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Introduction: Comparing Local Public Sector Reforms: Institutional Policies in Context
Abstract
Local governments all over Europe are in a period of increased reform activity and intensity, especially since this level of government has been the most seriously affected by the continuously expanding global financial crisis and the austerity policies in some countries. The reforms involve a variety of trajectories ranging from New Public Management (NPM) modernization to reorganization of service delivery between the local public, private and non-profit sectors, functional re-scaling, territorial consolidation, and inter-local cooperation. Many local governments have significantly shifted away from NPM-type reforms and moved to “something different” in order to correct the shortcomings of earlier NPM measures, which some commentators have labeled “post-NPM” (see Halligan 2010). The significance of NPM/post-NPM notwithstanding, European local governments have never concentrated solely on reforms of these kinds but have pursued a variety of (partly conflicting) reform trajectories. NPM reforms have undoubtedly prompted far-reaching institutional changes in some countries, yet in other countries they have been criticized or even ignored. Hence, “other-than-NPM measures” such as territorial reforms, functional re-allocations in the multi-level system, and democratic innovations have played an important role in many European local government systems. These diverse reform activities have contributed to transforming local government systems and patterns of local governance in Europe.
... Given such a distribution of perceived costs and benefits, the bearers of the costs (e.g., the affected local governments and other stakeholders) have a strategic advantage in mobilizing resistance to change. Second, the territorial division of a country into municipalities is likely to be subject to the forces of path dependency (Askim et al., 2017;Baldersheim & Rose, 2010;Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016;Kuipers, 2009). Path dependency suggests that the initial establishment of institutions or structures can condition later choices concerning the development of those institutions (Pierson, 1996(Pierson, , 2000. ...
... Thus, departing from the existing path of territorial division could be challenging, since policy actors have adjusted their strategies and actions according to the previously prevalent arrangements and, through that, reinforce the logic of the existing patterns of behavior (Thelen, 1999). Finally, departing from established structures can be challenging due to deeply entrenched informal norms and administrative traditions (Hall & Taylor, 1996;Pierson, 2000;Powell & DiMaggio, 1991) creating incentives for policymakers to retain existing arrangements in territorial division (Askim et al., 2017;Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016). ...
... For example, political parties that have a traditional attachment to the existing local government structure can act as veto players and block amalgamation reforms, especially if these parties regularly feature as part of a governing coalition in central government. A strong constitutional court can also assume the role of a veto player-and block top-down municipal amalgamation-in countries where constitutions have provisions protecting local government autonomy (Askim et al., 2016;Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016;Sellers & Lidström, 2007). ...
Why are some countries able to go ahead with comprehensive top-down local government amalgamation reforms, despite the many challenges such a reform entails? So far, we have limited theoretical and empirical understanding of how central governments manage to adopt such reforms. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks around public policy as well as research into territorial reforms, this article presents key political and institutional factors that are likely to facilitate top-down municipal mergers and examines whether these theoretical propositions help to explain the adoption of comprehensive top-down municipal amalgamation in four cases: Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, and Portugal. Key political and institutional factors identified in existing frameworks provide a useful starting point for understanding and explaining top-down comprehensive municipal amalgamation reforms, such as the role played by the breaking up of existing policy monopolies and emergence of new venues for discussing the reform. At the same time, the cases also reveal some important nuances that at times run counter to theoretical expectations. Our cases also reveal further factors, including the “bundling” of amalgamation reforms with other wider initiatives, and the potential effect of “distracting events” that should be taken into account in the further development of theoretical frameworks concerning top-down amalgamations.
... While this has ensured an in-depth understanding of the drivers of externalisation, these findings can alter when investigated in relation to other service areas and/or regions. For example, Bouckaert and Kuhlmann (2016) arrangements, we did not assess whether local governments were doubting between these options. It can be expected that decision-making on externalisation is subject to an assessment and consideration of different externalisation options, and, is affected by challenges in its implementation process (Albalate, Bel, & Reeves, 2021a). ...
... To what extent are these research results unique to Flanders or representative of other regions and countries as well? Essentially, depending on its historically shaped institutional contexts, local governments in different countries are assumed to encounter either promoting or blocking effects on specific types of reforms(Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016), such as the adoption of alternative SDMs. For example, while choosing alternative SDMs in some countries goes back decades, in others the recent financial crisis has spurred local governments to move away from in-house service delivery. ...
... For example, while choosing alternative SDMs in some countries goes back decades, in others the recent financial crisis has spurred local governments to move away from in-house service delivery. While some research has already highlighted that the country's history and political culture contribute to explaining a resistance against or preference for alternative SDMs at the local level(Rodrigues et al., 2012;Tavares & Camoes, 2007) and some research explores local governments' choices of SDMs from a cross-national perspective (see e.g.Bel, Dijkgraaf, Fageda, & Gradus, 2010;de Mello & Lago-Peñas, 2013;Hebdon & Jalette, 2008;, there are little comparative empirical endeavours present in the existing body of literature(Mafrolla, 2019).Consequently, while it is generally acknowledged that different central governmental policies have prompted far-reaching and diverging institutional changes in some countries(Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016), it remains that the literature on local governments' SDMs tends to present reform, such as privatisation, as a general trend in all countries, which is surely not the case as central governmental policy often shows divergent and heterogeneous patterns. An illustrative example in this regard was raised byHebdon and Jalette (2008, p. 157) in a study on how Canadian and American municipalities provide public services, and which factors affected these choices: Canadian managers may have been under more pressure to restructure. ...
