Bureaucracy Remade, Citizens Reconfigured: Accountability, Digitalization, and the Transformation of Public Administration

Something quietly consequential has been unfolding within democratic institutions over the past 40 years, though it rarely announces itself in obvious ways.Two recent books, emerging from different corners of public administration scholarship, circle this transformation from distinct vantage points.Karl Löfgren and Patrik Hall's The New Public Bureaucracy, alongside the edited volume Digital Co-Production of Public Services: Citizens, Challenges and Cases, led by Taco Brandsen, Ina Radtke, A. Paula Rodriguez Müller, and Trui Steen, were not conceived as companions.They speak in different voices and address partially overlapping audiences.Yet, when read side by side, something sparks between them.The tension is not accidental.It is revealing.