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PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS

International Bureaucracy
Challenges and Lessons for Public
Administration Research
Edited by Michael W. Bauer,
Christoph Knill, Steffen Eckhard
 Public Sector Organizations

Series Editors
B. Guy Peters
Maurice Falk Professor of Government
Pittsburgh University
USA

Geert Bouckaert
Professor Public Management Institute
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Belgium
Organizations are the building blocks of governments. The role of
organizations, formal and informal, is most readily apparent in public
bureaucracy, but all the institutions of the public sector are comprised of
organizations, or have some organizational characteristics that affect their
performance. Therefore, if scholars want to understand how governments
work, a very good place to start is at the level of organizations involved
in delivering services. Likewise, if practitioners want to understand how
to be effective in the public sector, they would be well-advised to con-
sider examining the role of organizations and how to make organizations
more effective. This series publishes research-based books concerned with
organizations in the public sector and covers such issues as: the autonomy
of public sector organizations; networks and network analysis; bureau-
cratic politics; organizational change and leadership; and methodology for
studying organizations.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14525
Michael W. Bauer • Christoph Knill • Steffen Eckhard
Editors

International
Bureaucracy
Challenges and Lessons for
Public Administration Research
Editors
Michael W. Bauer Steffen Eckhard
German University Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
of Administrative Sciences München, Germany
Speyer, Germany

Christoph Knill
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
München, Germany

Public Sector Organizations

ISBN 978-1-349-94976-2 ISBN 978-1-349-94977-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-94977-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956396

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
 ENDORSEMENTS

We all know that the major challenges of this world are global ones. We
also know that public administration is a crucial political actor. And still,
international bureaucracy is an underresearched subject. It is Bauer, Knill,
and Eckhard’s great merit to put international public administrations on
the agenda. This excellent collection makes an original contribution to
both International Relations and Public Administration research.

—Fritz Sager, University of Bern, Switzerland

v
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This book is the result of a joint effort of the colleagues of the Research
Unit 1745 on “International Public Administrations (IPAs)” funded by
the German Science Foundation (DFG). The debates and discussions we
have had over the last two years have been extremely intellectually inspir-
ing. It took an impressive amount of discipline and perseverance for our
common ideas to be implemented in this volume. The last few years were
hard work and good fun at the same time. We are greatly indebted to
this wonderful team and the generous support from the German Science
Foundation.
The intellectual journey that led us to this book had an even ear-
lier beginning. A workshop on “Management Reforms in International
Bureaucracies” organized by Michael in 2006 at the University of
Konstanz marks the departure. Christoph and Michael broadened and
then further developed the IPA agenda in a couple of smaller research
projects. With the help and input of Helge Jörgens and Stephan Grohs,
the general frame of our research program took shape, while Arthur
Benz, Klaus H. Goetz, and Andrea Liese joined in with new perspec-
tives, thus refining and consolidating our joint endeavor. In this crucial
phase between having some ideas and turning them into a coherent gen-
eral framework and corresponding individual projects, funds from the
Cluster of Excellence (EXC16—Cultural Foundations of Integration)
and the Excellence Program of the University of Konstanz were essen-
tial. Once the Research Unit became operative in 2014, Steffen Eckhard
joined as scientific coordinator, supporting Christoph and Michael as
speakers of the Research Unit.

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Many people helped us advance this research agenda on international

public administration. We would like to express our gratitude in particu-
lar to Wolfgang Seibel, Christopher Daase, Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt,
Stephan Grohs, and Helge Jörgens. For their invaluable assistance in
producing this book, we would like to thank Jan Zimmermann, Louisa
Bayerlein, and Laura Krämer.
The book mirrors our efforts so far. We have raised many more ques-
tions than we were able to settle in 250 pages. We are thus looking for-
ward to more collaboration and joint research in the study of IPAs in the
years to come.

Michael W. Bauer
Christoph Knill
Steffen Eckhard
Munich and Speyer, September 2016
 ABBREVIATIONS

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

BIS Bank for International Settlement
CBD Convention of Biological Diversity
CFP Country Programming Framework
COP Conference of the Parties
CPA Comparative Public Administration
DFID UK Development Aid Agency
DG Directorate General
EC European Commission
ECB European Central Bank
ECJ European Court of Justice
EDRC Economic and Development Review Committee
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
GEO BON Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network
GMBSM Global Multilateral Benefit Sharing Mechanism
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICC International Chamber of Commerce
IDB Inter-American Development Bank
IEA International Energy Agency
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IMO International Maritime Organization
IO International Organization
IOM International Organization for Migration
IPA International Public Administration
IPPC International Plant Protection Convention

ix
x ABBREVIATIONS

IR International Relations
ITPGRFA International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food
and Agriculture
MLA Multilevel Administration
MLG Multilevel Governance
MOF Ministry of Finance
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NPA National Public Administrations
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OMC Open Method of Coordination
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
PA Public Administration
SPR Strategy, Policy and Revision Department
UN United Nations
UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
UNEP United Nations Environment Program
UNEP-WCMC UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
UNFCCC United Nations Framework for Combating Climate Change
UNHCR United Nations Refugee Agency
WB World Bank
WHO World Health Organization
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
WMO World Meteorological Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
WWF World Wide Fund for Nature
 CONTENTS

1 A Public Administration Perspective on

International Organizations 1
Michael W. Bauer, Steffen Eckhard, Jörn Ege,
and Christoph Knill

2 A Matter of Will and Action: The Bureaucratic

Autonomy of International Public Administrations 13
Michael W. Bauer and Jörn Ege

3 Administrative Styles of International

Organizations: Can We Find Them, Do They Matter? 43
Christoph Knill, Jan Enkler, Sylvia Schmidt,
Steffen Eckhard, and Stephan Grohs

4 Orchestrating (Bio-)Diversity: The Secretariat

of the Convention of Biological Diversity
as an Attention-Seeking Bureaucracy 73
Helge Jörgens, Nina Kolleck, Barbara Saerbeck,
and Mareike Well

5 The Authority of International Public

Administrations 97
Per-Olof Busch and Andrea Liese

xi
xii CONTENTS

6 Changing Budgeting Administration

in International Organizations: Budgetary Pressures,
Complex Principals and Administrative Leadership 123
Ronny Patz and Klaus H. Goetz

7 Multilevel Administration in International

and National Contexts 151
Arthur Benz, Andreas Corcaci, and Jan Wolfgang Doser

8 International Public Administration:

A New Type of Bureaucracy? Lessons
and Challenges for Public Administration Research 179
Michael W. Bauer, Christoph Knill, and Steffen Eckhard

Contributors 199

Index 203
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 2.1. The dimensions of structural bureaucratic autonomy 24

Fig. 2.2. Aggregated values of bureaucratic autonomy in 20 IOs 29
Fig. 2.3. Values of administrative cohesion and differentiation
in the sample of 20 IOs 31
Fig. 6.1. Centralization cascade 129
Fig. 6.2. Complex principals 136

xiii
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Dimensions, sub-dimensions, and operationalization

of bureaucratic autonomy 26
Table 3.1 Indicators of administrative styles 61
Table 3.2 Determinants of administrative styles 65
Table 3.3 Four ideal-types of administrative styles 66
Table 3.4 Administrative styles and their basic characteristics 68
Table 5.1 Classification of authority 108
Table 7.1 Structures, modes, and patterns of multilevel
administration systems 156

xv
 CHAPTER 1

A Public Administration Perspective

on International Organizations

Michael W. Bauer, Steffen Eckhard, Jörn Ege,

and Christoph Knill

INTRODUCTION
Resolving climate change, combating transnational terrorism, foster-
ing democratic practices and human rights, fighting contagious diseases,
providing stability on the financial market, establishing fair rules for
international trade, and channeling migration—few decisions with signifi-
cance for the future of our societies are taken without the involvement of
international organizations (IOs). The more IOs are needed to design and
sustain policy solutions for global governance, that is, the more they are
involved in key state tasks like regulation, stabilization and redistribution,
the more attention needs to be paid to their organizational foundations.
This is so because political organizations, like any organization, once
given a legal mandate and provided with financial and personnel resources