While local governments have historically provided citizens with public services through in-house service delivery using their own employees and resources, in the past few decades, the array of alternative service delivery modes available to local governments has increased dramatically. Studies have found that today the default approach in many countries is the choice of local alternative service delivery modes, i.e. local governments rely on ‘external’ providers in service delivery rather than on in-house service delivery. This has spurred scholars to investigate why local governments choose alternative service delivery modes or externalise service delivery. Scholars generally point to the relevance of financial, economic efficiency and political-ideological drivers, i.e. focused on municipal-level and service-level drivers. This dissertation examines the drivers of these choices in a Flemish context and focuses on the elderly care sector and the household waste management sector. Doing so, we rely on a large number of data of various kinds such as government documents and semi-structured interviews with politicians, civil servants and not-for-profit partners. After a general introduction and problem statement, Chapter 1 sets the scene by means of a conceptual and theoretical outline with a discussion on the most prominent evolutions within the literature. We find that, despite the continuing interest of scholars in investigating the issue, literature still presents inconclusive and divergent research findings. In our opinion, two prominent issues remain a challenge in current research, related to both theoretical underpinnings of the predominant body of literature (i.e. current research is largely based on rational choice theory) as methodological in nature (i.e. many research efforts fail in capturing choices of service delivery modes in and over time and revealing their true underlying drivers). This dissertation aims at contributing to the body of knowledge by taking up the abovementioned theoretical and methodological gauntlet in the empirical parts (Chapters 3, 4 and 5). Based on a multiple-case study design, we find that financial and economic efficiency factors are important drivers of externalisation, while the impact of political ideology impacts the choice of PPP (Chapter 3). While entailing a satisfying explanation for the studied choices of service delivery modes in the elderly care sector in Chapter 3, we expand the framework both theoretically (by introducing the concept of coercive isomorphism) and methodologically (by employing a longitudinal multiple-case study design) in Chapter 4. Focusing on household waste collection, we show that these factors have to be studied in relation to (the evolution of) coercive pressures not only on the service delivery mode itself (direct), but also on the service characteristics (indirect). Bringing in the influence of central governmental policy, and moving beyond merely looking at municipal-level and service-level factors, on these choices, thus, proves to be essential in understanding the drivers of these choices. In chapter 5, focusing on household waste processing and household waste collection, we theoretically innovate by seeking inspiration in historical institutionalism to improve our understanding of local service delivery modes. We find that choices are highly influenced by path dependent processes and that they are structured and shaped by the confluence of a limited number of critical junctures generated by mostly exogenous factors while only in some cases combined with endogenous factors. Conclusively, this dissertation provides evidence that financial and economic efficiency drivers are, indeed, important factors in explaining choices of service delivery modes. While we did not find evidence of political-ideological drivers on choices of service delivery modes in the household waste management sector, they do appear to impact the choice for PPP in the service delivery of elderly care centres. This said, we showed that in order to fully understand why local governments choose certain service delivery modes, one should account for the impact of central governmental policy and pay attention to the temporal dimension. One overarching important finding in this dissertation is that research has potentially been overstressing endogenous determinants (at the expense of exogenous determinants) and overestimating the discretionary power of local governments in making these choices. Further, this dissertation indicates that findings from the international literature are not ipso facto generalisable to the context of Flanders, which is still characterised by a more European Napoleonic tradition, i.e. powerful, centralised bureaucracy and functionally rather weak local governments. Accordingly, future research could further undertake more comparative endeavours by, for example, deliberately choosing to research the topic in regions and countries with similar or dissimilar central-local relations or other traditions and starting positions in service areas. Key in this should be firstly assessing the actual autonomy of local governments in making these choices prior to turning to explain their choices.
... Finally, the cases in this study were in a single region. Recent implementation research has pointed out that different regions or countries seem to have different 'implementation styles' (Pülzl & Treib, 2017), depending on the content and scope of responsibilities and the extent of autonomy (Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016). Pierre (2011) observes that administrative traditions can be important for understanding reform processes. ...
... Pierre (2011) observes that administrative traditions can be important for understanding reform processes. In their typology of local government systems, Bouckaert and Kuhlmann (2016) place Flanders in the 'Continental European Napoleonic tradition' (powerful, centralized bureaucracy and functionally rather weak local governments), as opposed to, for example, the 'Nordic type' (highly decentralized and functionally strong local governments). It would be interesting to see if a similar research design, tested in a different region rooted in another administrative tradition, results in similar or different configurations. ...
... Fourth, the two reforms we studied also differed in terms of central government involvement. Although several scholars have found that central-local relations have an important impact on the implementation of reforms at the local level (Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016;Heinelt et al., 2018), our results nuance this assumption by finding that an equal configuration of conditions for both reforms leads to a high degree of implementation, suggesting that the influence of central government involvement is quite limited when different reforms are examined within the same institutional setting. Although further research is required, we hypothesize that central-local relationships can be decisive at the macro level, for example when comparing the implementation of reforms in different regions or countries, but have a limited influence on different administrative reforms within a single institutional setting. ...
By identifying a configuration of factors that impact the degree of reform implementation, this article offers a more accurate view of a local government’s implementation capacity than earlier studies. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis in 11 local governments was used to test how organizational factors jointly produced the right context for reform implementation. The results indicate that reform implementation capacity is largely dependent on the following organizational factors: municipal scale, politico–administrative relations and the presence of sufficient properly qualified employees.
... Equally there are also examples of countries that have reduced the size of their local authorities through secessions, and others again where the size of subnational units has not changed at all over an extended period of time. An alternative or complement to territorial reform has been the growing use of cooperative arrangements between subnational authorities to pool resources, variously referred to as inter-municipal cooperation, trans-scaling, or shared services (Hulst and van Montfort 2007;Baldersheim and Rose 2010;Bouckaert and Kuhlmann 2016). ...
... As with public service reform initiatives at the national level, different countries have approached these kinds of reforms in different ways, with varied experiences between states and varied experiences between subnational authorities within states, with reform effects often mediated by domestic traditions and legacies. Many subnational authorities have therefore taken an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary approach (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann 2016;Ammons et al. 2012). It is also possible to discern a shift towards some initiatives that can be characterized as post-NPM reforms (Christensen and Laegreid 2008;Osborne 2006). ...
