of 1984-5. In the edotiral chapters, a systematic analytical framework (definition, typology, analytical propositions) for crisis studies is presented (Introduction) and revised (Conclusion). More at Amazon.