M.W. Bauer ( ) • J. Ege

Deut. Univ. f. Verwaltungswissenschaften, Lehrstuhl f. vergl.
Verwaltungswiss. u. Policy-Analyse, 2, Freiherr-vom-Stein-Str,
67346 Speyer, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
S. Eckhard • C. Knill
Department of Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-University,
67, Oettingenstr, 80538 München, Bayern, Germany

© The Author(s) 2017 1

M.W. Bauer et al. (eds.), International Bureaucracy,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-94977-9_1
2 M.W. BAUER ET AL.

to do their job, tend to become actors in their own right. It is against

this background that this volume is concerned with what we conceive as
international public administrations (IPAs), the bureaucratic bodies and
administrative interactions of IOs.1 IPAs can be described as bodies with
a certain degree of autonomy, staffed by professional and appointed civil
servants who are responsible for specific tasks and who work together fol-
lowing the rules and norms of the IO in question.
One does not need to go as far as to see bureaucracy as the new defin-
ing feature of global politics. There is however no doubt that international
bureaucracy is becoming ever more important. For example, IOs have
been delegated a growing number of tasks and, in order to fulfill these
tasks, their administrative apparatus has grown considerably over recent
decades (Lenz et al. 2015, 147). These international administrative bod-
ies, the people populating them, and their procedural routines and organi-
zational structures have consequences for how modern global governance
works. Whatever the perspective chosen to analyze global governance and
transnational policy-making, international bureaucracy must be a central
part of the discussion.
Once the importance of international bureaucracy is recognized, it
should be recalled that studying the organization of government, admin-
istrative structures and officials, and the impact of the said organization
on policy-making and implementation is already the prerogative of PA as
a scholarly discipline. Thus far, however, PA has been largely neglected by
those studying international bureaucracy. This has two unfortunate con-
sequences. First, international bureaucracy scholars miss the insights that
a more systematic application of a PA perspective to IOs would be able to
produce. Second, for their part, PA scholars miss out on the opportunity
to develop further that field’s analytical concepts and thus forgo potential
theoretical advances regarding the transformation of modern statehood.2
It is the objective of this volume to address this double challenge. The
following contributions seek, first, to assess the value of PA concepts for
studying the bureaucratic dimension of global governance; second, they
also consider to what extent observable governance transformations and
organizational innovations at the international level suggest the need for
analytical and theoretical recalibration of PA scholarship at the national
level. In other words, the pieces in this collection explore how a PA per-
spective on IOs might serve both ends of addressing how IPAs matter
for global governance and how insights regarding IPAs may productively
inform national PA research.
 A PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNATIONAL... 3

PERSPECTIVES AND GAPS

IPAs have so far remained outside the PA focus. The study of PAs has tra-
ditionally been linked to national contexts and the cross-national compari-
son of national administrative systems. This neglect of IPAs has become
more problematic, however, as they have begun to play an even larger and
more visible role in domestic and international policy-making (Barnett
and Finnemore 2004; Biermann and Siebenhüner 2009; Busch 2014;
Dingwerth, Kerwer, and Nölke 2009; Hooghe and Marks 2015). In addi-
tion, international bureaucratic elites have become a focus of IRs scholars
and students of the European Union (Hooghe and Marks 2001; Kassim
et al. 2013; Xu and Weller 2004), who highlight phenomena as diverse as
bureaucrats’ role in indirect and soft forms of governance (Abbott et al.
2015), organizational change (Barnett and Coleman 2005), the design
of offshoot organizations (Johnson 2013), the management of regime
overlap (Jinnah 2010), and the solidification of supranationalism (Posner
2009). The growing size and competences of international bureaucratic
bodies thus beg the obvious question of to what extent a PA perspective
on IOs could add descriptive, analytical, or theoretical insights.
Yet, these questions have remained open, while the gap between national
and international PA scholarship has been growing. At the national level, PA
research has advanced our understanding of the organizational structures
of ministerial bureaucracies and their impact on national policy-making
(Page and Jenkins 2005; Schnapp 2004), but corresponding questions
regarding the international level and international bureaucracies have been
raised only sporadically (e.g. Bauer, da Conceição-Heldt and Ege 2015;
Bauer and Knill 2007; Bauer and Ege 2015; Knill, Eckhard and Grohs
2016). Consequently, key concerns of PA research—namely, whether and
through what mechanisms administrations have an autonomous impact
on the formulation and implementation of policies and programs (Heady
1998; Liese and Weinlich 2006; Ness and Brechin 1988), and what role
professionals and organizational dynamics play in the ‘working’ adminis-
tration (Trondal 2010)—have remained under-researched at the interna-
tional level and with regard to transnational constellations. Even where
individual studies have emerged (e.g. regarding the role of international
bureaucrats), they have not led to more systematic, comparative empirical
examination of the issues, let alone to comprehensive research programs.3
To be sure, the neglect of developing a genuine PA perspective on IOs
does not mean that their organizational features have remained completely
4 M.W. BAUER ET AL.

unexamined. Research combining IR and organization theory has indeed

fueled renewed interest in studying IOs ‘as organizations’ (Ness and Brechin
1988), recognizing that their internal structure and political personnel
can be the source of policy change (Biermann and Siebenhüner 2009) or
organizational dysfunctions (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). These lines
of inquiry go back to the 1970s, at least (Cox and Jacobson 1973; Weiss
1975). Their main contribution was to highlight that IOs and their secre-
tariats are not just epiphenomenal and instrumental (Mearsheimer 1995),
but wield a certain level of influence—particularly where no substantial
interests of powerful states are at stake. It is, however, fair to underline
that although these works highlighted ‘organizational features,’ they were
not particularly interested in following an intra-organizational agenda in
general, let alone a PA perspective that examined the nexus of administra-
tion and politics, particular bureaucratic features and their effects, or the
precise and varying impact of specific administrative cultures, routines,
and entrepreneurship.
Fortunately, this picture has begun to change. Since Barnett and
Finnemore’s (2004) seminal publication on the authority of IOs’ secretar-
iats, a growing number of studies inspired by organizational theory, soci-
ological institutionalism, and principal–agent approaches have adopted
a new perspective on the administrative bodies of IOs (Biermann and
Pattberg 2012; da Conceição-Heldt 2013; Dingwerth et al. 2009; Ege
and Bauer 2013; Goetz 2014; Hanrieder 2014; Johnson and Urpelainen
2014; Liese and Weinlich 2006; and Nay 2012). The findings regard-
ing the actions, influence, and outside relations of IPAs, however, remain
fragmented (see Eckhard and Ege 2016) and to the extent that a more
systematic PA perspective on IPAs has begun to emerge, its contours are
still being worked out.
Historically, there has been a kind of mutual disregard preventing inter-
disciplinary debates. PA was not interested in international bureaucratic
issues, while IR did not look systematically at the intra-organizational or
PA features of IOs. The organizational perspective on IOs—being a more
inter- than an intra-organizational agenda anyway—remained a somewhat
isolated (and not very influential) debate. However, these historically dis-
connected research programs have recently begun to converge. Following
Barnett and Finnemore’s 2004 book, scholars have (re-)discovered orga-
nizational and bureaucratic perspectives on IOs, and this shift, in turn,
has coincided with efforts in the PA community to come to grips with the
challenges posed by internationalization and globalization (Bauer 2015).
 A PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNATIONAL... 5

The time has thus come for PA as a discipline to revisit its own concep-
tual and theoretical potential for ‘going international.’ Demonstrating the
added value and innovation when PA concepts are further developed and
applied to international bureaucracies is the prime aim of this book.

