The triangle of bureaucratic policy analysis and the professional types of high‐level civil servants: Empirical evidence from Southern Europe

Despite the growing interest in the policy work and analytical capacities of bureaucracies, these dimensions have not been treated as central to characterizing and understanding the role of senior civil servants in policymaking, which is usually conceptualized in terms of their relationship with policymakers or other organizational and societal factors. This article fills this gap by proposing an analytical framework that allows the empirical classification of high-level civil servants according to the “triangle of bureaucratic policy analysis”, which consists of possible links between their policy work, their policy analytical capacities, and the types of information they use. We apply this analytical lens to the results of a large survey of approximately 1000 senior civil servants in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Our findings consist of three empirical professional types of top bureaucrats, the “political generalist”, the “manager”, and the “legal advisor”, each characterized by a particular combination of specific policy analytical capacities, sources and types of information used, and policy work. The proposed framework thus offers a promising conceptual lens for comparative research and demonstrates how a focus on the policy dimensions of high-level officials' activities can provide a novel perspective on their roles.