To Örebro University

Continued unsustainability and surpassed planetary boundaries require not only scientific and technological advances, but deep and enduring social and cultural changes. The purpose of this article is to contribute a theoretical approach to understand conditions and constraints for societal change towards sustainable development. In order to break with unsustainable norms, habits, practices, and structures, there is a need for learning for transformation, not only adaption. Based on a critical literature review within the field of learning for sustainable development, our approach is a development of the concept of transformative learning, by integrating three additional dimensions—Institutional Structures, Social Practices, and Conflict Perspectives. This approach acknowledges conflicts on macro, meso, and micro levels, as well as structural and cultural constraints. It contends that transformative learning is processual, interactional, long-term, and cumbersome. It takes place within existing institutions and social practices, while also transcending them. The article adopts an interdisciplinary social science perspective that acknowledges the importance of transformative learning in order for communities, organizations, and individuals to be able to deal with global sustainability problems, acknowledging the societal and personal conflicts involved in such transformation.

Biodiversity decline undermines the conditions for life on Earth resulting in calls for transformative governance of biodiversity. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, national biodiversity strategies provide the primary mechanism through which governments demonstrate their conservation efforts. With many countries due to develop new strategies under the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, it is timely to assess existing ones to identify policy design elements that could be ‘ratcheted up’ to meet the transformative agenda. This article analyzes andc ompares the policy designs of national biodiversity strategies in Australia, France and Sweden. We cover problem framing, policy goals, targeted groups, implementing agents, and policy instruments, to draw lessons on how national strategies can be designed to further support transformation of biodiversity governance. We identify elements in these strategies that can be used to inspire future ones: a negotiated framing of biodiversity and participatory processes in France, nested and integrated goals, targets and measures in Sweden, and an engagement with indigenous knowledge in Australia. However, to bring about transformative change, the analysis also shows the need for novel and fundamental re-designs to successfully target indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, shift power relations, and make biodiversity conservation a priority rather than an option.

The Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has played an important role in assessing knowledge and raising awareness of biodiversity loss, and it is now also mandated to assess and support processes of transformative change. This perspective paper argues that the transformative change assessment entails key elements of transformative agency, which, along with the performative role of IPBES, makes it relevant to re-conceptualize the organization as a transformative agent. This new role will change IPBES and brings attention to risks related to undermining the credibility, relevance and legitimacy of IPBES, but it also brings opportunities for innovations that may strengthen the organization, including furthering public reasoning, acknowledging ambiguities and disagreements, ensuring scientific autonomy and balancing governmental power in the organization. As IPBES takes on the fundamental challenge of transformative change, critical scrutiny and democratic debate regarding its function as a political actor are more important than ever.

Voluntary environmental governance is a widely used policy approach that has been criticized for its lack of effectiveness. This raises fundamental questions about how to design processes that can advance voluntary programmes in a way that makes them more successful. In this paper, we analyse a government-initiated dialogue process to phase out hazardous chemicals through voluntary action by the Swedish textile industry. The analysis shows that information transfer primarily motivated business participation, while consumer pressure, regulatory threats and traditions of government–business cooperation played minor roles. The institutional design of the dialogue ensured close interaction within a homogeneous group, but collective actions were limited by disagreement about the problems to be addressed, prior unilateral environmental commitments by leading companies, and ambivalent engagement. This case provides valuable insights into the effect of institutional design on the actual interplay between business and government and its effects on voluntary governance.

The Gothenburg congestion tax was introduced in 2013 and later subjected to a consultative referendum where the citizens, despite getting first-hand experience with the scheme, rejected it. This article explains voting behavior in the referendum using both self-expressed motives and five nested models to test various explanations suggested in previous research. Drawing on an extensive longitudinal study, we conclude first that although a majority voted against the tax in the referendum, attitudinal preferences have become more positive since its introduction – supporting previous findings and hypothesis of familiarity effects. Second, we present a model for voting behavior that explains significant portions of the variance, concluding that it is not the outcomes of the charges that are important, but rather if the charges are in line with basic values, if the uses of the revenues (in this case, infrastructure investments) are supported, and if the institutions and processes introducing the charges are perceived as legitimate, trustworthy, and responsive. The article ends with general policy recommendations on the basis of these findings.