CONTOURS OF A PA APPROACH TO IPAS

What might a specifically PA approach to IPAs look like? We argue that the
comparative method constitutes the key to a PA research agenda for IPAs.
Cross-national comparative research has advanced our understanding of
variation in administrative systems across the world. Comparing admin-
istrations across levels holds similar potential for innovation if the focus
changes from the horizontal to the vertical. Oriented by comparative PA
research, we can outline four sets of questions relevant for analyzing IPAs.
The first set of questions concerns international organizational features.
What characterizes administrative actors, processes, and structures at the
international level and to what extent are these features distinct from what
we already know about national administrations? Research in this area
would focus on the internal functioning of IPAs and take administrative
actors (at different hierarchical levels), their roles and behavior, as well as
the organizational structures of public bureaucracies as its central analyti-
cal categories.
The second set of questions is concerned with the nexus between
administrations and their political masters. Research often focuses on the
relationship between elected policy-makers and bureaucracies with the
presumption that administrations will tend to use their superior expertise
to escape close control by those elected to lead. The fear that administra-
tions will lose their instrumental character and begin to act on their own
accord and in their own interests has long constituted one of the central
concerns of political and social science studies of public organizations.
The third set of questions puts the boundaries of PA center stage.
Where does a particular administration end and other actors’ domains
begin? What are the effects of such formal or informal demarcations? What
kinds of exchanges take place between administrative actors of different
kinds and at different levels? What structures determine the relationship
between a PA and its environment—particularly with regard to its ‘client’
relations to civil society and organized interests?
The fourth set of questions encompasses the previous three as it inquires
into the effects of administrative structures, processes, and behavior on
6 M.W. BAUER ET AL.

public policy. The central issues raised here are whether and through what
mechanisms an administration is able to shape public policy-making in
particular ways (especially in terms of implementation and budgeting),
and how the linkage between administrative variables on the one hand and
policy output on the other should be theoretically conceived and empiri-
cally studied.
These questions are not meant to be exhaustive; rather, they establish
the analytical starting points for studying the particularities of IPAs from a
comparative perspective. The questions highlight how key concepts from
the discipline of PA can be taken from their traditional national context
and used to analyze internationalized structures, configurations, and actor
relationships. As such, the questions are meant only to guide analytical
efforts and spark discussions, not to confine empirical research or defini-
tively settle any debates that are just about to be conducted.

CENTRAL CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES ON IPAS

Any attempt to address the questions as formulated above presupposes
the development of analytical concepts that guide empirical analysis. We
identify six concepts customarily used in PA studies and explore them with
a view to analyzing IPAs from a comparative perspective and addressing
the questions formulated above. These concepts include bureaucratic
autonomy, administrative styles, bureaucratic entrepreneurship, adminis-
trative expertise, bureaucratic budget-making, and multilevel administra-
tive coordination. Together, the concepts cover the central theoretical and
analytical advances of comparative PA research.
Each of these concepts offers important insights in terms of theory
development for international PA. At the same time, we expect that apply-
ing these concepts to IPAs has the potential to reflect back on traditional
‘national’ PA scholarship. Through this process, we hope to improve our
conceptual toolbox by developing more general frameworks that can be
applied to PAs at various levels (international, national, and subnational)
and in different contexts. Only such an empirically broad and comparative
perspective, we argue, will eventually allow getting the gist of PA.
Each of this book’s chapters takes one of the above-mentioned con-
cepts as its central point of analytical departure. As such, the chapters
follow a similar structure. All chapters reflect the chosen central concepts
in terms of previous accomplishments and in terms of their potential for
studying IPAs. In a second step, these concepts are applied to the study
 A PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNATIONAL... 7

of IPAs, including the identification of new conceptual and theoretical

insights gained from empirically studying IPAs through distinctive analyti-
cal lenses. Finally, the chapters also reflect systematically on what can be
learned from their analysis of IPAs for the study of PAs more generally.
In the concluding chapter of the book, these analytical achievements and
findings will be summarized and discussed more generally.
In Chap. 2, Michael W. Bauer and Jörn Ege study intra-organizational
features via a classical focus of PA: bureaucratic autonomy. The authors
propose that IOs are not organized the same way as national political
systems, and therefore it is likely that international bureaucracies develop
specific capacities and exploit different structures and actor constellations,
eventually reshaping the balance between autonomy and control at the
international level. The autonomy structures of IPAs are informed by what
we know about how to keep national PA ‘in check,’ but whether and to
what extent these control structures are effective for international configu-
rations is the topic the authors seek to address.
In Chap. 3, Christoph Knill, Jan Enkler, Sylvia Schmidt, Steffen
Eckhard, and Stephan Grohs look into the informal procedures and rou-
tines shaping international administrative behavior. To do so, they use
the concept of administrative styles. The styles concept helps to focus on
procedures and routines that define the de facto ways in which interna-
tional administrations try to achieve their objectives within the opportu-
nities and constraints of their structural and institutional contexts. The
authors develop a new typology of administrative styles and a theoretical
framework accounting for variation in administrative styles that can be
applied to any bureaucracy, regardless of the institutional level at which it
is located.
In Chap. 4, Helge Jörgens, Nina Kolleck, Barbara Saerbeck, and
Mareike Well study bureaucratic entrepreneurship in the secretariats of
multilateral environmental agreements. They revisit entrepreneurship the-
ories and conceive these relatively small international secretariats as brokers
able to exploit their privileged information access and their function as a
hub of communication exchanges during ongoing international negotia-
tions. The authors analyze attention-seeking and brokerage as mechanisms
through which IPAs can successfully seek political influence—with par-
ticular focus on the early stages of the international policy-making process.
In Chap. 5, Per-Olof Busch and Andrea Liese revisit the concept of
administrative expertise with a view to developing a tool to comparatively
study the role of IPAs. They focus on expert authority and how it can
8 M.W. BAUER ET AL.

