Patterns of bureaucracy: Conceptualizing administrative traditions

Abstract Administrative traditions (AT) are a prominent approach to classify and compare administrative systems across countries, yet there is a lack of agreement on the definition and conceptual dimensions of AT. This article addresses this gap by synthesizing existing knowledge on AT and refining its conceptualization in three steps. First, a systematic review of 505 publications since 1998 elucidates the diverse understandings of AT and the study contexts in which the concept is used. Secondly, ten AT attributes that emerged from the review are operationalized with secondary data for 49 administrative systems from around the world. Using exploratory factor analysis, the study identifies two underlying dimensions of the AT concept: Citizen orientation and Structural concentration. In a third step, I propose two indices to measure AT along these two dimensions and apply it to map contemporary administrative systems from 49 diverse countries. The analysis uncovers important variation within assumed country families such as the Anglo-American or post-communist groups. The article’s core contributions are the empirically grounded and parsimonious conceptualization of AT as the degree of Citizen orientation and Structural concentration in a country’s public administration as well as the validated two-dimensional AT measure.