Frontrunner states have been shown highly important for the development and diffusion of progressive environmental policies. History shows, however, that the frontrunner status is dynamic and that previous leader countries have become laggards. Here I assess recent policy changes in Sweden – a state widely recognised as an environmental frontrunner – arguing that environmental policy practice within areas prioritised by the Government (biodiversity, sustainable energy, the marine environment, and climate change) have experienced high-profile, and from a green perspective highly controversial policy changes. This policy development raises critical concerns for the future role of Sweden as an environmental frontrunner.

The Ecosystem Services (ES) concept has attracted substantial interest among researchers and policymakers alike, and there are hopes that it can facilitate much needed policy changes and actions. Implementing it has proved challenging, however. Elaborating on a theoretical framework of key governance elements, and drawing on new empirical findings about the introduction and implementation of ES in Sweden, this paper aims to further the understanding of challenges and opportunities for implementing the ES approach as experienced by policy actors and to discuss its implications for the ability of ES to strengthen environmental governance. The findings show how the ES approach provides important opportunities for (horizontal) integration, professional communication, and networking, but also that further implementation has been hindered by a lack of co-ordination, public participation, and institutionalization. Based on the findings, and with the aim of strengthening the impact of ES on environmental governance, three critical issues in need of elaboration and further debate are discussed: institutionalization, reappraisal of the role of economic valuation, and interest mediation.

A key dilemma in transport planning involves how to make possible the radical changes needed for long-term sustainability while ensuring political legitimacy and democratic process. Congestion charges are a case in point; despite their being considered an effective policy measure for improving environmental and health problems in cities, it has proved difficult to secure public acceptance for them. This paper analyses the policy process behind the introduction of a congestion tax in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, focusing on strategies for building legitimacy for the tax. The results show that the tax was legitimated primarily through its broad support in the City Council, which had been secured by integrating the tax with infrastructure investments, while strategies for directly involving the citizens in the process, such as public consultation and local referendums, were neglected or actively opposed. The process successfully generated a capacity for decisive political action legitimated through representative government. Over time the decision may gain public acceptance, but the process used might also prove detrimental to the future of the congestion tax and undermine trust in the democratic institutions.

Collaboration has become a key element of governments’ efforts to address complex policy problems as well as of attempts to revitalise democracy. Depending on what public agencies want to achieve by engaging in collaboration – whether collaboration is intendedto gain support for public policymaking, induce voluntary actions by stakeholders, or something else – collaborative governance will have to mean very different things.Collaborative governance needs to be made fit for purpose. Drawing on the literature and a case study of road safety governance in Sweden, the article theorises on the interplay between strategic purpose and institutional design in collaborative governance and shows how two types of strategic purposes – policy support and voluntary actions – determine appropriate choices of institutional designs. This generates important insights that contribute to understanding institutional diversity and factors important to the success or failure of collaborative governance, and can aid practitioners who are designing collaborative forums within various policy fields.

From government to governance is a grand story line about the changing role of the state, which has had a great impact upon researchers and practitioners. This article is an empirical assessment of this story line. Three critical dimensions are elaborated into indicators of government and governance: governing styles and instruments, public–private relationships, and policy levels. These indicators are used to assess the role of the state in environmental governing using Swedish forestry and transport as examples. The results show that the story line is too simple; the role of the state is not changing in a unidirectional way. Instead, the comparison shows that environmental governing within the two policy areas is characterized by both government and governance modes of governing, thus questioning the usefulness of the story line as a guideline when framing empirical studies or political decisions.

Faced with environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss, the dominant political response has been sustainable development, balancing environmental protection against economic prosperity and social justice. While political action is increasingly being called for, the role and capacity of the state is questioned – as captured neatly in the story from government to governance that implies a relocation of authority and power between policy levels and in public-private relations, as well as a radical restructuring within public administration. Taking its conceptual point of departure in theories of sustainable development, govern­ance, and policy change, this thesis assesses, explains, and theorises about recent developments of environmental governing within Swedish forestry and transport, two areas with high environmental impact and that involve strong eco­nomic val­ues and interests. The findings are presented in four articles that have all been published in leading academic journals. The thesis concludes that public policy has changed within both policy areas as environmental objectives and new modes of governing have been adopted – a development that can be characterised as governing towards sustainability. However, the storyline from government to governance is too simple to capture these changes. The state remains important in several ways (actor, arena, institutional structure, form of authority) and influ­ences society through a variety of modes of governing. Thus, governance and government remain relevant. To explain policy change we need to recognise mul­tiple barriers to and enablers of change as well as having a contextual under­standing of the policy area in focus. The thesis concludes by arguing that sustain­able development needs to be politicised in terms of visible political action and open political contestation between differing visions of a sustainable society.

