Der Aufsatz befasst sich mit der Frage, ob sich eine wachsende Politisierung der Ministerialbürokratie und eine zunehmende Bürokratisierung der Politik in einer Hybridisierung der Karriereverläufe von Spitzenbeamten und Exekutivpolitikern auf Bundes- und Landesebene in Deutschland nachweisen lässt. / Switches between political and administrative positions seem to be quite common in today’s politics, or at least not so unusual any longer. Nevertheless, up-to-date empirical studies on this issue are lacking. This paper investigates the presumption, that in recent years top bureaucrats have become more politicised, while at the same time more politicians stem from a bureaucratic background, by looking at the career paths of both. For this purpose, we present new empirical evidence on career patterns of top bureaucrats and executive politicians both at Federal and at Länder level. The data was collected from authorized biographies published at the websites of the Federal and Länder ministries for all Ministers, Parliamentary State Secretaries and Administrative State Secretaries who held office in June 2009.

Dieser Beitrag präsentiert die Befunde der Elitestudie Politisch-Administrative Elite 2013 (PAE 2013) über Zusammensetzung und Politisierung der bundesdeutschen Verwaltungseliten. Diese vierte nationale Replikation der Comparative Elite Studies zum Ende der 17. Legislaturperiode bringt überraschende Entwicklungen ans Licht: Hinsichtlich der Zusammensetzung des Personals schreitet zwar die Feminisierung auch auf den Leitungsebenen fort und eine Berufsvererbung kann nicht mehr festgestellt werden, allerdings erlebt die Juristendominanz mit erstmals seit Jahrzehnten steigenden Werten ein Wiedererstarken. Der Grad an formaler Politisierung überrascht: Trotz des Verbleibs der CDU/CSU an der Macht findet ein umfassender Personalaustausch statt. Diese teils im Widerspruch zu etablierten Trends und Theorien stehenden Entwicklungen zeigen, dass das Feld der administrativen Elitenforschung auch zukünftig besondere Aufmerksamkeit verdient.

The thesis explores the nature of executive leadership in international organisation. Executive leadership is often praised or blamed for outcomes in international agencies, and yet, the disciplinary literature fails to incorporate the executive head into institutional analyses of politics, power, and change over time. The thesis aims to address this lacuna and the role of executive leadership by analysing if and how it matters in international politics. The thesis draws on a composite literature from other areas of political research to establish what is known. A review of the literature and prevailing approaches to leadership studies reveals that an overwhelming majority of scholarship relies on exclusively structural or agential accounts of leadership. This somewhat determinist literature has distorted the limited knowledge on the nature of executive leadership in international organisation. Approaches that focus on agency-based explanations argue that executive heads matter greatly. Approaches that utilise structure to interpret executive leadership find that it matters little, if at all. Rejecting these narrow frameworks, the thesis uses a dialectical approach, supported by critical realism, to analyse four cases of executive leadership in the World Trade Organization to address the research questions and lacuna. The case studies draw on over 70 years of multilateral trade governance to reveal a set of core and subsidiary findings about politics, power, executive leadership, and change over time. The thesis argues that executive leadership matters, but that how it matters is contingent on the executive head and the circumstances of their term. By incorporating the executive head into the disciplinary literature, the thesis argues politics, power, and change over time can be more accurately understood.