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The outbreak of COVID-19 unleashed a severe crisis in society. The suddenness and speed with which the disease spread into a global pandemic makes it an outstanding case for showing how bureaucracy acts in response to a crisis marked by uncertainty and urgency. This article focuses on the role played by the central government bureaucracy in preparing and enacting the Danish government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. It is based on full access to internal government files related to crisis management during the winter and spring of 2020. These files include memos, e-mails, decision notes, and draft decisions from key civil servants. The article demonstrates the strength of the theory of bounded rationality when it comes to analyzing the interaction between top civil servants and political executives. Moreover, it shows how administrative and political executives can mold a governmental organization to overcome the inertia inherent in bureaucratic organization and procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of Covid-19 holds important lessons for general understandings of specialised agencies and their interactions with the political executive in a context of high political salience and uncertainty of the knowledge upon which agencies can base its professional decisions and pursue its policy preferences vis-à-vis the political principal. This case study analyses the behaviour of the Danish Health Authority (DHA) during two critical series of events in 2020 and 2021. Based on unique document access and interviews with key actors, the article makes a triple contribution to the literature on agencies by showing that: (1) interactions within the governmental hierarchy are transactional rather than rule-bound; (2) agency impact in interactions with the political executive depends on the agency head’s skill in forming a strategically neutral approach; (3) a strong agency reputation with key audiences is not sufficient for ensuring political influence or avoiding political interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By mid-2003, the legal orders (the entire bodies of legislation in force) of three EU member states – Austria , Denmark, and The Netherlands – contained between 10.5 and 14.2 per cent of rules devoted to the transposition of EU directives. Only a few ministerial jurisdictions contain more than 20 per cent of Europeanized rules. The member states show remarkable differences in the use of parliamentary versus delegated legislation as a means of transposition. The comparison of the three cases tentatively suggests that different legal traditions and the parliamentary involvement in EU affairs are important factors that account for cross-national differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance contracts entered between ministerial departments and their agencies are used throughout the Danish central government. The article analyzes the use of performance contracting in 2005. The analysis draws on transaction cost theory and actor-centered institutionalism, stressing the bargaining aspect of hierarchy and the importance of economic and political transaction costs. The analysis shows considerable variation in the content of performance demands. Ministries with different organizational designs use contracts in markedly different ways and agencies with a strong interface to individual citizens and businesses are more likely to meet demands regulating policy delivery and service levels. Further, contracts contain substantive clauses, the terms of which are largely assessable. It also shows that performance contracts only rarely specify demands related to cost efficiency within agencies. Many of these results are statistically significant, even though a general point is the wide variation in the implementation of performance contracts between individual ministries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Danish parliamentarism has developed practices that balance the strong executive position of ministers against the parliamentary constraints created by minority government. In this way ministers have been able to strengthen the incentives for civil servants to deliver the services they demand. Parliament on its side has marked the constraints within which the incumbent government can use the civil service for its political purposes. By implication Denmark has upheld a pure merit civil service that is ready to serve political executives, even if this implies its involvement in procedures and dealings considered as belonging to the game of politics in certain civil service systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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State sector reform was an integral component of the radical economic and social policy changes enacted by New Zealand governments between 1984 and 1991. This reform replaced the traditional tenured public service with a contractual regime. Through a comparison with Denmark, it is shown that New Zealand's reforms were not unique. Similar reforms were enacted in Denmark. But contrary to what occurred in New Zealand, the Danish reforms had already begun in the 1960s, and have since been gradually expanded. The parallel contractual regimes introduced in the two countries are accounted for by an increasing demand among politicians to secure a civil service that is responsive to political executive demands. However, because of institutional differences and diverging regulatory regimes, the strategic approaches in the two countries have been different. Whereas the New Zealand approach was dominated by an appeal to a coherent and sophisticated body of theoretical knowledge, combined with strict formalization, the Danish strategy has been based on political bargaining with the civil service unions. In both cases the reforms rest on critical assumptions regarding their positive and negative implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralization of authority from central government to sub-national governments is an important part of modern public sector reforms and has been the primary contribution to public sector reform in Denmark and the other Nordic countries. On the assumption that political and administrative actors are authority maximizers, the paper analyses how national and sub-national actors react to these decentralization goals, and the extent to which they are implemented. The analysis points to the importance of both institutional and power variables. It concludes that dynamic change can take place in a public sector which is characterized by strong corporatist and multi-level institutions, such as in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]