Dr. Alexa Lenz

Dr. Alexa Lenz is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer (Akademische Rätin a.Z.) in Political Science at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute, where she works with Prof. Dr. Christoph Knill. Her research lies at the intersection of public administration and public policy, with a particular focus on policy implementation and citizen–state interactions. She received her PhD from the University of Konstanz with a dissertation on crisis management in public administrations, examining organizational tensions between bureaucratic routines and adaptive practices.

Her habilitation project investigates how modern democracies manage the growing gap between complex policy demands and limited administrative capacity. It explores how bureaucracies and frontline actors adapt to institutional overload through cognitive shortcuts, informal workarounds, and discretionary coping strategies. As these responses are not neutral, the project further examines how they shape who gets access to the state, how policy complexity evolves, and how democratic legitimacy changes under strain.

She combines experimental and quantitative methods to examine how institutions cope with complexity, and how these dynamics are experienced and evaluated by citizens. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration, and Public Management Review. She is also Co-Principal Investigator in research projects funded by the BMBF and EU Horizon, and has held visiting scholar positions at Leiden University and KU Leuven.

Project at CAS:

At CAS, Alexa Lenz will work on investigating how political debates reflect the imbalance between policy production and implementation – a core paradox of contemporary democracies. While governments often gain visibility and electoral rewards from announcing new policies, implementation tends to receive less rhetorical and political attention, despite its significance for long-term governance. Drawing on comparative data from parliamentary debates across European democracies, the project explores how often and in what ways implementation is discussed, which institutional and partisan factors shape this emphasis, and how responsibility for policy failures is assigned, particularly to bureaucracies. By uncovering the rhetorical neglect of implementation, the project will develop insights into the political dynamics behind weak policy follow-through and contribute to debates on accountability, administrative capacity, and the quality of democratic governance.