... It is also possible to discern a shift towards some initiatives that can be characterized as post-NPM reforms (Christensen and Laegreid 2008;Osborne 2006). Rather than seeking to sweep away NPM entirely, post-NPM is usually seen as a means to address some of the shortcomings of earlier NPM reforms -examples include bringing selected services that were contracted out back into direct 'in-house' provision by subnational authorities, and greater efforts at coordination and joined-up government to address fragmentation (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann 2016;Schwab et al. 2017;Steen et al. 2017). ...
... Nowadays, governing locally is very demanding. And the various requirements to be (more) responsive, effective, efficient as well as having to meet many other standards at the same time have pushed a lot of local governments to drastically and autonomously reform their political and administrative ways of working (Kuhlmann and Bouckaert 2016;Wayenberg and Kuhlmann 2018). From north to south, east to west, European cities and municipalities are remoulding their organisational structures, procedures and ways of service provision. ...
... In Finland, the last decade has been an era of continuous local government reforms that have aimed at bigger scales, stronger structures and increasing efficiency. These objectives for more efficient public administration have been shared in many European countries (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann 2016). To answer the challenges of an aging population and growing costs, different solutions have been sought and discussed. ...
... Problems with the NPM more broadly, such as organisational fragmentation, loss of bureaucratic control and a deficit of democratic and constitutional values, have given way to a diverse set of newer and more or less institutionalised reform ideas and models in a post-NPM era (Reiter and Klenk 2019). These ideas and models have been summarised and discussed under major descriptors such as the Neo-Weberian State (NWS) and the New Public Governance (NPG) (Byrkjeflot et al. 2018;Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017 have been sustained calls for more innovation and intensification of local public sector reforms (Kuhlmann and Bouckaert 2016). One outcome from these developments is that conventional marketisation models inherited from the NPM have been complemented by an increasingly heterogeneous mix of arrangements for organising relations with the private sector in public service delivery (Donahue and Zeckhauser 2011). ...
This book presents new research results on the challenges of local politics in different European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and Switzerland, together with theoretical considerations on the further development and strengthening of local self-government. It focuses on analyses of the most recent developments in local democracy and administration.
“Most ‘local government’ books are written by believers. This book is different for its realistic visions of futures of local government. It shows how autonomy, digitalization, marketization, and amalgamation could be functional or dysfunctional, and also how this is affected by links to politics, and impacted by intergovernmental relations. This is a must read for all believers in local government.”
—Geert Bouckaert, KU Leuven Public Governance Institute, Belguim
“The twenty chapters of this book provide a timely and thought-provoking addition to our understanding of local self-governance in eight countries in Northern and Central Europe. This book was completed shortly before the Corona-crisis crashed in. But the lessons to be learned from this volume will doubtlessly prove important in fully exploiting local government’s potential in facing the challenges of the difficult times ahead.”
—Bas Denters, Professor of Public Administration, University of Twente, Netherlands
“Very inspiring book that covers the most important aspects of local self-government within a comparative framework. As we might have expected, there is no general trend, no single best model but a variety of functionally equivalent settings and patterns. The book gives insight into the diversity and richness of local government, its very essence, actual challenges and transformations, and puts subnational policy making in a multi-level perspective of governance.”
—Andreas Ladner, Professor for Political Institutions and Public Administration at the IDHEAP, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
“Covering eight countries, this ambitious volume compares developments in local governments across Europe. Local governments are on the front-line when it comes to responding to wicked issues like climate change and migration, yet face major challenges in terms of financial and human resources. Using rich empirical evidence, the volume presents a nuanced analysis of trends. No one direction emerges for Europe’s local governments, but a rich seam of innovation is revealed covering political participation and public administration alike. Local governments have the potential to engage citizens in meaningful ways and deliver effective and responsive services, but this requires clear local leadership and support rather direction from the centre.”
—Vivien Lowndes, Professor of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, UK
Tomas Bergström is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden.
Jochen Franzke is Professor of Administrative Science at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
Sabine Kuhlmann is Professor of Political Sciences, Administration and Organization at the University of Potsdam in Germany. She also is the Vice-Chair of the German National Regulatory Control Council at the German Federal Chancellery and she serves as the Vice-President for Western Europe of the IIAS and the Vice-President of EGPA.
Ellen Wayenberg is Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium.
... We examine NGO and political leadership because of the emphasis on localgovernment development in the past few decades (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016). Networks of business and civil-society representatives have become part of decision making, service delivery and financing (Schwab et al, 2017;Sotarauta and Beer, 2017). ...
... Moreover, leadership at the national level differs from leadership at the local level. In the past few decades, new management practices have transformed leadership in local governments (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016;Guérin and Kerrouche, 2008;Steyvers et al, 2012). The increasing authority of local governments -including as part of the EU accession process in CEECs (as will be discussed later) -has made local leadership more important and required the development of new alliance networks (Schwab et al, 2017). ...
... CEECs have undertaken significant decentralisation (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016;Schwab et al, 2017). The dependence of citizens on government for the provision of services has increased the importance of local politics (Wollmann, 2016). ...
This article explores the relationship between the adoption of core party political values and an
individual’s electoral prospects. Our survey of 355 local candidates in Prague, Budapest and Bratislava
shows that many aspiring politicians, including non-profit leaders, make a strategic calculation to
adopt core party values in order to improve their prospects of success in running for election in
local government. Their willingness to enter a political party may increase the likelihood of their
being selected as a candidate. However, it did not improve their chances of being elected. The
results suggest that voter behaviour is influenced by other factors and in particular the national
standing of political parties. The finding that local political issues are secondary to national politics
in city elections casts doubt on the scope for effective local collective action and has implications
for our understanding of local leadership and for policies that seek to promote devolution.
