1. ^aDepartment of Public Administration, Leiden University, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: boin@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
2. ^bSocial & Political Theory and Philosophy Programs, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Australia. E-mail: goodin@coombs.anu.edu.au

¹Earlier versions were presented at the Mini-conference 'The Early Years of Public Organizations', Leiden University (10–12 June 2004) and at the department of political science, University of Berkeley (3 April 2006). We have benefited from comments of these audiences and, then and later, of Chris Ansell, Todd La Porte, Rod Rhodes, Paul Schulman, Paul 't Hart and the anonymous reviewers of this journal.

Abstract

Governments routinely create new organizations to deal with emerging or persistent problems. It is a real challenge for these 'upstarts' to build a robust organization that is considered legitimate by political stakeholders. The challenge is twofold: the new organization has to create the capacity to effectively and efficiently perform its formal mission and it is has to do so without alienating patrons and clients. The upstart thus has to balance external and internal integrity. The public administration and political science literature tends to prioritize the former (responsiveness) over the latter, suggesting that too strong a focus on the organization's structure and culture may violate the tenets of a healthy democracy. In this article, we reconsider this piece of conventional wisdom. We argue that it may be quite healthy — both for the organization and its environment — if the upstart develops some 'recalcitrant' features.