be empirically studied, particularly in the area of social exchange and

organizational reputation. The authors develop the expertise concept as
an important feature of IPAs and precondition for IPAs to wield policy
influence.
In Chap. 6, Ronny Patz and Klaus H. Goetz look at an area too often
neglected in comparative organizational analysis: the politics of bureau-
cratic budget-making. They conceive of budgeting as a core organizational
process that involves and concerns all actors within an administration. They
argue that the struggle over safeguarding needed financial resources leads,
especially in times of retrenchment, to particular administrative response
strategies and adjustment processes. Patz and Goetz show how complex
principal–agent constellations in budgeting, efforts to secure voluntary
funds, and the motives of IPA administrative leaders affect administrative
reaction patterns to budget pressures.
In Chap. 7, Arthur Benz, Andreas Corcaci, and Jan Wolfgang Doser
look into the connections between international and national administra-
tions. They study coordination patterns and develop a concept of mul-
tilevel administrative coordination distinct from the broader frame of
multilevel governance. They focus, in particular, on the mechanisms and
patterns by which these administrations de facto interact. Vertical admin-
istrative relationships, according to their findings, are characterized by the
absence of coercion and subordination; multilevel administrative coordi-
nation therefore is relatively voluntaristic, coined more by exchanges at
an equal footing and less by clear-cut types or structures than in purely
national contexts.
In Chap. 8, Michael W. Bauer, Christoph Knill and Steffen Eckhard
take stock of what we have learned about International PAs in view to
identify general patterns as well as to improve our understanding of poten-
tial implications for further PA research. They argue that international
PAs constitute a genuinely new type of bureaucracy. The structures and
processes of IPAs may be familiar in many important respects. However,
it is the conjoint occurrence of distinct contextual factors and their effect
on the behavior and strategies of international administrations that make
up for transforming international bureaucracies into something new.
This becomes especially visible in a set of peculiar behavioral patterns.
Chapter 8 hence argues that the analysis of international bureaucracies
constitutes challenges and reassurances for a PA perspective on the current
transformation of the state and its institutions focusing IPAs.
 A PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNATIONAL... 9

What follows are the individual chapters. We hope that the analyti-
cal concepts and their application will help appreciate what is special
about IPAs, how IPAs are made up, and how they matter for global
governance. We will eventually make the case for how the insights of
analyzing IPAs may productively provide feedback to traditional PA
research.

NOTES
1. We are of course not the first to acknowledge the bureaucratic nature
of IO secretariats. Barnet and Finnemore (1999, 2004), in particular,
were instrumental in triggering a rich and fruitful stream of academic
research (Larsson and Trondal 2006; Liese and Weinlich 2006;
Biermann and Siebenhüner 2009; Dingwerth et al. 2009; Benner et al.
2011; Ege and Bauer, 2013; Hawkins et al. 2006; Trondal et al. 2010;
Zürn et al. 2012; and Eckhard 2016).
2. Other PA approaches dealing with the challenges emerging from ongo-
ing processes of internationalization and globalization include litera-
ture on multilevel governance (Hooghe and Marks 2001, 2003), the
European administrative space (Trondal 2010) and on transnational
administration (Stone and Ladi 2015).
3. PA research on international secretariats is not an entirely new
development. Over the last 80 years, a substantial number of schol-
ars—often former employees of these organizations themselves—
have written extensively about the challenges the international civil
service has faced over the years (see Ranshofen-Wertheimer 1943;
Beigbeder 1988). This research culminated in a special issue of PA
Review entitled ‘Towards an International Civil Service’ (Mailick
1970). However, while these early studies advanced our knowledge
by pointing out how the international civil service works and why it
is an important precondition for successful multilateral cooperation,
they were mostly normative and descriptive in nature and lacked a
clear theoretical program. In the shadow of the Cold War and the
growing relevance of realism as the predominant paradigm in IR,
the debate lost momentum. Consequently, this strand of research
did not develop into a more analytical research agenda that would
make it compatible with the changes and developments within
(national) PA.
10 M.W. BAUER ET AL.

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 CHAPTER 2

A Matter of Will and Action:

The Bureaucratic Autonomy
of International Public Administrations

Michael W. Bauer and Jörn Ege

INTRODUCTION
This chapter conceptualizes the bureaucratic autonomy of international
administrations and suggests a measurement strategy to capture its varia-
tion across 20 international (governmental) organizations (IOs). Max
Weber famously theorized bureaucratization as the main characteristic
of rational-legal authority and an inevitable tendency of modern life; he
framed it as both necessary and somehow ‘dangerous’ (1978). Bureaucracy
is necessary because it constitutes the most efficient way to administer a
society, but it is also dangerous insofar as it may use its unique expertise
to escape legitimate political control. This tension between the auton-
omy needed by a public administration (PA) to execute its delegated tasks
effectively, and the concern that this autonomy might hamper political
control and fuel illegitimate competence encroachment, has long troubled
PA scholars ever since Weber.

M.W. Bauer ( ) • J. Ege

Deut. Univ. f. Verwaltungswissenschaften, Lehrstuhl f. vergl.
Verwaltungswiss. u. Policy-Analyse, 2, Freiherr-vom-Stein-Str,
67346 Speyer, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany

© The Author(s) 2017 13

M.W. Bauer et al. (eds.), International Bureaucracy,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-94977-9_2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
trudged sturdily homewards, with her petticoats held well out of the
mud, and her country-made boots defying the slushy road.
When Mrs. Dulcimer had gone the two girls sat at opposite sides
of the hearth, very much as they had been seated the night before,
only there was no pretence of reading to-night. Beatrix sat looking
idly at the fire with great melancholy eyes. Bella watched her, ready
to offer any scrap of consolation which might suggest itself.
‘It seems painfully clear that my father committed suicide,’ Beatrix
said, at the end of a long reverie.
‘Oh, I hope not,’ exclaimed Bella, piously. ‘We must not think that,
dear. He may have taken an overdose of laudanum.’
‘Yes, if he had been in the habit of taking laudanum. But he was
not.’
‘How can you know that? Poor Mr. Harefield was so reserved. He
lived so much apart from you.’
‘But if he had taken laudanum habitually somebody would have
known of it. Peacock, for instance, who always waited upon him. No,
Bella, there was something in that Italian’s visit. I believe my father
poisoned himself.’
‘But why?’
‘For the last ten years his life has been one long regret. Yes. I am
sure of that now. His coldness and unkindness to me were the
growth of despair. He told me that he had closed his heart against all
human affection ten years ago. That was the time of my mother’s
death. And last night those long years of grief culminated in a
paroxysm of despair, and in a rash moment—a moment in which he
was not responsible for his actions—he threw away his life.’
‘But how did he come by the poison?’ asked Bella. ‘He must have
obtained the poison somehow. That would be a deliberate act—just
as deliberate as yours when you went into six different chemists’
shops.’
‘Why do you look at me like that, Bella?’ inquired Beatrix, struck by
something curious in the other’s intent gaze. ‘Do you suppose that I
did not tell the truth about the laudanum I bought at Great Yafford?’
‘I know you told the truth. I was with you in the pony carriage, you
know. Don’t you remember my asking the meaning of all those little
packages? I was only thinking, just now, that had I been you I don’t
think I should have told the coroner about that laudanum.’
‘Why not? There was no harm in my buying it. I had as much right
to buy that as any other medicine.’
‘Of course, dear. But still I am sorry you told about it.’
‘Why, in goodness name?’
‘Because it might make a bad impression upon some people—
people who don’t know you as your friends know you. People who
think that you and your father lived unhappily together. It might put
curious ideas into their heads.’
‘Bella, what do you mean?’ cried Beatrix, starting up from her
chair. ‘Do you mean that there is any creature on this earth so vile in
mind and heart as to be capable of believing that I poisoned my
father?’
‘My dear Beatrix, there are people wicked enough to be ready to
believe anything evil of those who are richer than themselves.’
‘I am sorry such a hideous suggestion should come from you,
Bella,’ said Beatrix, coldly.
Bella saw that she had gone a little too far, and knelt down by her
dear Beatrix’s chair, and tried to soothe the irritation her suggestions
had caused. Beatrix’s wounded feeling was not easily appeased.
‘If such a thing can enter into the mind of my earliest friend, my old
playfellow, what measure of evil am I to expect from strangers?’ she
said.
‘My dearest Beatrix, have I been speaking of my own thoughts? I
only said I was sorry you mentioned those unfortunate purchases at
Yafford.’
‘I shall never be sorry for having spoken the truth.’
 Mrs. Dulcimer had her wish gratified. At the gate of the Vicarage a
large and blundering vehicle loomed upon her through the rainy
darkness. It was one of the Great Yafford flies, a cumbrous
conveyance of wood, iron, and mouldy leather, which Mr. Bollen, of
‘The George,’ innkeeper and postmaster, facetiously called a landau.
‘Have you brought any one from the town?’ asked Mrs. Dulcimer.
‘Yes, mum, I’ve bringed a gen’leman from t’ steation.’
Mrs. Dulcimer went into the house delighted. She forgot the
awfulness of things at the Water House, forgot everything but this
propitious arrival of Sir Kenrick.
‘My dear Kenrick!’ she exclaimed, making a friendly rush at the
newly-arrived guest, as he stood in the hall talking to the Vicar. ‘How
good of you to remember your promise!’
‘My dear Mrs. Dulcimer, do you suppose there is any house in
which I would sooner spend my Christmas than in this? But what
terrible news this is about Mr. Harefield.’
‘Is it not awful? Poor Beatrix, without a relative; and with hardly a
friend except Clement and myself. With her great wealth, too—for
now she is mistress of everything.’
‘There is no one else, I suppose, to whom Mr. Harefield can have
left his estates?’
‘Not a creature. He lived like a hermit, and Beatrix is his only child.
It is a great fortune for a girl to be mistress of.’
‘Is it really so large a fortune?’ inquired Kenrick, in a
conversational tone, taking off his coat and wraps.
‘Immense. Mr. Harefield’s mother was old Mr. Pynsent’s only
daughter, and a great heiress. There is the Lincolnshire property. I
have heard Mr. Scratchell say that it brings in more than the
Yorkshire estate.’
 ‘In plain words, Beatrix will have something like ten thousand a
year,’ said the Vicar, rather impatiently. ‘A great deal too much
money for any young woman, and likely to be a burden instead of a
blessing.’
‘Not if she marries an honourable man, Clement,’ remonstrated
Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘All depends upon how she marries. She ought to
marry some one who can give her position. She does not want a rich
husband.’
Mr. Dulcimer sighed.
‘If our English Church had what it ought to have, educational
establishments for women, I should recommend Beatrix to avoid the
rocks and shoals of matrimony, and bestow her wealth upon such an
institution. She could live very happily as the foundress and superior
of a Protestant convent, like Madame de Maintenon, at St. Cyr.’
‘With this difference,’ said Sir Kenrick. ‘Madame de Maintenon was
an old woman, and had had two husbands.’
‘But her only period of happiness was at St. Cyr.’
‘So she said; yet she intrigued considerably to be Queen of
France, à la main gauche.’
‘Clement!’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer, looking the image of horror;
‘the word convent makes me shudder. When a Protestant clergyman
talks approvingly of convents, people may well say we are drifting
towards Rome.’
‘Please, ’um, the fowls are getting as cold as ice,’ said Rebecca, at
the door of the dining-room. ‘Do let me take your bonnet and shawl,
’um.’
They all went in, Mrs. Dulcimer having removed her wraps, and
shaken out her frillings hastily. The dining-table looked the picture of
comfort, with its composite meal, half tea, half supper, a pair of fowls
roasted to what Rebecca called ‘a turn,’ a dish of broiled ham, a cold
sirloin and a winter salad, made as only Rebecca—taught by the
Vicar himself—could make salads. Kenrick had a fine appetite after
his long damp journey from the South.
 All tea-time the talk was of Mr. Harefield and Beatrix. The Vicar
had been in the little group of listeners standing by the door of the
Water House dining-room, and had heard the whole of the coroner’s
inquiry.
‘That poor girl ought to have somebody to watch the proceedings
on her behalf,’ said Mr. Dulcimer. ‘I shall go over to Great Yafford on
Wednesday and see Mivers. He is about the cleverest lawyer in the
town.’
‘Mr. Scratchell would surely protect Beatrix’s interests,’ suggested
Mrs. Dulcimer.
‘Mr. Scratchell is very good as a collector of rents, but I do not give
him credit for being exactly the man for a critical position.’
‘What do you mean by a critical position, Clement?’ exclaimed
Mrs. Dulcimer.
‘I mean that Beatrix’s position is a very critical one. Her admission
that she bought laudanum at six different shops, within one week of
her father’s death by that poison, is calculated to raise very painful
suspicions in the minds of those who do not know the girl’s nature as
well as you and I do.’
‘Oh, Clement, how dreadful!’
‘To protect her against such suspicion she must have a clever
lawyer. Mr. Harefield must have got the laudanum that killed him
somewhere or other. The mode and manner of his getting it ought to
be found out before this day week.’
‘It must be found out!’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘Kenrick, you will
help this poor ill-used girl, will you not? Your chivalry will be aroused
in her defence.’
‘I am sure if I can be of any use’—faltered Kenrick.
‘You can’t,’ said the Vicar. ‘A clever lawyer will be of use—and no
one else. I shall write to Mivers directly after tea.’
‘Has Miss Harefield any idea that the admission she made about
the laudanum may be dangerous?’ inquired Kenrick.
 ‘Not the slightest. Poor girl, she is simply dazed—that is the word
—dazed! She did not even want me to stay with her. She did not
care whether I stayed or went away. Her brain is in a state of stupor.’
‘It was very lucky for her that she did make that statement about
her purchase of the laudanum,’ said the Vicar.
‘But why, if the admission was likely to do her harm?’ asked
Kenrick.
‘Because to have concealed the fact would have done her more
harm. The chemists from whom she bought the stuff would have
talked about it.’
‘Of course,’ assented Mrs. Dulcimer, ‘everything is talked about in
Great Yafford. Though it is such a large town, it is almost as bad as a
village for gossip.’