... We examine NGO and political leadership because of the emphasis on localgovernment development in the past few decades (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016). Networks of business and civil-society representatives have become part of decision making, service delivery and financing (Schwab et al, 2017;Sotarauta and Beer, 2017). ...
... Moreover, leadership at the national level differs from leadership at the local level. In the past few decades, new management practices have transformed leadership in local governments (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016;Guérin and Kerrouche, 2008;Steyvers et al, 2012). The increasing authority of local governments -including as part of the EU accession process in CEECs (as will be discussed later) -has made local leadership more important and required the development of new alliance networks (Schwab et al, 2017). ...
... CEECs have undertaken significant decentralisation (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016;Schwab et al, 2017). The dependence of citizens on government for the provision of services has increased the importance of local politics (Wollmann, 2016). ...
... Our research question link two aspects, namely the relationship mayors maintain with the professionals of the local public sector and the formers' perception of their role, with mayors' attitudes towards different local government reform processes. These reforms include changes in the relations between the government and its broader environment (ranging from democratic renewal to processes of functional re-scaling, including greater citizen involvement and democratic participation) and changes in the internal organization of the local government (ranging from the reform of human resource management to restructuring processes) (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016). We explore the link between mayors' role within the public administration and their position on the content and scope of government reforms. ...
... Several comparative studies of local administrative reform highlight a number of key areas where these transformations tend to converge (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016;Korac et al., 2016). Among the most important ones are: 1) Internal transformations of municipal organization and management. ...
... As for their actual content, these transformations had to do with the introduction of new working methods and new management techniques that result in the reorganization of structures, processes and the management of both human resources and the budget. In short, they constitute either "managerial reforms" (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016) or "organizational innovations" (Korac et al., 2016). 2) Models of service delivery and the implementation of public policies; that is, service innovations and external reorganizations, including networking with external agents. ...
Local public authorities have traditionally been an area for experimenting with reforms of varying impact for the overall institutional framework. In implementing these reforms, a prominent part has been taken by mayors in their role as the highest-ranking officials in their organisations. This article reports evidence for, and reflects on, the connection between the figure of the Spanish mayor (in the way mayors perceive their own role) and their relations with both the municipal governments they head and the processes of transformation to which these governments are exposed. Based on data obtained from the project entitled "Political Leaders in European Cities", concerned with identifying mayors' attitudes towards several aspects of local government, this article develops its argument in two stages. In the first stage, we describe the profiles of Spanish mayors, with a prime focus on how they perceive their functions and the importance they attach to their role as managers of the local authority. In the second stage, we analyze the connection between these perceptions and the relations the mayors establish with the local authority (that is, the relations between politicians and public executives and governmental employees). Finally, based on the classifications made, the positions taken up by mayors in relation to various processes of government reform are determined. The conclusions allow for various scenarios of administrative reform to be established based on the degree of involvement of the respective mayors, and they also point to further lines of research.
... Several comparative studies on local administrative reforms have highlighted many key areas where changes tend to converge -internal organizations, relations with external stakeholders, and distribution of competencies (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016). Among the most important of these are internal changes in the local government and the governance of local governments. ...
... In any case, they did not lead to radical transformations (Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2014). New ways of working and new management practices have been introduced, resulting in a reorganization of structures, processes, human resources, and budget management (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016). The NPM model reflects the private sector's ideas -how to improve the efficiency and quality of organizations in delivering public services. ...
Purpose: The article aims to present evidence of the role of the mayors in the territorial amalgamation process, focusing on their relationship with voters and other stakeholders and on the transformation processes experienced by local governments. Given their status as the highest-ranking officials enjoying voters’ and deputies’ support, mayors play an essential role in either implementing or, on the contrary, impeding local government reforms. As they have the power, knowledge, and expertise to influence the implementation of local government reforms, it becomes essential to evaluate their role.Design: The article examines the role of mayors in local government reforms, particularly in the context of the recent territorial amalgamation reforms in Latvia. Through a literature review and analysis of results from the recent amalgamation, the article explores the complex relationships that mayors have with other stakeholders and the transformation processes within their respective local governments.Findings: The study highlights the importance of mayors in providing effective leadership during reform initiatives and the potential implications for their reputation and electoral outcomes. The results show that mayors primarily use media, public consultations, public letters, and even the possibility of resignation to influence the territorial amalgamation process.Academic contribution to the field: While there has been research on territorial amalgamation, the role of the mayor is often overlooked, especially in a top-down initiated process where, despite its features, the mayor still possesses the tools to shape the course of the territorial amalgamation process. The article presents the reform experience in Latvia as a small state.Value: This research provides valuable insights into the role of mayors in the territorial amalgamation process in Latvia and its implications for local government reform. The findings contribute to the existing literature by comprehensively analysing the mayor’s influence on the reform agenda and implementation strategies.
... For the purposes at hand, Hansen and Kjaer's (2017) study of Denmark is particularly interesting. Denmark is often compared with Sweden in its way of organising local government (Bouckaert & Kuhlman, 2016), and in Hansen and Kjaer's analysis (2017, p. 8), the general hypothesis was confirmed: 'no matter whether we analyse trust in legislature, leadership or politicians, a clear pattern can be observed, namely that a citizen's trust in the local government level is higher than the same citizen's trust in the regional and national level of government'. ...
... 4 To test the validity of the research agenda I have tentatively sketched here, a next and interesting step could be to carry out an in-depth country-comparative study with a 'most similar' design. An interesting way to go about would be an historical approach that uniquely focuses on countries that belong toor closely resemblethe 'Nordic' way of organising local government: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Sweden (Bouckaert & Kuhlman, 2016;John, 2001). In addition to the arguments I have put forward here, this research design could give deeper insights into whether Sweden's comparatively far-reaching new public management agenda in local government plays a role in affecting local government trust. ...