The role and capacity of the state are changing. Some researchers argue that the state is transforming, strategically adapting to new circumstances, while others see a development of governing arrangements that are autonomous from the state, governing ‘without’ government. This article assesses the governing without government thesis through the case of forest certification introduced in Sweden in the late 1990s. This is a case of private governance, the governing capacity of which is based on voluntary self-regulation rather than government authority, seemingly a prime example of governing without government. The results show that government nonetheless is involved with forest certification through governance-oriented modes of governing: enabling and influencing the arrangements. Thus, what appeared to be a prime example of governing ‘without’ government is better understood as governing ‘with’ government.

Political consumerism is described as a civil society response to perceived failures by governments to address global problems. It has been theorized as representing a challenge and complement to the state’s authority and legitimacy. This chapter reviews the roles of government in relation to political consumerism, focusing in particular on how governments have influenced the development and implementation of voluntary nongovernmental labeling schemes. The aim is to discern and discuss critical issues and debates on the interaction between government and political consumerism. It is concluded that political consumerism is part of a new governance landscape but that its development and effectiveness are fundamentally dependent on government. Political consumerism needs to be understood and critically researched in relation to a multifaceted understanding of government actors, responses, and interactions that recognizes both the varying conditions between states and the unique powers and responsibilities of government.

Transport policy has proven highly resistant to change despite growing environmental problems. However, in the Swedish city of Örebro, objectives and policy measures in support of ecological sustainability have successfully been introduced in urban transport policies adopted by the local government. This article explains how this 'greening' became possible. Three variables of change proved highly important to understand policy change in this case: (i) new policy ideas of sustainable transport, (ii) reorganization of the local administration and (iii) the pressure of green policy entrepreneurs. A common denominator behind all these changes was the reformation of urban transport into a political issue through discursive changes and an active involvement by elected politicians, that is, politicization. The continuing importance of politics in contemporary policy processes as complex as transport is an important lesson from this case, that is, politics still matters.

That public officials influence public policy is generally agreed upon, but the issue of how individual officials gain this influence is less developed in the literature. Here, the stories and experiences of ten officials, active in local environmental governing in Sweden, are used to identify, describe, and discuss key strategies for gaining policy influence. The result shows the importance of accessing key politicians; avoiding isolation within the administration; developing long-term strategies; and being skilled in communication, networking, and generating external resources. The way these officials act and think challenges some well-established theoretical notions and adds empirical insights to the democratic dilemma of bureaucratic power.

Why do we need the green state to combat environmental problems? In this chapter, I highlight the key challenges the state faces in governance for sustainable development (GSD) with regard to policy, polity, and political dimensions, and elucidate and discuss the functions and responsibilities the green state brings to efforts to address these challenges. The green state possesses a unique capacity and legitimacy to foster and lead the transition towards a more sustainable society. Rather than being neglected or lost within the scholarly field of GSD, the state should be brought forward as an important actor in governance for sustainable development.

Recognising continuing unsustainability as a result of governing failures, governance for sustainable development (GSD) has become the dominant approach to address environmental problems, promoting society-centric modes of governing and challenging traditional state-centric environmental governing. Here I identify key dimensions of GSD; clarify how GSD challenges the state; and argue that the state retains key merits for environmental governing. Rather than being lost in transition, the green state must play a central role in governance for sustainable development.

Reforming democratic political systems to handle environmental problems is one of the key political challenges of our time. Here I analyse how local environmental officials in Sweden perceive the shortcomings of the current political system and what reforms they deem necessary to handle key environmental problems. While green political theory tends to focus on the need to deepen democracy through increased citizen participation, analysis of survey data shows that environmental officials, even though their perceptions of the current system’s shortcomings are similar to those presented in the theoretical literature, are more likely to argue for increased expert influence than for direct citizen participation. This result is not easily explained as officials seeking to expand their power, as environmental officials have more complex perceptions of their roles in democracy. The different visions of green professionals and green theory highlight the importance of deliberation on green democratic reforms, including the potentially undemocratic consequences of empowering experts.

