Bureaucratic Culture and Governance: State, Society and Rules

This project proposes to conduct comparative research on distributive conflicts over the rules of governance in India, China and Iran. We believe that these unusual comparisons will reveal important facets about governance. Governance connotes the implementation of institutional rules driven by a certain normative framework. Our strong conjecture is that normative framework and the ideational milieu within bureaucracies has a powerful impact on whether rules embodying formal legislations are implemented reasonably. This is a neglected area in comparative studies of governance. In this light the project will explore bureaucratic culture as a significant governance variable.

This Project is supported by Field of Focus 4 (FoF4) , Heidelberg University, Germany.