The focus of this paper is to study how governments develop and use ethics management to uphold integrity and countervail ethics violations in the public sector, and how these strategies are adapted to a good governance setting, i.e. a setting with prosperous democratic governance and effective public administration. Even these settings have to deal with the continuing occurrence of ethics violations and there is also a perception among citizens that corrupt influence and other forms of ethics violations play an important (and sometimes increasing) role in public governance. We explore the role of ethics management and how it is promoted in practice in public sector organisations in Sweden, an example of a country characterised by the above. The purpose is to study two organisations with important roles for disseminating, promoting and coordinating ethics management in Swedish public administration, and what type of ethics practices/ instruments they promote. In state public administration, we study the Swedish Agency for Public Management (SAPM), which has a specific assignment from government to contribute to and coordinate state authorities’ work towards a sound administrative culture. In local government administration, we study the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), a member organisation for all local and regional authorities with a similar role as SAPM as it comes to providing information, advise and education. These two cases enable the study of ethics management both in relation to state agencies and local government, which in Sweden have been more associated with ethics violations and scandal and is also more at arms-length from the central government concerning these issues. We ask what type of ethics management strategies they promote for state agencies and local government respectively. When doing so we look at how their strategies align on the compliance – values spectrum, to what extent strategies promoted include ethics practices that involve sub-management level employees, and to what extent and how the impact on ethics management of stakeholders outside organisations is considered.

This article studies two Swedish organizations with key roles in the facilitation and promotion of ethics management vis-à-vis other public-sector organizations. The study offers insights into how organizations combine and prioritize ethics management measures, involve submanagement employees, and consider external stakeholders, in contexts of democratic governance and public concern about corruption. Our findings suggest that these types of bird’s-eye view organizations studied are important as they are in a position less prone to ad hoc scandal-driven responses. They can thus promote strategies that consider a combination of aspects and avoid a narrow rules-based focus.

This edited volume explores the emerging European administrative space. With contributions from several sub-disciplines to political science and public administration the book investigates to what extent a shared administrative identity amongst public servants exists in Europe using a range of methodological approaches.

This volume provides a comprehensive understanding of the European Defence Agency (EDA), the leading EU armaments policy institution.

Despite its critical role in European strategic and military affairs as the key hub of European policy-making in the field of armaments, the Agency has hitherto received very little attention by the academic and research community around Europe. To fill this gap in the literature, the book covers a multitude of inter-related themes and topics. Not only does it provide a detailed analysis and assessment of the Agency’s record as the first institution dealing solely with EU armaments policy, but it also links these findings to international relations and European integration theory. Thematically, the contributions go beyond the mere description of achievements, gaps and risks, elaborating on novel themes such as space, offsets, pooling and sharing, and transatlantic armaments relations. The book combines an interdisciplinary approach to the study of European defence with theoretical and ontological pluralism, and seeks to unveil the strategic, industrial, institutional and ideational sources of armaments collaboration and capability development under the aegis of the EDA.

The multi-faceted orientation of the book will be of much interest to students of European security, EU institutions, defence studies, arms control and international relations in general.

The institutional landscape of the EU has been transformed through the establishment of agencies and changes brought by the Lisbon Treaty. This article seeks to contribute to our conceptual and empirical understanding of European agencies post-Lisbon. It maps the current European agencies according to timing of establishment, size, functions, governance structures and financial arrangements, and discusses the findings in relation to studies and classifications of agencies in national settings. It shows that variations between different European agencies correspond to variations observed between agencies in national settings and argues that what is innovative is the political level at which they are created, not the agency type. Focusing on the functions, governance structure and financial arrangements of European agencies, it develops a classification model for European agencies. It concludes that there are four main types of agencies, distinguished by their formal functions and formal autonomy from the European Union’s core executive institutions.

