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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2016

Assessing the Diffusion of Managerial Models in Judicial Systems: International Court Performance Indicators and their Indirect Effect on Local Policy Change

Bartolomeo Cappellina

Résumé

Focusing on the contextual spread of international indicators on court performance and new managerial models of administration for jurisdictions, the paper relates these global trends with examples of local changes in French and Italian tribunals. Through an approach centred on the circulation of actors, ideas and instruments of policy, the paper empirically investigates how and at which extent local changes can be the result of transnational pressure. Generated by comparisons on court performance indicators and diffusion of new managerial models, this transnational pressure has affected European judicial administrations in very different ways, as well as at different times and rates. Following the research flow on the influence of governance indicators over public policy, this paper looks in depth at these supposedly objective descriptions of judicial administrations in order to pinpoint the often overlooked links between the production and diffusion of international indicators and the public action that results of it. Local and national indicators are frequently qualified as providers of evidence to public managers, essential for the goal-setting activity regulating organisations and actors in NPM and post-NPM models of administration. However, international indicators rarely assume such a direct effect on national and local policy, and they are more frequently associated with fuzzy mechanisms such as blaming and shaming, social pressure, or incitation for change. If this is somewhat empirically justified, such mechanisms often oversee indirect processes that convoy these general effects of international indicators. Through the example of judicial performance indicators created by the Council of Europe and the European Commission this paper shows how these general indicators are often used by their creators as a way to foster the attention of decision-makers on specific concerns on which these same international organisations can offer expertise. This expertise can take different forms such as the handing of guidelines and best practices to deal with specific issues, the creation of arenas for mutual exchange on practices for judicial actors, or the direct assistance of international experts on demand of tribunals or ministers. In this case, international indicators act as mediatised attention fasteners that permit to international organisations to get recognition in a specific field of policy. Decision-makers at national and local level are then more likely to get socialised with other policy instruments developed in the same frameworks and conceived to have a more direct effect in the shaping of public action. This mechanism can be boosted by other factors, such as the capacity of internationally socialised actors to promote these instruments with their peers, or the capacity to combine the expertise on the field with funding opportunities. The first case is depicted in the example of the cooperation between the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) and a French tribunal. The second one is then introduced through the experience of an Italian tribunal in the national program “Diffusion of Best Practices in the Italian Judicial Offices” funded by the European Commission between 2007 and 2013.
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Dates et versions

halshs-01379341 , version 1 (11-10-2016)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-01379341 , version 1

Citer

Bartolomeo Cappellina. Assessing the Diffusion of Managerial Models in Judicial Systems: International Court Performance Indicators and their Indirect Effect on Local Policy Change. ECPR General Conference, Panel : Internationalisation of Policy Ideas, ECPR, Sep 2016, Prague, Czech Republic. ⟨halshs-01379341⟩
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