The European Public Servant: A Shared Administrative Identity? - Paperback

by Fritz Sager (Editor), Patrick Fritz (Author)

European integration is under pressure. At the same time, the notion of a European administrative space is being explicitly voiced. But does a shared idea of the public servant exist in Europe? This volume shows how the public servant has been conceived throughout history, and asks whether such conceptions are converging towards a common European administrative identity. It combines conceptual and institutional history with political thought and empirical political science. Sager & Overeem's timely analysis constitutes an original effort to integrate history of ideas and cutting-edge survey research. It presents the subject's ideational foundations as well as its modern manifestation in European administrative space.

Author Biography

Dr Patrick Overeem is an assistant professor at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he specialises in political and administrative theory, with a special interest in public ethics. For his doctoral dissertation (2010; published 2012), he studied the constitutional rationale for disentangling politics and administration in modern states. Articles have been published in Public Administration Review, Administration & Society and Administrative Theory & Praxis. His current research concerns constitutional legitimacy, virtue-ethics (especially MacIntyre's), statesmanship, and the political implications of value pluralism. He teaches courses on political philosophy, administrative ethics, public values, and the philosophy of social science. Professor Fritz Sager is a political scientist specialising in administrative studies and theory, policy research and evaluation, organisational analysis, and Swiss politics. His research has been published in the Public Administration Review, Governance, Public Administration, Regulation & Governance, Policy Sciences, Policy & Politics, Political Studies, West European Politics, the Journal of Urban Affairs, the American Journal of Evaluation, Public Money & Management, Evaluation, and the Public Management Review among others. In 2010, he won the Marshall E Dimock Award for the best lead article in the Public Administration Review during the volume year 2009. His current research regards knowledge utilisation in direct democracy, positioning strategies of secondary capital cities, and bureaucratic behaviour in policy implementation and in policy failure.