As a rule, citizens appreciate local more than central government. This paper proposes a new research agenda for multilevel trust studies by arguing that it is premature to believe that citizen’s proximity to officials by definition trumps distance. As in country-comparative studies, close attention needs to be paid to institutional quality in analyses of multilevel trust. To put this argument to work, a closer investigation of Sweden is conducted. Tracking three indicators of trust, with time-series stretching over two decades, Sweden turns out to be a curious outlier from the international pattern: Swedes trust their local government less than the state. To make this observation intelligible – while simultaneously aiming to contribute to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of multilevel trust – the mix of three features is identified for bringing this circumstance about: (1) the principal role Swedish municipalities have successively been given in implementing core welfare state assignments; (2) that several of the municipalities’ assignments are susceptible to corruption; and (3) that the increase in municipal responsibilities has neither been accompanied with institutions that guarantee accountability of politicians nor the impartiality of local bureaucracies.
... As mentioned above, a third wave of amalgamations has swept across the developed world during the past two decades (cf. Bouckaert and Kuhlman 2016;Swianiewicz, Gendźwiłł, and Zardi 2017). Denmark implemented a major reform in 2007, cutting its local government structure down to 98 municipalities. ...
... When the first wave took place, larger municipalities were associated with economic growth, welfare state expansion, and technocratic optimism. Today however, amalgamations tend to be fueled by financial difficulties and austerity, and the hope is that larger municipalities may ultimately facilitate economies of scale to save small and shrinking municipalities (Bouckaert and Kuhlman 2016). ...
Arguments invoking increased functional efficiency have had a profound impact on local government reforms in advanced democracies during the past 60 years. Consequently, most mature democracies have implemented municipal amalgamation reforms, often through top-down coercion. In this article, we demonstrate how far central governments have been willing to go, in terms of coercion, by providing an in-depth historical account of Swedish municipal amalgamations between 1952 and 1974. Debates on amalgamation reforms have typically revolved around pros and cons of mergers. But very few discussions have addressed the more fundamental moral problem of enforcing amalgamations through coercion. Often, large-scale mergers are carried through against the expressed will of municipalities who wish to remain self-governing. In this article, we present a normative defense of strong local self-government, based partly on values of individual autonomy, and partly on group-based human rights, and we show how coerced amalgamations are at odds with these values.
... Centrai turėtų užpildyti patirties ir specifinių žinių spragas. 26 Vietos, regionų ir valstybės plėtros darnai ir nuoseklumui užtikrinti knygoje numatoma įgyvendinti pilotinius vietinio viešojo transporto "regionalizavimo" projektus ir, atsižvelgus į šių projektų bei užsienio valstybių (Vokietijos, Švedijos) patirtį, apibrėžti bendrąsias regioninių paslaugų sistemų gaires. 27 Tarp bendrų regioninių paslaugų sistemų gairių ypač išskiriamas bendradarbiavimo organizavimas vykdant bendros paslaugos teikimą keliose savivaldybėse, savivaldybių atsakomybės ir funkcijų nustatymas, paslaugos plėtros ir pokyčių klausimai, paslaugos kokybės užtikrinimas. ...
... Valstybiniame strateginio atliekų tvarkymo plane konkretizuojamos savivaldybių teisės, susijusios su komunalinių atliekų tvarkymo sistemos eksploatavimu ir plėtojimu. Komunalinių atliekų tvarkymo sistemos eksploatavimą savivaldybės gali kaip privalomą užduotį pavesti savivaldybės įsteigtai 26 Ten pat. 27 Ten pat. ...
The main idea of the monograph aims to examine the different forms of institutional inter-municipal cooperation (hereafter, IMC) in Lithuania. The focus here is to reveal the potential of inter-municipal cooperation forms used for the consolidation of the public services provision to residents in different municipalities. We also evaluate the role of public interest in public services provision
networks, which enables the intersections between various local government, business, and community interests. The book also examines the institutional inter-municipal cooperation practices regarding the advantages and challenges of
different municipal services implementation in Lithuanian municipalities. The theoretical assumption of this monograph is based on the idea that inter-municipal cooperation is defined by networks of central and local government, business, and community interests. The intersections create governance structures
based on mutual resources, formal and informal interactions, negotiation, deliberations, and debates. The practical implications of our research are also linked with the tendencies of the shrinking population in the municipalities, enabling
discussion on the consolidation of internal and external municipal resources in providing public services to residents.
The insights provided in the books are based on theoretical and empirical results from the research project “Intermunicipal Cooperation and Implementation of Public Services: Options for Network Governance and the Public Interest Dilemma in Lithuania” (No.S-MIP-17-3 financed by Lithuania Council of Science). The interdisciplinary team of sociologists and public administration experts carried out the project between 2017 and 2019. The content of the book follows the idea of the research that was to evaluate the potential of inter-institutional cooperation and network governance in Lithuanian municipalities, emphasizing the organization of public service provision and the challenge of public interest and civic participation. The methodological approach of the project is based on the western academic experience to examine the internal and
external preconditions, causes, and consequences of institutional cooperation at the municipal level. Coordination mechanisms between different interest groups at the municipal level are also evaluated in connection with the broader political discourse on territorial self-government reforms and consolidation of municipal functions. The inspiration for the book came from the international
research project LocRef “Local Public Sector Reforms” (COST Action IS1207) carried out between 2014 and 2017. The network became a productive platform for the implementation of few international comparative studies, including an inter-municipal cooperation survey in Finland, Portugal, Germany, Iceland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain. A special dedication is provided to our project partner,
the researchers' group of the Department of Local Politics and Development at
the University of Warsaw, Poland. Their comparative projects on inter-municipal cooperation and its forms, scales, motives, mechanisms, results in Europe
became an essential framework for similar research in Lithuania.