Human rights groups frequently criticise FRONTEX and the legality of the agency’s operations has been questioned in scholarly literature. At the same time, recent studies have shown that humanitarian concerns are increasingly emphasised in FRONTEX’s rhetoric. Drawing on Manners’ concept of ‘Normative Power Europe’, and Niemann and de Wekker’s framework for empirical analysis of normative power Europe, this paper assesses FRONTEX’s cooperation with third countries with a focus on one norm: respect for fundamental rights. It examines to what extent the agency shows a genuine commitment to the implementation of fundamental rights and to what extent the agency is acting in a normative way, i.e. applying universal norms and showing willingness to listen to and learn from the experiences of third countries. The analysis suggests that that the agency has moved towards a more genuine commitment towards fundamental rights implementation and that there is a fair degree of inclusivity and reflexivity to third country cooperation. However, the possibility of internal conflicts of interest as well as discrepancies between what is stated on paper and what is happening on the ground may stand in the way of the agency’s exercising normative power.

Governance in the European Union is being transformed through the increased use of agencies to perform a range of functions in a variety of policy areas. The European Commission believes that agencies can add value but admits that their establishment has not been accompanied with a “common understanding” of their roles and purposes. In this thesis, I take the approach that such an understanding is best reached through examination of existing agencies. Focusing on the most common type of agency in the EU, i.e. Community Agencies, this thesis provides a four-level analysis. At the conceptual level, the thesis deals with the ‘agency’ concept. Drawing on public management literature, the empirical level involves classification of these diverse bodies. The contribution of the thesis at the theoretical level is to identify the key driving factors behind agency establishment; following a theoretical framework devised from new institutionalist theories I trace and analyse the establishment process of four case study agencies. The research reveals that to fully understand the establishment of agencies we need to draw on more than one strand of new institutionalism, as they can explain different aspects of agency creation. As a wider outlook the thesis reflects on the role of agencies, relating it to the wider academic debates on the ‘regulatory state’ and its implications for legitimacy.

As border management continues to be a contentious and fast developing policy area in the EU, a better understanding of FRONTEX is needed. This article takes the new institutionalist approach that the functioning of institutions is dependent on the conditions under which they emerge. Drawing on documentary resources and semi-structured interviews with EU officials, the article traces the process leading to the establishment of FRONTEX. It argues that a proper understanding of agency creation and design requires us to look beyond rational choice institutionalist explanations and take into account social processes and historical contexts. Expectations derived from the three main strands of new institutionalism (rational choice institutionalism, sociological institutionalism and historical institutionalism) are not mutually exclusive and can function as conceptual lenses drawing attention to different aspects of agency creation.

Rekommendationer ifrån Folkhälsomyndigheten (Fohm) kom att spela en avgörande roll för pandemihanteringen i Sverige. Tidigare forskning har visat att medborgare med hög tillit till myndigheter är mer benägna att anpassa sitt beteende efter rekommendationer, på gott och ont. Kompetens och öppenhet kan leda till tillit. Syftet med denna artikel är att undersöka uppfattningar om Fohm:s agerande under hösten 2020 med särskilt fokus på några olika grupper i samhället. Generellt hade personer i Sverige hög tillit till att myndigheten agerat kompetent och öppet, men det finns skillnader mellan grupper. Undersökningen visar att unga vuxna generellt är mer skeptiska än äldre. Kvinnor, personer med hög generell tillit och personer som känner tillfredsställelse med det demokratiska systemets funktionssätt har högre tillit än män, personer med lägre generell tillit och personer som är missnöjda med demokratins funktionssätt. Tillit till myndigheter är nödvändig för att policyer ska fungera och myndigheter kan bistå politiska beslutsfattare med ovärderlig expertkunskap. Alltför hög tillit kan dock leda till att befolkningen får bristande förmåga att reda ut kriser och långtgående delegation till oberoende myndigheter kan också leda till problem med ansvarsutkrävande med bristande legitimitet för hela det politiska systemet som följd.