Not at the Vicarage only, but at every tea table in Little Yafford the
inquest at the Water House was the only subject of conversation.
Though very few people, save those actually concerned, had
crossed the threshold of the house during the inquiry, yet everybody
seemed to know all about it. They knew what the butler had said,
what Mr. Namby had said, what Beatrix and Bella had said—how
each and every witness had looked—and the different degrees of
emotion with which each particular witness had given his or her
evidence. Opinions at present were distinguished by their
vagueness. There was a general idea that Mr. Harefield’s death was
a very mysterious affair—that a great deal more would come out at
the next inquiry—that the butler and Bella Scratchell were both
keeping back a great deal—that Beatrix and her father had lived
much more unhappily together than anybody had hitherto suspected
—that Beatrix, being of Italian origin on the mother’s side, was likely
to do strange things. In support of which sweeping conclusion the
better informed gossips cited the examples of Lucretia Borgia,
Beatrice Cenci, and a young woman christened Bianca, whose
surname nobody was able to remember.
 Late in the evening Cyril Culverhouse came to the Vicarage. He
had promised to be there to hear the carol singers, in whom, as his
own scholars, he was bound to be interested. He was looking pale
and worried, and Mrs. Dulcimer immediately suggested a tumbler of
Rebecca’s port wine ‘negus,’ a restorative which the curate
obstinately refused.
‘I am a little anxious about your friend Miss Harefield,’ he said. ‘I
have written to a London lawyer to come down here immediately and
protect her interests.’
‘And I have written to Mr. Mivers, of Great Yafford,’ said the Vicar.
‘She ought to be well looked after between us.’
‘You were with her after the inquest, Mrs. Dulcimer,’ said Cyril,
‘How did she seem?’
‘Dazed,’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer, exactly as she had exclaimed
before. ‘There is no other word for it. She reminded me of a sleep-
walker.’
 CHAPTER V.
gloomy days.
Mrs. Dulcimer called at the Water House after the morning service
on Christmas Day. She found Beatrix alone, and very quiet,
disinclined to talk of her grief, or, indeed, to talk about any subject
whatever. Bella had gone to assist at the early dinner at the Park, or,
in other words, to see that the juvenile Pipers did not gorge
themselves with turkey and pudding.
‘You ought not to have let Bella leave you, my love,’ said Mrs.
Dulcimer. ‘It is dreadful for you to be alone.’
‘Dear Mrs. Dulcimer, Bella cannot do me any good. She cannot
bring my father back to life, or explain the mystery of his death. I
insisted upon her going to the Park to-day. I am really better alone.’
‘My poor Beatrix, I cannot understand you.’
‘Am I so eccentric in liking to sit by my fireside quietly, and suffer in
silence?’ asked Beatrix, with a wintry smile. ‘I should have thought
any one would have preferred that to being the object of perpetual
consolation.’
This was a strong-minded view of the case which Mrs. Dulcimer
could by no means understand. It seemed to remove Beatrix further
away from her. But then she had always been able to get on better
with Bella than with Beatrix.
‘You are not without friends, Beatrix, and advisers in this hour of
trouble,’ she said, encouragingly.
And then she told Beatrix about the two lawyers to whom the Vicar
and his curate had written.
‘Strange, was it not, that Cyril and my husband should both think
of the same thing?’
 ‘Very strange,’ said Beatrix, deeply thoughtful.
‘You see, my dear, the important question is, where did your father
get the laudanum?’
‘Oh, I think I know that,’ answered Beatrix.
‘You know, and did not tell the coroner? How very foolish!’
‘I did not think of it yesterday. I could think of nothing. I felt as if I
had lost myself in some hideous dream. But this morning, in my
mother’s room—I am free to go into my mother’s room now—the
idea occurred to me. It must have been there my poor father found
the laudanum.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Mrs. Dulcimer, eagerly.
Beatrix described her former visit to her mother’s room, and how
she had found a medicine chest there, and in the medicine chest a
bottle half full of laudanum.
‘I looked at the bottle this morning,’ she said, ‘and it was empty.’
‘And your father was found lying dead in that room. Nothing can
be clearer,’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘The coroner ought to be
communicated with immediately. How glad Clement will be! This will
stop people’s mouths.’
‘What people?’ asked Beatrix.
‘Those horrid people who are always ready to think the worst of
their neighbours. I shall go back to the Vicarage at once. Clement
ought to know without a moment’s delay. How I wish you could eat
your Christmas dinner with us, poor child! Kenrick has come back,
looking so handsome, and so full of Culverhouse Castle. What a
noble old place it must be! and what a pity he cannot afford to live in
it!’
Beatrix did not hear a word about Culverhouse Castle.
‘Cyril will be with you too, I suppose?’ she said presently.
‘No; it’s extremely tiresome. Poor Cyril has one of his bad
headaches, and says his only chance of getting through his evening
duty is to keep quietly at home between the services. I feel quite
annoyed. We have such a superb turkey. Rebecca chose it at
Moyle’s farm six weeks ago. It was a great fierce creature, and flew
at her like a tiger when she went into the poultry-yard. Well, good-
bye, dear. Pray keep up your spirits. Clement will be so glad to know
about the laudanum.’
Beatrix sat alone, till the twilight gathered round her, thinking of
Cyril. To-day, for the first time, she thought of her own position, which
was assuredly a horrible one. But she contemplated it without a
shadow of fear. Bella’s speech yesterday, Mrs. Dulcimer’s hints to-
day, had shown her that—in their minds at least—it seemed possible
that people might suspect her of being her father’s murderer. There
were people who would think that she, to whom crime seemed as far
off as the stars, had blossomed all at once into the most deliberate
and vilest of criminals. Could this really be so? Were there people
capable of believing such a thing? Why was not Cyril near her in this
hour of doubt and trouble? Mrs Dulcimer came with her good-
natured attempts at consolation; but he, her natural consoler, held
himself aloof, now, when there was no one to bar the door against
him. Was it delicacy that kept him away? Yes, possibly. He might
consider it an outrage against that silent master of the house to
cross his threshold unbidden.
‘By and by, after the funeral, he will come,’ she thought.
He had entered the house yesterday as one of the public. She had
seen him in the hall, but he had either not seen her, or had not
chosen to recognise her. These things were bitter to her, but she
fancied there must be some wise meaning in his conduct which she
could not fathom.
‘But he might at least have written to me,’ she thought, piteously.
Bella came home from the Park by and by, full of the history of her
day, trying to change the current of Beatrix’s thoughts by talking
briskly of all that had happened in the Piper ménage. Mr. Piper had
been wonderfully kind, and had insisted upon the brougham being
brought out to take her back to the Water House.
 ‘I have no doubt the coachman hates me for bringing him out this
damp evening,’ said Bella, ‘but Mr. Piper would not let me come any
other way. “What’s the use of having ’osses eating their heads off,
and a parcel of idle fellers standing about chewing straw?” he said.
“It’ll do ’em good to ’ave a turn.”’
‘How is poor Mrs. Piper?’ Beatrix asked, languidly.
‘Not any better. She had to dine in her own room. It was dreadful
to see all those children stuffing turkey and pudding and mince pies,
and making themselves spectacles of gluttony at dessert, without a
thought of their poor mother, whose last Christmas Day was passing
by—for I really don’t think Mrs. Piper can live to see another
Christmas.’
‘Then you dined alone with Mr. Piper and the children?’ inquired
Beatrix, in the same listless tone.
‘Not quite alone. Miss Coyle was there.’
Miss Coyle was a maiden lady of intense gentility, who possessed
a small annuity—bestowed on her by the head of the house of
Coyle, which was supposed to be a family of distinction—and who
inhabited one of the prettiest cottages in Little Yafford—a rustic
bower with a porch of green trellis-work, curtained with clematis and
woodbine. The cottage was so small that a single friend dropping in
to tea filled it to overflowing, insomuch that the small servant could
hardly turn the corner of the parlour door with the tea-tray. This
smallness Miss Coyle found economical. She visited a great deal in
Little Yafford, and was not called upon to exercise any hospitality in
return.
‘With my poor little place it would be ridiculous to talk about giving