The main theoretical arguments to analyze inter-municipal cooperation are
related to the ideas from the political economy, network theory, public choice, and
collective action approach. The theories differently recognize the reasons, incentives, institutional arrangements, and results of various inter-municipal modes.
For example, the political economy and public choice approaches highlight the
importance of efficiency and economies of scale, emphasizing the benefits of
public service consolidation for the central and local authorities. The criterion
of cost-effectiveness becomes one of the most crucial motives for municipalities
to adopt joint service delivery models or to develop new inter-institutional forms
(Gerber and Gibson, 2005). Other related theories (for example, network theory)
focus on the interactions between resources and decision-making. It is argued that
informal interactions, mutual trust, or shared interest enables the mechanism of
collaboration and helps to overcome the limitations of transaction costs. The territorial identity of municipalities is significant, allowing them to identify and draw
the boundaries of cooperative networks (Feiock et al., 2004).
Furthermore, the public choice approach reveals a broader institutional
logic in debating which territorial self-governance model, consolidation, or
fragmentation is more effective and helps overcome the complexity of the local
governance system (Bouckaert et al., 2002). Thereby, the theory of collective
action analyzes the inter-municipal cooperation considering the arguments on
reducing transaction costs and the asymmetric distribution of power (including
the costs of information, negotiation, control or activation) (see Feiock, 2007).
Numerous studies of inter-municipal cooperation in many European countries
demonstrate that there is no single dominant approach that can explain the
causes of this phenomenon. It is necessary to consider the specificities of theSUMMARY 233
countries' self-government system and territorial administration arrangements
as well as many other political factors.
The issues of inter-municipal cooperation receive relatively modest attention in Lithuania, considering the input from practitioners, politicians, and researchers. The research on inter-governmental and inter-municipal cooperation
forms and practices is less developed compared to the other European countries
characterized by the fragmented territorial administrative system. In general,
European researchers have focused on the different aspects of inter-municipal
cooperation, for example, the impact of territorial reforms on municipal cooperation forms and public service delivery models, the factors of the political or legal
context, organizational culture specificities. Contrary, in Lithuania most substantial part of self-governance research, has been carried out in the areas discussing
legal and institutional structure or functions of self-government (for example,
Astrauskas 2002, 2013; Žilinskas 2009, 2004; Mačiulytė 2006, 2007); self-government relations with central government or civic organizations (Guogis 2007;
Raišienė 2003); involvement of citizens in self-government and local communities
issues (Kulakauskas, Nefas 2009; Bučaitė-Vilkė, Žilys, 2016; Bučaitė-Vilkė, 2019);
structure of public municipal budgets and municipal institutions’ efficiency
(Davulis 2006, 2009, Bivainis 2003, Civinskas, Tolvaišis 2006). While investigating inter-municipal cooperation, more attention is paid to individual sectoral
problems, for example, discussing different options for the privatization of public
services. Similar discussions concern the international cooperation between municipalities, especially in the development of cross-border projects. A study comparing the situation in Slovakia and Lithuania regarding the impact of municipal
size on cooperation processes (Klimovský et al., 2014) or the cooperation capacities of Lithuanian municipalities (Bučaitė-Vilke, Civinskas, Lazauskienė, 2018)
could be mentioned. More attention is paid to the analysis of municipal services
and the improvement of the public service delivery system from the perspective
of public administration (Urvikis, 2016; Civinskas & Dvorak, 2010; Burkšienė
et al., 2017 and many others). Thus, this monograph is one of the first attempts
to introduce the research on inter-municipal cooperation and contribute to the
research traditions intensively developed in other Western countries.
We use the empirical results of quantitative and qualitative research on inter-municipal cooperation in Lithuania. The quantitative survey was carried out
in 2018 January - May using the electronic platform. A data sample includes
the list of local political, administrative, municipal companies, and community actors involved in the inter-municipal cooperation field. The survey assesses the
reasons, motives, and forms of inter-municipal cooperation in providing public
services and identifies the main threats of coordination between different interests. We also carried out the qualitative semi-structured interviews in three
case studies of consolidated public service delivery in different Lithuanian municipalities. The data used in the book were collected between December 2018
and March 2019. We covered three regions of Klaipėda, Alytus, and Kaunas that
provide distinct cases of public services delivery using inter-municipal cooperation arrangements. The case study of the Alytus region waste management center
includes the municipalities of Druskininkai, Alytus city, Alytus, Varėna, Lazdijai,
Birštonas, and Prienai districts. Kaunas' cultural tourism services case connects
Kaunas city and Kaunas district municipalities. The third case study of consolidated public transport services in the Klaipėda region involves the municipalities
of Klaipėda city, Palanga, Klaipėda district, and Kretinga district. We have interviewed the field experts, representatives of municipal companies, local authorities, and community activists related to the public service delivery models.
The first chapter of the book “Municipal Cooperation: A Theoretical Concept
or Effective Practice” takes a close look at the theoretical discussion on the causes,
initiatives, motives, and outcomes of the inter-municipal cooperation phenomenon. It also focuses on the analysis of different forms of institutional cooperation,
highlighting those institutional arrangements that are relevant to the public services delivery. The chapter focuses on the institutionalized models of municipal
collaboration and explores the reasons for choosing the strategies of collaborative
practices. The theoretical overview demonstrates that we must consider different
factors that encourage municipalities to establish inter-organizational networks.
Looking at the experience of European countries, there are different characteristics of institutionalized forms of cooperation between municipalities that depend
on self-governance systems and political or legal context. European countries with
a relatively dense municipal administrative-territorial network demonstrate different forms and traditions of inter-municipal cooperation arrangements
On the other hand, countries with a high degree of territorial consolidation
treat intermunicipal cooperation as an innovation of organizational governance.
