This volume takes up an analytical concern shared in many historical and ethnographic studies of public administration: tackling the complexity of decision making which cannot be simply reduced to the application of legal norms to specific circumstances. The Weberian ideal typical construction of bureaucratic processes belies this complexity, on which anthropological and micro-sociological studies of bureaucracy, however, focus. See exemplarily Bruno Latour: La fabrique du droit. Une ethnographie des Conseil d’Etat, Paris 2004; Jean Marc Weller: Fabriquer des actes d’État. Une ethnographie du travail bureaucratique, Paris 2018; Robert Garot: »You’re Not a Stone«. Emotional Sensitivity in a Bureaucratic Setting, in: Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 33/6 (2004), pp. 735–766. On the reception of Niklas Luhmann’s concept of functional differentiation cf. Benjamin Ziemann: The Theory of Functional Differentiation and the History of Modern Society. Reflections on the Reception of Systems Theory in Recent Historiography, in: Soziale Systeme 13 (2007), pp. 220–229.
We consider the concept of On the role of stereotypes cf. Robert Garot: Sprachspiele im Wohnungsamt, in: Peter Becker (ed.): Sprachvollzug im Amt. Kommunikation und Verwaltung im Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Bielefeld 2011, pp. 157–184.
Administrative multinormativity provides the conceptual resources to understand the public servants’ negotiation between different normativities by way of the legacy of modern statecraft, which operates within the contradicting expectations of equality and specificity. The introduction of Peter Collins, positioned at the beginning of our volume, spells out its theoretical framing in more detail.
This volume would not have been possible without the generous support made available by many institutions and colleagues. We would like to use this opportunity to thank our authors, who joined us in the exploration of a new concept and provided fascinating insights into the logic and functioning of public administration in a broad range of settings. We are equally indebted to all institutions which opted for supporting the yearbook despite the fact that they operate within the multinormative figuration of budgetary discipline and support for academic excellence. Our special thanks go to the Max-Planck-Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory for providing support to organise a workshop on this theme. A long-term publication venture needs innovative ideas and the sacrifice of time and energy. We are privileged to have Stefan Nellen and Thomas Rohringer as part of our editorial team, as they provide both and keep us running.