Governments are increasingly turning to new modes of governance to induce nonstate actors to voluntarily take responsibility for societal problems. Using the concept of responsibilization as a theoretical lens, this article analyzes changes in road safety governance in Sweden. How, why, and to whom has the responsibility for road safety been attributed in Swedish policymaking, and how have state authorities engaged in processes of responsibilization during its implementation? The results show a shift in attribution of responsibility from individual road users to a broad set of so-called system designers, based on moral, causal, and preventive rationales. Responsibilization both occurs within the state apparatus and is imposed by state authorities on nonstate actors using soft governance measures. Responsibilization provides a fruitful theoretical lens for governance studies by identifying shifts in responsibility (including deresponsibilization), explicating normative/ethical underpinnings of new governance modes, and helping to open the “black box” of the state.

Regulatory intermediaries—organizations that operate between regulators (public and private) and target groups—perform a range of important functions. While most previous research has focused on intermediaries that have been delegated official authority, in this paper we focus on unofficial and informal intermediary functions aiming to advance the governance of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals. Chemical pollution is a growing environmental and health concern, leading to both public and private regulatory initiatives. By studying a particular segment—paperboard food packaging in Sweden—the study generates insights into critical functions performed by unofficial intermediaries (Svenskt Vatten and ChemSec) in this regulatory regime, which extend and expand regulatory reach in various ways. The study also shows the importance of different types of intermediaries that interact in dynamic ways, and the role of material artifacts in processes of intermediation. These unofficial functions are arguably important for the functioning of complex, hybrid forms of governance, but they also prompt critical questions about the effectiveness, legitimacy, and role of intermediaries in generating needed transformative change.

Congestion charging is widely considered an effective policy measure to regulate and reduce car traffic demand and associated environmental and health problems in cities. However, introducing restrictive measures to constrain individual choice and behaviour for the common good has often proven difficult. Using a specific case, the Gothenburg congestion tax introduced in 2013, we study the policy process behind the introduction of the tax and assess to what extent green values were compromised along the way. The tax was made possible by co-financing infrastructure investments, including roads, which seemingly contradicts stated goals of reducing car traffic and emissions. We show how the tax was ‘muddled through’ in a top-down political compromise by a grand coalition where different interests could legitimate their support in relation to the achievement of partially conflicting objectives and projects. However, to declare the regulatory goals fully neutralised would be to underestimate the scheme’s direct environmental effects and restrictive potential. Finding a compromise with powerful political and economic interests was necessary to get it off the ground. Once launched, however, it can over time regain its restrictive properties and lead to more profound long-term effects.

Lack of public and political acceptance is the main barrier to introducing congestion charges. Here we compared the experiences of congestion charge introduction in the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg, with the aim of explaining differences in political and public acceptance. The results showed the importance of procedural factors, such as the consistency of objectives in policy packages, communication and marketing efforts, and the use of public referendums, and of contextual factors, including urban form, level of congestion, and functioning of public transport. Important lessons were drawn between the two cities, but primarily on how to design, rather than secure public acceptance for, a congestion tax scheme. To build acceptance for congestion charges, close attention must be paid to the local political and geographical context when designing and implementing such a scheme.

This paper explores to what extent and in what ways conceptual innovations matter for biodiversity governance. A three-step analysis is employed, starting with identifying theoretical insights on how concepts matter for transformative change. These insights provide a lens for examining the academic debate on the Ecosystem Services concept and for identifying critical conceptual challenges related to transformative change. Finally, how the concept is used and valued in policy practice is explored through an empirical study of policy practitioners in Sweden. Based on this investigation we conclude that the ES concept holds important but restricted properties for transformative change. The ES concept provides new meanings in the form of economic valuation of nature, but these remain highly contested and difficult to practice; ES function as a boundary object, but poorly integrates social analysis and, in practice engages professionals, rather than resulting in more inclusive public participation; and ES function performatively by reflecting a technocratic ideal and raising awareness rather than targeting fundamental political challenges. Finally, the paper returns to the general questions of how conceptual innovations can generate transformative change and argues that in the continued work of conceptually developing the Nature’s Contribution to People, researchers and practitioners need to pay close attention to interpretive frames, political dimensions, and institutional structures, necessitating a strong role for social analysis in this process of conceptual innovation.

