Administrative Elite and Diverse Society: Values, Knowledge, and Policy

Research Questions and Objectives

I study how well the administrative elite understands the values held by a culturally diverse society, how effectively it considers them when selecting and processing knowledge to ensure their reflection in administrative decisions, and how successfully it addresses these values according to public perception.

In the first part of the project, I investigate whether the administrative elite and society have different ideas about morality and diversity, i.e., values. I link the findings to questions about how they can be explained by socio-demographic and administrative contextual characteristics and which individual bureaucratic role perceptions within the administrative elite they indicate. The second part of the project asks how these values are reflected in administrative policy-making. To this end, I take the individual role perceptions within the administrative elite as a starting point and examine their manifestation in divergent dispositions towards acquisition, selection, and utilization of informational and relational knowledge in cognitive decision-making processes. The subsequent implementation of these cognitive decisions in administrative action and policy is typically conditioned by individual and contextual factors, which I will also study in this research phase. In the third part of the project, I examine experimentally whether symbolic indications of potential congruence between societal and administrative elite values on morality and diversity can enhance public perceptions of the effectiveness, trustworthiness, and fairness of federal ministries and, thus, the acceptance of their policies.

Background

The administrative elite is characterized by specialist expertise in specific policy areas or generalist expertise in the legislative process. As such, it exercises technical and legal supervision in the implementation of policy programs, conducts policy analyses, mediates between stakeholders, drafts legislation, evaluates policies, and advises elected politicians. These tasks require the administrative elite to navigate the various political values, demands, and knowledge sources available in a culturally diverse society to ensure responsive, effective, and legitimate policymaking.

Methods

I will conduct an online survey to study the values and decision-making behaviors of the administrative elite. A parallel online survey on the values of society allows me to examine the value coherence between the two groups. The focus is on ideas of morality and diversity. I will triangulate the survey data with qualitative interviews to comprehensively understand decision-making behaviors. Subsequently, I will examine public perceptions of the administrative elite's performance through two psychological experiments: an implicit association test and a visual world paradigm using eye-tracking. The target group comprises senior bureaucrats in the federal ministries and the general public in Germany.

Relevance

The project's results will contribute to basic research on bureaucratic policy-making, representative bureaucracy, and social cohesion. They will also benefit administrative practice by informing public personnel management and the management of public satisfaction with public policy and administrative action in diverse societies.