A basic principle of good government is that politics should be restricted to the input side, whereas the bureaucracy should operate independently of political considerations. However, 10 previous literature documents an implementation gap between unitary political aims and varied local outcomes, which occasionally can be attributed to political reasons; both bureaucratic ideology and that local political constituencies can shape implementation and affect outcome. So far, however, research has neglected the question of whether one of these effects is conditioned by the other. This article presents original data on the political orientation of public 15 employees in the Swedish Social Insurance Administration that allow these two factors to be tested together for the first time. The main finding is that neither the bureaucratic ideology nor the political orientation of the local community independently affects the outcome but that the real effect of political ideology on implementation takes the form of an interaction effect between the two. This interaction effect visualizes so that a rightward shift in bureaucratic 20 ideology significantly reduces the number of annual sick leave days per capita when the political orientation of the local community is right leaning. Hence, political ideology only affects welfare state outcome by restricting policy implementation in a situation in which restrictive public employees are positioned in restrictive local communities.

Researchers have studied the impact of different welfare state regimes, and particularly family policy regimes, on gender equality. Very little research has been conducted, however, on the association between different family policy regimes and children's well-being. This article explores how the different family policy regimes of twenty OECD countries relate to children's well-being in the areas of child poverty, child mortality, and educational attainment and achievement. We focus specifically on three family policies: family cash and tax benefits, paid parenting leaves, and public child care support. Using panel data for the years 1995, 2000, and 2005, we test the association between these policies and child well-being while holding constant for a number of structural and policy variables. Our analysis shows that the dual-earner regimes, combining high levels of support for paid parenting leaves and public child care, are strongly associated with low levels of child poverty and child mortality. We find little long-term effect of family policies on educational achievement, but a significant positive correlation between high family policy support and higher educational attainment. We conclude that family policies have a significant impact on improving children's well-being, and that dual-earner regimes represent the best practice for promoting children's health and development.

While a growing body of research argues for increased attention to ethics within public administration, scholars diverge on how to conceptualize the character of public ethics. Likewise, empirical evidence regarding the role that ethics plays in the quality of service delivery is rare. The author argues that the concept of a public ethics of care is useful for public administration in welfare states. She examines the idea empirically through a large-N analysis of frontline bureaucrats within the Swedish Social Insurance Administration. The analysis develops two general measures of a public ethics of care as well as a public ethics of justice. The author proceeds to show a clear presence of an ethics of care in the Swedish public sector. Further, analysis shows that these two ethics measures are supplementary, not contradictory, and that age is the main individual determinant behind ethics of care, strongly correlating with number of years in office. The conclusion underscores how public ethics of care results from acquired experience in fulfilling care-oriented tasks.