Ecosystem services (ES) is an important approach to biodiversity protection in political rhetoric and policy practice, but it is also highly contested. This paper analyzes the introduction of ES in Swedish environmental policy and how it is contested by key stakeholders, and discusses its implications for biodiversity governance. The results show that although ES is widely accepted on an abstract and conceptual level, critical features and functions are highly contested. These primarily concern the valuation of nature, and the appropriateness of different policy instruments and institutional structures. The paper concludes that while the controversy surrounding ES fills an important role by reinvigorating debate and stimulating reflections on biodiversity loss, it also illustrates how ES is used to further particular values and beliefs and to challenge traditional biodiversity-protecting strategies. Understanding these policy controversies is central to addressing the challenges of transforming the promises of ES into practical policies. 

Governance networks (GNs) are theorized as institutions for state–civil society interaction with important merits as well as shortcomings for effective and democratic governance. Here we compare GNs with a far less researched type of state–civil society interaction, the Swedish governmental commission (GC), critically discussing them in terms of organizational and functional features, the role of the state and democratic anchorage. Drawing on lessons from the institutional design of GCs, we contest the notion that well-functioning GNs require a low level of formal institutionalization and discuss how democratic problems with GNs could be addressed through a formal institutional framework that provides pre-established and generally applied ground rules, ensures elected politicians the final say on policy, and values broad participation and consultation. Recognizing that GNs are not a self-evident form for state–civil society interactions, traditional institutional designs should be more fully considered in the discussion and theorization of the democratic anchorage of GNs.

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is assessed and elaborated by applying it to the Swedish forestry policy subsystem, a dynamic subsystem in which environmental interests have challenged a dominating production coalition. Forest policy has changed as new ecological values and modes of governing have been introduced through an incremental, pragmatic learning process mediated by a pre-established partnership culture. This policy change is not satisfactorily explained by conventional ACF mechanisms (shocks and brokered learning). Policy change may be better understood if the ACF is nuanced and contextualised by recognising that the learning process has evolved over a long time within the ideological-discursive context of ecological modernisation, and that the forest sector has been under constant pressure due to its strong dependence on world markets.

This book considers how public sector institutions can be transformed to better support sustainable development by exploring the concept of green inside activism and its importance for institutional change. The phenomenon of inside activism has been shown to be crucial for green policy change and this book focuses on public officials as green inside activists, committed to green values and engaged in social movement, acting strategically from inside public administration to change public policy and institutions in line with such value commitment. The book theorizes how green inside activism can contribute to a more sustainable development through institutional change. This theorizing builds on and relates to highly relevant theoretical arguments in the existing literature. The authors also consider the legitimacy of inside activism and how it can be reconciled with democratic ideals. This innovative work will appeal to students and scholars of public policy, political science and environmental politics.

This article assesses the possibility of implementing biodiversity policies using voluntary, informative policy instruments. The case is the Swedish forest sector, a policy area where vital national economic interests as well as important ecological values are at stake. The results show that informative policy instruments affect the behaviour of forest owners by providing advice and raising awareness but do not change underlying values and preferences. Sustainability through good advice is an important practice with limited effects, at least in the short run. Private regulations (certifications) have a relatively powerful influence on forest owners and complement the public informative policy instruments, implying that the forest sector can be depicted as private governance with government.

With this paper we aim to further our understanding of local environmental governing by analysing green inside activists who use expert-based authority, networks, and a professional position within public administration to green government policy and action from the inside. Using new survey data, we identify and analyse who these actors are and whether they matter for local environmental governing in Sweden. The results show that green inside activists operate within 23% of the Swedish municipalities and that these municipalities score higher on three different measurements of environmental governing performance, which supports the conclusion that green inside activists do make a difference. We also show that green inside activists differ from other public officials working with environmental issues in that they are more frequently involved in policy making, have more extensive horizontal and vertical networks, and promote societal changes to a greater degree. We end by raising key questions concerning the democratic legitimacy of these actors.