parties,’ she used to say, ‘but if my friends will drop in upon me any
afternoon they will always find a good cup of tea.’
Thus Miss Coyle contrived to cry quits with the best people in Little
Yafford at the cost of a cup of tea. Even Mrs. Dulcimer—who prided
herself upon the superiority of her tea—confessed that Miss Coyle
excelled as a tea maker, and would condescend to drop in at the
cottage once in a way on a hot summer afternoon, when the roads
were ankle-deep in dust, and seemed longer than usual. Miss Coyle
had not only tea to offer for the refreshment of the body, but she
generally had some scrap of news for the entertainment of her
visitor’s mind. She was a wonderful woman in this way, and seemed
always to be the first to know everything that occurred in Little
Yafford, as if she had been the centre of an invisible telegraphic
system.
‘Oh, Miss Coyle was there, was she?’ said Beatrix.
‘Yes, she has been at the Park a good deal since the beginning of
Mrs. Piper’s illness. She goes to sit with poor Mrs. Piper almost
every afternoon, and they talk of the wickedness of servants. Miss
Coyle’s father kept seven servants—four indoor and three outdoor. I
have heard her describe them all, again and again. They seem to
have been models; but Miss Coyle said they belonged to a race that
has disappeared off the face of the earth—like the Drift people, or
the poor Swiss creatures who lived in the lakes. You may imagine
how lively it is to hear Miss Coyle and Mrs. Piper bewailing the
iniquities of the present race.’
‘Did Miss Coyle speak about my father—or me?’ asked Beatrix,
with an anxious look.
She remembered meeting Miss Coyle at the Vicarage two or three
times, and she had a vague notion that if this lady had assisted at a
memorable scene, when the sinless among the crowd were bidden
to cast the first stone, she would assuredly have been ready with her
pebble.
Bella looked embarrassed at the question.
‘They did talk a little,’ she faltered. ‘Mr. Piper and Miss Coyle. Yon
know how vulgar and coarse he is—and I’m afraid she is not so
good-natured as she pretends to be. But you must not be unhappy
about anything such people can say.’
‘Do you think I am going to make myself unhappy about it? Do you
suppose I care what such people say or think of me?’ exclaimed
Beatrix, irritably.
 ‘You must not imagine that they said anything very bad, dear,’ said
Bella, soothingly.
‘I shall not imagine anything about them—their remarks are
perfectly indifferent to me.’
‘Of course, dear. What need you care what anybody says—or
thinks—with your fortune? You can look down upon the world.’
‘With my fortune!’ echoed Beatrix, scornfully. ‘I do not know
whether I have sixpence belonging to me in this world, and I do not
very much care. Indeed, I think I would just as soon be without
fortune. I should find out what the world was like then.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Bella, ‘you would see it “the seamy side without.” It is
a very rough world on the wrong side, I assure you.’
Beatrix did not answer. She was wondering how it would be if her
father had left his estates away from her. If she were to find herself
standing in the bleak hard world, penniless as the beggarmaid
chosen by King Cophetua! Would Cyril, her king, in her mind the one
pre-eminent man upon earth, would he, the true and noble lover,
heedless of fortune, descend from his high estate to win her? She
could not doubt that it would be so. Wealth or poverty could make no
difference in him.
The weary week dragged slowly to its dull dark end. There was a
stately funeral, solitary as the life of the dead man had been, for the
mourners were but two—Mr. Scratchell, the agent, and Mr. Namby,
the village doctor. But the escutcheoned hearse and nodding
plumes, the huge Flemish horses with their manes combed reverse
ways, the empty black carriages, the hired mourners, cloaked and
scarved, and struggling heroically to impart a strangeness of
expression to features which were familiar to the populace in every-
day life—one of these venal followers being only too well known as a
drunken carpenter, and another as a cobbler skilled in his art, but
notorious for a too free use of the fire-irons in the correction of his
wife and children—these trappings and suits of woe were not
wanting. All that the most expensive undertaker in Great Yafford
could devise to do honour to the dead was done; and Little Yafford,
draining the dregs of its Christmas cup of dissipation, felt that Squire
Harefield’s funeral made an appropriate finish to the festivities of the
season. The weather had changed; the bare barren fields were
lightly powdered with snow, the black ridge of moorland was sharply
cut against a bright blue sky.
‘It’s an outing, anyhow,’ said the people of Little Yafford, and there
was a good deal of extra liquor consumed at small wayside
beerhouses after the funeral.
In the course of that afternoon the will was produced by Mr.
Scratchell, who had drawn it, and who knew where to look for it.
Nothing could be simpler or more decided. It had been executed
nine years before, and, with the exception of legacies to old
servants, and five hundred pounds to Mr. Scratchell, it left everything
to Beatrix. Mr. Dulcimer was made joint executor with Mr. Scratchell,
and Beatrix’s sole guardian in the event of her father dying while she
was under age.
Two days later came the adjourned inquiry before the coroner.
This time Beatrix Harefield’s interests were watched by the lawyer
from London, a little dark man, with heavy eyebrows and a hard
mouth, a defender who inspired Beatrix with a nameless horror,
although she could but be grateful to Cyril Culverhouse for his
forethought in procuring her such skilled service. Mrs. Dulcimer had
harped upon the curate’s thoughtfulness in sending for one of the
cleverest men in London to protect her dear Beatrix from the
possibilities of evil.
‘It was very kind of him,’ Beatrix said somewhat constrainedly, ‘but
I would much rather have dispensed with the London lawyer—or any
lawyer.’
‘My dearest Beatrix, Mr. Dulcimer and Cyril must understand the
exigencies of the case far better than you can, and both are agreed
that the inquest cannot be too carefully watched on your behalf. If
you only knew the dreadful things people say’——
Beatrix’s marble cheek could grow no paler than it had been in all
the sorrowful days since her father’s death, but a look of sharpest
pain came into her face.
‘Mrs. Dulcimer, do people think that I murdered my father?’ she
asked suddenly.
‘My love,’ cried the Vicar’s wife, startled by this plain question,
‘how can you suggest anything so horrible?’
‘You suggested it, when you spoke of people saying dreadful
things about me.’
‘My dear Beatrix, I only meant to say that the world is very
censorious. People are always ready to say cruel things—about the
most innocent persons. It was so in David’s time even. See how
often he alludes to the malice and injustice of his enemies.’
Beatrix said no more, but, when Mrs. Dulcimer had left her, she sat
for a long time with her face hidden in her clasped hands, in blank
tearless grief.
‘I see now why he shuns me,’ she said to herself. ‘He believes that
I poisoned my father.’
Beatrix was one of the first witnesses examined at the adjourned
inquest.
She made her statement about the medicine chest in her mother’s
room, and the empty laudanum bottle, simply and briefly.
‘Why did you not mention this before?’ asked the coroner.
‘I forgot it.’
‘What! could you forget a fact of such importance? You found your
father dead in that very room, and you forgot the existence of a
medicine chest, which, according to your statement of to-day,
contained the poison by which he died.’
‘The fact did not occur to me at the previous examination,’ Beatrix
answered firmly.
Her manner and bearing were curiously different from what they
had been on the previous occasion. She was deadly pale, but firm as
a rock. That firmness of hers, the calm distinctness of her tones, the
proud carriage of her beautiful head, impressed the coroner and jury
strongly, but not favourably. They had been more ready to
sympathize with her a week ago, when she had stood before them
trembling, and bowed down by her distress.
The medicine chest was brought from the late Mrs. Harefield’s
room. There was the bottle as Beatrix had described it—an empty
bottle which had obviously contained laudanum.
‘Do you know if your mother was in the habit of taking laudanum?’
asked the coroner.
‘I know very little about her. All that I can remember of her is like a
dream.’
Mr. Namby was re-examined upon this question of the laudanum.
He remembered that Mrs. Harefield had suffered from neuralgic
pains in the head and face during the last year of her residence at
the Water House. She had complained to him, and he had
prescribed for her, not successfully. He was of opinion that the Water
House was too much on a level with the river. He would not go so far