One of the examples of diverse intermunicipal cooperation arrangements is Poland. The subchapter by the researchers of the University of Warsaw explores
the practice in organizing interinstitutional forms of municipal cooperation in
Poland. The example of Poland characterized by a dense administrative network
of municipalities (2,480 municipalities in total) recognizes the importance of
long-standing cooperative traditions. The collaborative municipal practices lead
to different models of public service delivery and allow achieving different parameters of efficiency and service quality.
The second chapter, "Experience of Lithuanian Intermunicipal Cooperation
and European Context," consists of two parts presenting the Lithuanian context
in different ways. The first subchapter presents the legal situation in Lithuania
regarding the regulation of public services and other municipal functions. The
regulatory framework of the cooperation of Lithuanian municipalities in the provision of public services is examined in terms of defining the overall process of
municipal public services delivery between municipalities. The understanding of
the context of the municipal functions and services regulation allows discussion
of the degree of autonomy of Lithuanian municipalities. The review of the public
services delivery data in municipalities highlights the importance of state-regulated mechanisms. The expert interviews reveal the significance of the sectoral
services problems, for example, consolidation or cost optimization challenges.
The third chapter of the monograph, entitled "Empirical Study of Intermunicipal Cooperation: Power Relations, Initiatives, and Practices," analyzes the
empirical results of quantitative and qualitative research on inter-municipal cooperation in Lithuania providing public services. This chapter seeks to deconstruct the process of inter-municipal cooperation, looking from the point of the
coalitions of actors involved in the process and trying to understand the causes
and incentives of collaborations. The chapter aims to take a broad look at the
context of Lithuanian municipalities, where formal and informal cooperative
network initiatives are emerging. The first subchapter presents the methodological discussion of municipal research, presenting the methodological guidelines
of empirical research, the sampling procedure, and case selection criteria. The
second subchapter, "Causes, Motives, and Initiatives of Intermunicipal Cooperation," analyzes the reasons and incentives for cooperation between Lithuanian
municipalities. The cooperative initiatives could be classified into internal and
external factors, some of which emphasize the institutional context; others are
more related to the territorial policy or intra-organizational aspects of the municipality. The third section, “Results and Impact of Intermunicipal Cooperation," demonstrates the differences in the perception of cooperative initiatives
benefits and expected results. The fourth section, "Options for Intermunicipal
Cooperation Development: Public Interest and Citizen Participation in Public
Service Delivery," focuses on the discussion of the public interest and the citizen
involvement in the process of public services provision. The main question is
how local, regional, and central actors involved in inter-municipal cooperation
activities perceive the benefits of cooperation. The empirical data demonstrate
that the greater involvement of the local community and representation of the
public interest is needed to ensure a more efficient service delivery process.
Finally, the book provides a summary and recommendations highlighting the
need to re-assess the process of inter-municipal cooperation in Lithuania, also
considering the experience of other European countries.
As it was already noticed, the monograph aims to examine the forms,
causes, motives, and outcomes of inter-municipal cooperation in Lithuania.
We also explored the potential of municipalities to consolidate the provision
of public services to inhabitants considering different cooperative mechanisms
and strategies and inclusiveness of local communities. Summarizing the results,
few theoretical and empirical findings are relevant for the Lithuanian context.
Horizontal and vertical forms of intermunicipal cooperation (IMC) in
delivering public services. Our research results indicate that we should consider
the horizontal (“bottom-up”) and vertical forms (“top-down”) of inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) delivering public services. The empirical studies demonstrate that the IMC allows municipalities to increase the economy of scale and
cost-saving principles, especially concerning public services requiring long-term
infrastructure investments. The empirical studies point out that the cost-saving
strategy depends on the services cost structure, the regulations by the local government and decision-making powers (Allers, Ommerenui, 2016). Here, the collective action approach considering the voluntary basis of municipal cooperation
is relevant. The question of whether voluntary inter-municipal arrangements
pursue political goals and ambitions, how they exchange competencies, knowledge, and information is also essential. In European countries, various models of
municipal service privatization are implemented to solve the problem of public
service costs. Countries with different political or administrative traditions imply
different regulations for service delivery models. At the same time, the municipalities' efforts to preserve local autonomy, improve the quality of life of residents,
and meet their expectations is noticeable. The results of our research indicate that
the maintenance of informal contacts and mutual trust and greater involvement
of the citizens (“bottom-up” approach) is considered as one of the most effective
drivers for cooperation compared to the vertical ones.SUMMARY 237
Contrary, the "top-down" approach implies the vertical logic of inter-municipal cooperation arrangements. Here, the New Public Management (NPM)
paradigm become more prevalent in the last decade, referring to the neoliberal model of public service delivery in terms of cost optimization and resource
consolidation. The results of our study in Lithuanian municipalities demonstrate that centralized planning and regulations impact higher parameters of
public service quality; however, voluntary cooperation initiatives are based
on the greater involvement of partners and long-term mutual trust. In future
studies, we should pay more attention to the analysis of institutionalized forms
of inter-municipal cooperation, concerning different models of public services
delivery and privatization options, for example, subcontracting, public-private
partnerships, outsourcing, various concessions, etc.
The initiatives for inter-municipal cooperation. Another aspect concerns
the potential of municipalities to consolidate efforts for more efficient public
service delivery. We asked whether joint efforts by municipalities produce positive results? Are different parameters of public service delivery such as accessibility, quality, customers satisfaction and other indicators increasing? How to
reconcile public services efficiency and democratic participation? As the results
of our research show, the inter-municipal cooperation efforts enable a better
quality of public service
Furthermore, capacity and competences on the strategic decisions, reaching
joint agreements, and evaluating various alternatives are also increasing. The
ability of intermunicipal coalitions and alliances to agree on joint projects also
determines the local political agenda. Municipalities learn to overcome the conflicts or guarantee the support of various stakeholders for collaborative arrangements. Partnerships based on horizontal interactions tend to have much more
in-house resources and mobilization capabilities than partnerships based on
vertical interactions (Teles, 2016: 76-77). However, efficiency is also necessary
for the vertical interaction, which ensures the compatibility of the municipal
interests and central government or other controlling authorities. Conflicts arise
when the competences or functions of these institutions overlap, the boundaries
of responsibility remain unclear and there is a wide range of interests involved
in cooperation (Marks and Hooghe, 2004).
