Project description
Shedding light on how government structures affect government policy
Since modern states emerged in Europe in the early 19th century, governments have built and adapted their structures – ministries and agencies – to develop government policy. However, most research focuses on the postwar period and hence on parties to explain changes in these structures. Funded by the European Research Council, the STATE-DNA project will investigate government structures on a more granular level, analysing the units inside ministries and agencies. The aim is to find new explanations for structural change by tracing the evolution of these units across several countries for a period of more than 200 years. The project will also study how the units' structural evolution affects government policy, seeking to explore opportunities to forecast what will happen with government structures in the future.
Objective
Why do government structures change? Traditionally, the answer refers to political parties exercising control over a state bureaucracy. Yet government structures have been changing ever since they emerged alongside the modern state and thus already before parties existed. The recent decline of party government worldwide also begs the question whether other actors and mechanisms matter that have been underestimated so far. Meanwhile, it became a truism that structure shapes policy, but existing research focuses on other effects of structural change in government, such as democratic and economic outcomes or cabinet governance. We lack systematic analyses of how structural change affects government policy.
To address these gaps, STATE-DNA studies the change of units inside ministries and agencies as the building blocks of the modern state. It submits a novel theory of evolutionary government that regards structural change in government as an interplay between a units structural features and its organizational and environmental environment. This notion of multiple levels allows to study more than party-centric causes of change and, for the first time, to analyze the effects on government policy explicitly, as evolutionary consequences managed by distinct units.
STATE-DNA breaks new ground by applying genetic measures to assess structural change in government, establishing the most comprehensive data set, which begins with the primordial soup of the early 19th century when government structures fragmented (~150,000 units, six countries, 18152025). For the empirical analyses, existing (historical) data on legislative activity, organizational, and environmental features will be used and extended. STATE-DNA will exploit methodological advancements in biology, such as data assimilation techniques, to analyze the origins and consequences of structural change in government and to forecast such change, thereby injecting a predictive notion into government studies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology governance
- social sciences political sciences public administration bureaucracy
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG
See all projects funded under this callHost institution
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
14469 Potsdam
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.