Suchergebnisse

Supreme audit institutions as a research subject are widely ignored by the social sciences. This field of research is dominated by technical-legal disputes, leading to a lack of new insights, insufficient empirical evidence and limited explanatory power. Furthermore, a huge amount of data sources and methods of data gathering are currently not used. Among these data sources are annual reports, recommendations of the finance committees, parliamentary proceedings, media reports or questionnaires and interviews, among others. The available material should be analyzed systematically, to evaluate the role of supreme audit institutions from an empirical point of view -- i.e., in relation to the Parliament, Financial Committee or audited ministries. The political sciences are particularly suited to conduct further empirical research on these institutions. Adapted from the source document.

Research on top civil servants reveals the increasing heterogeneity within this once rather homogeneous group across many countries in recent decades. While changes in the composition of administrative elites in government departments and agencies in different countries have received considerable attention in existing literature, top civil servants in Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) have so far hardly been considered. In light of this gap, this article investigates the change of socio-demographic and career backgrounds among SAI presidents in the German states over more than 70 years (1945–2022), utilizing prosopographical data. The results indicate larger changes with regard to gender representation and study background, whereas age, career background, and educational degree have undergone only moderate changes.

AbstractThere is a remarkable gap in research regarding principal‐centred analyses of control means towards—in a formal sense—rather weak independent administrative actors as agents. Therefore, the paper develops a theoretical notion to link means of ex ante and ex post control and applies it to the (re‐)actions of ministries vis à vis hardship commissions in the German Länder by asking: How does the super‐ordinated ministry (principal) try to control the hardship commission (agent) and with what effect? The theoretical framework is based on principal‐agent theory and argues that the respective relationship is best understood by a notion of control pliers which interlinks the principal's preferences, its means of ex ante and ex post control and the agent's output. We hereby draw on partisan and organization theory. The overall research design of the paper is confirmatory and the focus on the federal states allows to control most of the external variance. We use descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling for path analysis to investigate the ex ante and ex post elements of the control pliers. Our empirical analysis is based on the output of 12 hardship commissions for the period of 2005–2017. Our results show that ex post control seems to matter more than ex ante control, but also that the effects of both may be characterized as interdependent. Furthermore, we show that partisan influence seems to matter more than organizational factors considering the output of the agent but that most can be won by combining the two approaches.

Research on top civil servants reveals the increasing heterogeneity within this once rather homogeneous group across many countries in recent decades. While changes in the composition of administrative elites in government departments and agencies in different countries have received considerable attention in existing literature, top civil servants in Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) have so far hardly been considered. In light of this gap, this article investigates the change of socio-demographic and career backgrounds among SAI presidents in the German states over more than 70 years (1945-2022), utilizing prosopographical data. The results indicate larger changes with regard to gender representation and study background, whereas age, career background, and educational degree have undergone only moderate changes.

Im Gewährleistungsstaat ergeben sich bei der Erfüllung öffentlicher Aufgaben grundsätzlich vielfältige Möglichkeiten einer kooperativen Aufgabenteilung zwischen staatlichen und privaten Akteuren. Dies setzt jedoch voraus, dass staatliche Behörden ihre Rolle als zentrale Regulierungs- und Kontrollinstanz wahrnehmen und damit ihrer Gewähr leistungsverantwortung gerecht werden. Mit Blick auf die zunehmende Auslagerung von Sicherheitsaufgaben untersucht der Bei trag die Kontrollpraxis staatlicher Behörden gegenüber privaten Sicher heits dienstleistern. Dazu wird auf quantitative Befunde einer Online-Befragung von Ordnungsbehörden und Sicherheitsdienstleistern zurück gegriffen. Zu deren Einordnung werden qualitative Ergebnisse einer Interviewstudie herangezogen. Während die quantitativen Befunde ein weitreichendes Kontrolldefizit offenlegen, verdeutlichen die qualitativen Erkenntnisse eine Vielfalt dahinterliegender Kontrollherausforderungen.