Green radicalism among local environmental officials in Sweden is examined with the aims of theoretically elaborating on different dimensions of Green radicalism in the context of public administration, exploring the dimensionality of Green radicalism among officials, and examining the extent to which Green radicalism is associated with policy influence. Three types of Green radicalism are identified: Green ethics, Green institutional change, and Green activism. Survey data (N=701) show that the three theoretical dimensions are present among officials, and that there is no negative association between radicalism and influence. It is primarily officials with Green activism beliefs who perceive themselves as able to influence policy. These findings suggest a need for more nuanced understanding of and further studies into the role of public administration in the quest for more radical Green reforms.

Consulting interest groups is commonplace in the preparation of policies by democratic governments. It is often assumed that interest groups participate in consultations primarily for the purpose of influencing policy. This article goes beyond this simplified claim and empirically explores the role of consultations from the vantage point of interest groups. Drawing on the Swedish formalized referral process known as the 'remiss procedure' the article shows that interest groups not only participate in consultations in order to effectively change the policy proposal under consideration, but they also use the output of the process in other venues for policy influence, such as direct political contacts and opinion making, and to establish themselves, or maintain their status as legitimate actors in the eyes of the government. In addition, the remiss procedure appears to be intertwined with the groups' own 'internal life', promoting the development and anchorage of policy positions within the organizations. These insights are important for further understanding the promises, as well as the perils, of public consultation.

Policy, offentliga organisationers handlingsinriktning - uttalad eller outtalad - som vägleder beslut och handlingar och som medför viktiga värdeprioriteringar, utgör själva innehållet i politiken. Den här boken ger en introduktion till hur policyprocessen fungerar i praktiken och hur policyforskare förstår och analyserar den. 

I boken första del beskrivs och problematiseras policyprocessens olika faser, från att en fråga hamnar på den politiska agendan till att en politisk reform utvärderas. I bokens andra del introduceras centrala teoritraditioner och perspektiv inom policyforskningen. 

The theoretical concept of inside activism brings fresh light on institutional change by upgrading the importance of political agency within public organizations. Inside activism captures a specific empirical phenomenon, namely, public officials being committed to the agendas of civil society networks and organizations, and acting from inside public organizations to induce policy and institutional change. Inside activism upgrades political aspects of public organizations, recognizing the importance of authority, power, and combative action. Public organizations are institutionally shaped by continuous processes of consolidation and fragmentation. This means opportunities for inside activists to act politically, preferably in secret and subversive ways, and to further strengthen the fragmented nature of public organizations. Strategically, inside activists can work for institutional change by expanding their agency through the development of collective power and networking, using combative subversive strategy, working for cumulative effects and combinative solutions as well as to bend and break constraints on their actions (the 5C model). To induce change, they further exploit institutional ambiguities like “weak spots” of institutions and discrepancies between institutional rules and practices on the ground. The neglect of inside activism within institutional theory likely means that the possibility of institutional change has been underestimated and there is thus a need for a comprehensive research agenda on inside activism, political agency, and institutional change, which in this article is termed “new political institutionalism.”

To further our understanding on policymaking and policy change we need to recognize the significance of individual key actors in policy and planning processes. This article theorizes on the characteristics and policy influence of inside activism in which individual public officials act strategically from inside public administration to change government policy and action in line with a civic engagement and value commitment. Based on initial empirical findings from Swedish local government, we argue that inside activism is empirically relevant but not satisfactorily covered by other key actor concepts. We theorize that inside activism is 1) dualistic: open, deliberative, consensus-seeking and tacit, tactical, power-driven; 2) influential through informal networking inside and outside of government; and 3) dynamic as it varies over time and between critical situations. Due to current trends in society and public administration (e.g. governance), we expect inside activism to be increasingly relevant and we encourage further theoretical, empirical as well as normative research and discussion on this phenomenon.

Consequences of public officials’ policy influence have been at the center of debates on political–administrative relations. Based on a survey of public managers in Swedish local government (N = 1,430), this study examines whether policy politics hollows out political neutrality. The analysis shows that although managers are highly involved in policy politics, attitudinal support for the neutrality principle is strong. The enquiry into behavioral intentions shows more variation. In relation to a set of dilemmas, most managers would defend neutral competence, but significant minorities would also act for more partisan reasons. However, we find no empirical evidence that policy influence undermines political neutrality.