Abstract The study examines how the Federal Employment Agency ( Bundesanstalt für Arbeit , BA) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety ( Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit , BMU) coped with the pressures of German reunification in 1989/90. It analyzes how both institutions faced unprecedented organizational stress from political, social, and administrative challenges. The BA struggled with soaring unemployment and mass migration, while the BMU focused on environmental cooperation and the creation of a ›environmental union.‹ By comparing strategies, resources, and stress responses, the paper highlights how these institutions shaped and adapted to the transformative period of unification.

Abstract The article examines the connection between literary and policing documentation in Joseph Roth’s novels »Die Flucht ohne Ende« and »Der stumme Prophet«. Both texts belong to the creative phase during which Roth was most intensely concerned with documentary writing. In both novels, state documents and bureaucratic institutions play an essential role in the narration. The article reveals how Roth interweaves literary and police documents to investigate narrative agency. On this basis, Roth’s poetics of the late 1920s is described as an unique form of documentary literature that positions the document as a necessary starting point for disrupting a given order.

Abstract This article analyses the ILO’s administrative practice on agricultural issues in the interwar period. On the surface, the ILO did not succeed in assuming a prominent position in the agricultural question. However, the article goes beyond this failure by focussing on the newly founded states of East Central Europe. It interprets the work of the tripartite actors and the experts from the region and works out how these actors shared a common conception of developed and underdeveloped countries with the Western internationalists and how they tried to overcome their weak position through statism and social engineering (e.g. land reforms).

Abstract The present paper analyzes the implementation of the simplification law in Hungarian public administration between 1900 and 1910. The law was enacted in 1901 in a bid to »simplify, facilitate, and speed up« administrative processes and mitigate encounters between different administrative units. The law created an extended debate on the possible directions of simplification and resulted in a mixed reception, including an oftentimes contested implementation. The paper investigates the logic behind the reform both in terms of the legal and practical formulation of revised regulations and in terms of the actual implementation of the directives on the local level. I argue that “simplification” was a buzzword for the homogenization and rationalization of public administration that was considered inept to accommodate the new and expanding tasks of the state by the turn of the century. ›Simplification,‹ hence, resulted in a more complicated system, an oxymoron quickly flagged by contemporaries. The simplification law is understood in the present paper as a case of innovation, and the paper thus contributes to our understanding of innovation processes in public administration. The paper asks how the simplification law was implemented based on the micropractices of administrators, what were the practical consequences of the law in relation to the purposes of lawmakers, who were the main agents that influenced the process, and how they could press their own agendas in the process. These questions are approached through the lens of the materiality of public administration, in which people, objects, and material processes can explain the outcome of innovation initiatives, as in the case of the implementation of the simplification law.

Abstract This paper examines the use of management consultants in the German Ministry of Defence in 1981 and 1982. After an affair concerning the procurement of the Tornado fighter aircraft, the Minister of Defence, Hans Apel, hired a team from the consulting firm McKinsey to develop a new organisational concept. This paper examines the special features of the German procurement and defence administration as well as the reasons for the failure of projects of administrative innovation. Focus is placed on the role of management consultants in the implementation of organisational innovations and their relationship to the actors within the ministerial administration.

Abstract In nineteenth century France, an administrative practice underwent a spectacular expansion: the assessment of all civil servants, regardless of their ministry of affiliation. This article analyzes this innovation. In the first section, the political and administrative context of this assessment is presented. The second section describes the chronology of the expansion of performance appraisals and the content of the forms used: the competencies of the agents were dissected on all levels (attendance at work, technical abilities, and personal and family life). Finally, the last section will attempt to analyze the modalities, drivers, and effects of the expansion of this practice.

Abstract The article reports on the workshop » born digitals und die historische Wissenschaft – Annäherungen an eine Quellenkunde für genuin elektronisches Archivmaterial«, which was organized by the State Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia in Duisburg on August 30th and 31st, 2022. The workshop established a dialogue between archivists and historians to address the epistemological, methodological, and technological challenges and opportunities of archiving and analyzing digital administrative records. The article situates these debates in a longer history of efforts to document administrative practices. Thus, the article highlights that the established archival order of written records was the contingent outcome of three interlinked transformation processes that occurred around 1900 in administrations and archives: 1) loose paper files started to replace records bound together in books transforming the file as the primary medium for documenting administrative practice, 2) the chronological organization of records in the registry gave way to an order based on subject categories, 3) archivists started to establish the principle of provenance as a principle of structuring archival collections. Thus, rather than treating digitalization as a crisis, it is seen as a transformative period of documentation practices, which brings its specific opportunities and challenges.

Abstract In this paper, Eugen Ehrlich’s notion of living law is presented as a concept of multi-normativity. The culturally pluralist character of his home province, Bukovina, led Ehrlich – rightly considered a pioneer not only of the sociology of law, but also of legal pluralism and qualitative social research – to empirically explore the legal customs of its different ethnic groups as actually practised. As Ehrlich stressed the role of private societal legal transactions, his place of activity became a metaphor for a law beyond the state. However, the textbook narrative that Austrian state law has been ›dead‹ in the easternmost crown land of the Habsburg Empire does not stand up to closer scrutiny. In fact, as shown by an analysis of the monarchy’s legal statistics (that are hitherto practically unused for historical or sociological studies) and contemporary media accounts, the Bukovina witnessed an extraordinarily high litigation rate. Apart from precarious economic conditions, this was most likely an unintended consequence of civil procedural reforms. Given the Bukovina’s figurative meaning in current socio-legal discourses on law and globalisation, a proper understanding of this demand for state justice, as well as its coexistence with multiple societal normativities, is not only of historical interest.

Abstract The file is synonymous with British bureaucracy but it had a long gestation from at least the 16th century. It emerged slowly from the chrysalis of the docket during the 19th century, differentially in the various departments of state and became a fixity following reforms in the aftermath of the First World War. Even then the system of recording information in government was not uniform and was subject to the exigencies of the financial crisis and the commitment of officials. Although India and the rest of the Empire had separate administration, there was very little attempt to manage and preserve information effectively. Most initiatives met only with partial success and were often resented by junior officials. Registries in keeping with long-held commitment to paucity in government spending were and are poorly staffed and resourced. This article traces the evolution of the file until its demise in the digital age.

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