The Department of Administration and Organization Theory

The Department of administration and organization theory (DAO) is one of two political science departments at the University of Bergen - the second being the Department of Comparative Politics. It was established as a research discipline within the Department of Sociology in 1969 and became a separate department in 1981. The DAO has 19 tenured faculty members, about 30 doctoral students, 100 master students and 300 students at the bachelor level.

Research at the DAO focuses on public policy and administration. It is characterized by a common interest among its faculty in the comparative analysis of politics, administration, and organization. The blend of a political science topic in combination with organization theory and institutional analysis is a distinguishing characteristic of the DAO research profile. The DAO has profited from the intellectual influence of one of its first professors, Johan P. Olsen who was affiliated with DAO until 1993 and from his collaboration with James March.

The Department does research over a wide area of empirical policy fields including education, health care, social services, environment, transportation and communication, ICT, development aid, municipal governance and military defense. The projects are often comparative, and knowledge is developed through comparisons across the Nordic countries, the rest of Europe, and countries in Southern Africa, Central and North America, Australia/New Zealand, and in Asia. Of great value for the Department is also the research done by PhD- and master students supervised by faculty members.

The research is currently organized in five research groups in which faculty members, doctoral students and master students participate.

• Democracy organization and political regimes
• Europeanization and democracy
• Globalization and development
• Knowledge and politics
• Political organization and multi level governance

The groups also have members from cooperating institutions, particularly the Rokkan Centre for Social Studies with which the Department cooperates closely.

Over the last decade the research effort has become more comparative and more internationally oriented. The latter is reflected in research collaboration in which faculty members are involved in wider international research networks through which they obtain funding and do their research. They also publish more with colleagues from these research networks.

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