as to say the house was damp, but he was sure it was not dry. It was
not unlikely that Mrs. Harefield would resort to laudanum as a
palliative. He had never given her laudanum.
Peacock, the butler, was examined. He remembered Mrs.
Harefield complaining of pain in the head and face. It was called tic-
dollerer. He fancied the name meant something like toothache,
independent of teeth. As he understood it you might have tic-dollerer
anywheres. He remembered being in Great Yafford with the carriage
one day when Mrs. Harefield told him to go into a chemist’s shop
and ask for some laudanum. He got a small quantity in a bottle. Mrs.
Harefield used often to drive into Great Yafford. Sometimes he went
on the box with the coachman—sometimes not. He knew that she
had a medicine chest in her room. He had heard Chugg, the young
woman who waited on her, say that she took sleeping draughts.
The jury agreed upon their verdict, after some deliberation.
Mr. Harefield had died from the effects of laudanum, but by whom
administered there was no evidence to show.
 CHAPTER VI.
bella’s revenge.
The blinds were drawn up at the Water House, and the wintry sun
shone upon the empty rooms. Miss Scales had come back to her
charge, leaving that provoking old lady in Devonshire still undecided
whether to live or die, ‘making it so very perplexing as to one’s
choice of a winter dress when one might be called upon at any
moment to go into mourning,’ Miss Scales complained to her
Devonshire acquaintance, when discussing her aunt’s weak-minded
oscillation.
But now there was no further difficulty about the mourning
question. For Mr. Harefield, her employer of fifteen years, Miss
Scales could not assume too deep a sable, especially when the
sable would naturally be provided and paid for by her dearest
Beatrix.
Banbury and Banbury’s forewoman came to the Water House with
boxes of crape and rolls of bombazine, and the governess and her
pupil were measured for garments of unutterable woe.
And now, at nineteen, Beatrix found herself on the threshold of a
new life, a life of supreme independence. Wealth, and liberty to do
what she pleased with it, were hers. Mr. Dulcimer was likely to prove
the most indulgent of guardians; Mr. Scratchell was subservient to
the last degree, his sole anxiety being to retain his position, and to
ingratiate himself and his family in Miss Harefield’s favour.
‘If Mrs. Scratchell can be useful in any way, pray command her,’
said the village lawyer. ‘She will be only too proud to serve you, Miss
Harefield, but she would be the last to obtrude her services.’
‘I do not think you need entertain any apprehensions as to Miss
Harefield’s being properly taken care of, Mr. Scratchell,’ Miss Scales
remarked, stiffly. ‘She has Mr. Dulcimer—and she has me.’
 Mr. Scratchell rumpled the scanty bristles at the top of his bald
head, and felt himself snubbed.
‘Neither Mrs. Scratchell nor myself would wish to obtrude
ourselves,’ he said, ‘but Miss Harefield being fond of Bella might like
to make use of Mrs. Scratchell. She is a very clever manager, and
might put Miss Harefield in the right way with her servants.’
‘Miss Harefield’s servants know their duties, and do not require
managing, Mr. Scratchell. I should be very sorry to live in a
household where the servants had to be managed. The bare idea
implies a wrong state of things.’
‘Well,’ exclaimed Mr. Scratchell, testily, ‘I don’t want to press
myself or my family upon Miss Harefield—although I am joint
executor with Mr. Dulcimer, and had the honour to enjoy her father’s
confidence for five-and-thirty years. I should be very sorry to be
intrusive. And there’s Bella, she has made a very long stay here, and
she’s wanted badly elsewhere. If Miss Harefield is agreeable she
had better come home.’
‘She must do as she likes,’ Beatrix answered, listlessly. ‘I am a
very dull companion for her.’
‘Dear Beatrix, you know I love to be with you,’ murmured Bella, in
her affectionate way, ‘but I think I ought to go home, as papa says.
Poor Mrs. Piper is so ill, and the young Pipers get more troublesome
every day. Their holidays are too trying for her. I believe I ought to
resume my duties.’
‘I am sure you ought,’ said her father, who was bursting to assert
his independence. He did not mind how subservient he made himself
to Beatrix, but he was not going to knuckle under to Miss Scales. ‘I
met Mr. Piper in the village yesterday, and he told me the house was
all at sixes and sevens for want of you.’
Beatrix seemed indifferent as to whether Bella went or stayed, so
Miss Scratchell got her goods and chattels together, and departed
with her father, after many loving embraces and pretty expressions
of gratitude. Perhaps in the book of the recording angel that parting
kiss of Bella’s went down in a particular column devoted to such
Judas kisses—that traitor kiss of Darnley’s, for instance, on the night
of Rizzio’s assassination.
Bella went home with her father, looking slim and pretty in her new
black dress and bonnet, and doing her best to soothe her parent’s
wrath with sweet deprecating speeches. In the box which she had
just packed—to be brought home later—there were many things that
she had not taken to the Water House, including a handsome black
silk gown, and innumerable trifles in the shape of gloves, collars, and
neck-ribbons; but there was one thing which Miss Scratchell carried
away in her pocket, and which she held to be of more importance
than all her finery.
This was the sealed envelope which she had found upon Mr.
Harefield’s writing-table. ‘For my daughter Beatrix.’
She took it from her pocket when she was safely locked in her own
room, secure from the intrusion of the family herd. She sat with the
packet on her lap, thoughtfully contemplating it.
She had kept it more than a fortnight, and had not broken the seal.
She had been sorely tempted to see what was inside the envelope,
but had resisted the temptation. To open it would be a crime, she
had told herself, and she made a kind of virtue of this self-denial. All
she wanted was to keep the document. She had made up her mind
that this sealed packet contained the key to the mystery of Christian
Harefield’s death. So long as the seal remained unbroken that death
would remain a mystery. No one would know whether it was suicide
or murder; and this uncertainty would hang like a cloud over Beatrix.
This was Isabella Scratchell’s revenge. That pink and white
prettiness of hers was not incompatible with the capacity to seize an
opportunity and to persevere in an inexorable hatred.
‘She has beauty and wealth, and a good old name,’ thought Bella;
‘but so long as her father’s death remains unexplained she will
hardly have the love of Cyril Culverhouse.’
Bella had heard enough from Mr. Piper and Miss Coyle on
Christmas Day to know very well which way opinion was drifting in
Little Yafford. It was a settled thing already in the minds of a good
many deep thinkers, and profound students of human nature as
exhibited in the weekly papers, that Beatrix Harefield knew more
about her father’s death than anybody else. The very horror of the
idea that her hand had put the poison in his way gave it a morbid
attraction for tea-table conversation. There was a growing opinion
that the coroner’s jury had done less than their duty in returning an
open verdict.
‘The verdict would have been very different if Miss Harefield had
been a labouring man’s daughter,’ said Miss Coyle, who had more to
say on this subject than any one else, and who was always
uncompromising in her opinions.
Bella was not sorry to leave the Water House, though home
looked a little more squalid and untidy than usual, after the subdued
splendour of Miss Harefield’s mansion. She had not been able to feel
at her ease with Beatrix during this last visit. Even to her essentially
false nature there was some effort required to preserve a demeanour
of unvarying sweetness towards a person she detested. The old
Adam was in danger of breaking out now and then. Between Beatrix
and herself there stood the shadowy image of Cyril Culverhouse;
and there were moments when Bella could not quite command her
looks, however sweetly she might attune her voice. And now that
Miss Scales was on the scene, with eyes which saw everything,
Bella felt that the veneer of affection might be too thin to hide the
hardness of the wood underneath it.
So Bella resumed the monotonous order of her home life,
breakfasted at eight, and presented herself at the Park upon the
stroke of nine, where the Piper children, clustering round the newly-
lighted fire in the schoolroom, hated her for her punctuality. But she
knew that if the children disapproved, Mr. Piper approved, for he
generally looked out of the dining-room, newspaper in hand, to give
her a friendly nod of welcome.
‘Good little girl, always up to time,’ he said; ‘those are the ’abits
that make success in life. That was Brougham’s way. He might be
hard at it, drinking and dissipating far into the small hours, but he