Motives and outcomes of intermunicipal cooperation. Summarizing the
results of the monograph, the discussion on the forms of inter-municipal cooperation, motivations, and outcomes, the institutional context and decision-making
structures is essential. Referring to the results of the Lithuanian municipalities’
survey, one of the main motives for cooperation between municipalities is related to the economy of scale and cost rationalization, for example, improving
the quality of services, reducing prices, and the costs of services. However, centrally imposed government regulations and legislation are much less appreciated
as an important motive for cooperation. On the one hand, the decision-making
power on forms and strategies of inter-municipal cooperation is held by the
local authorities and their administrations. Most often, the cooperation is institutionalized and has long-term goals, operating as joint municipal enterprises,
in which a part of the shareholders are business entities.
On the other hand, external institutional factors should also be considered.
For example, there is no specific regulation in Lithuania for the institutionalization of cooperation between municipalities. The existing legislation allows
municipalities to set up various joint ventures based on both horizontal and vertical cooperation forms (e.g., regional waste management centers). On the other
hand, the results of the qualitative study demonstrate that the inter-cooperation
based on informal, bottom-up interactions and incentives can be very effective
in corresponding to the needs of the inhabitants, for example, the organization
of public transportation services in Klaipeda region.
Local autonomy and municipal size. The debates on the local autonomy,
municipal size, territorial consolidation, and territorial fragmentation policy are
particularly relevant in this context. We used public choice theory arguments
that reveal a broader discussion of the advantages or disadvantages of territorial
reforms, as well as the challenges of overlapping organizational approaches to
public and private service delivery. The results of the empirical study show that
the externalities of inter-municipal cooperation are rather unfavorable in Lithuania. The consolidated structure of the self-government system has a limited
impact on inter-municipal cooperation. Most Lithuanian regions experience a
strong depopulation phenomenon (e.g., due to the inner-outer migration, urbanization, and economic factors). However, the shrinking population did not
foster significant inter-municipal cooperation initiatives. Contrary, the central
authority has strengthened the administrative control and financial monitoring
of municipalities between 2012 and 2014.
Network governance characteristics. We consider network governance
characteristics important for Lithuanian inter-municipal cooperation cases
in delivering public services. European studies suggest that there are threeSUMMARY 239
conditions for successful collaboration: an organizational culture of interconnectedness, external factors, and strong leadership. The first factor related to
organizational culture reflects the importance of social capital and trust in facilitating communication between collaboration partners (Heinelt, Kubler,
2005). Referring to the main theoretical assumptions on the network governance (Torfing, 2005), our empirical results indicate that the local governance
is perceived as a multicenter structure contrary to a homogeneous system of
government regulations based on centralization and authority, and a multifunctional system of competitive market regulations. Hereby, the network actors are
interconnected, sharing the same perception of public interest.
On the other hand, we can find the specificity in the decision-making mechanism where co-decisions are made through reflexive interactions. The negotiation process aims to find a compromise between the different stakeholders in
the networks. The process creates mutual commitment and trust, supported by
norms and rules that are more effective compared to hierarchical central authority subordination mechanisms.
Democratic participation in inter-municipal cooperation. Finally, we
consider the aspect of democratic participation that is important in inter-municipal cooperative arrangements. Does inter-municipal cooperation have enough
potential to involve the citizens? Can we find democratic governance characteristics such as active engagement, accountability, or transparency? Chapter 4.4.
analyzes the issue of democratic participation and examines the role of local
communities. The strategies and joint action by local people demonstrate their
engagement in the local public service delivery agenda. The data collected
during our research show that a high level of mutual trust, effective communication, and mutual understanding of public interests allows achieving economies of scale and quality of service provided. The interconnectedness of joint
community actions also links to the realization of the public interest.
On the other hand, the involvement of the local community in municipal
cooperation is poorly defined. The problem of the so-called 'democratic deficit'
should be highlighted. We can conclude that the municipal authorities have
little concern about the lack of direct democratic participation in inter-municipal cooperation arrangements. Citizens and their organizations are highly dependent on their representatives to have enough power to influence the process
of municipal cooperation activities (Klok et al., 2018: 170)
... Basically, the reforms can focus on the input or output side of the policy (cf. Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016;Inglehart, 1977), but the implementation process signifies the transformative mechanism through which the reforms come into being. The transformation of the semi-presidential system to 'European' prime minister-centred parliamentarianism has increased the accountability of government to parliament and strengthened representative democracy. ...
This chapter summarises and concludes with the main changes to and challenges faced by Finnish public administration in the context of Nordic welfare state reforms. The chapter builds on a simple analytical approach by analysing the politico-administrative system from the perspectives of input, throughput and output. The chapter provides a concise description of the main aspects of government, the economy and civil society. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the changes to and future prospects of the citizenry and democratic processes related to public administration, the trends and reforms of public administration and management, and public service delivery.KeywordsPublic AdministrationFinlandNordicReforms
... Hoewel beide hervormingen van elkaar verschilden op vlak van de betrokkenheid van de centrale overheid -de implementatie van een organisatiebeheersingssysteem was reeds decretaal verplicht op het ogenblik van de dataverzameling, terwijl we onderzochten in welke mate de gemeenten en het OCMW waren geïntegreerd voordat dit wettelijk werd verplichtwerden deze beiden door de centrale overheid geïnitieerd. Verschillende auteurs wezen erop dat centraal-lokale relaties een belangrijke impact hebben op de implementatie van hervormingen op lokaal niveau(Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016;Heinelt et al., 2018), maar onze resultaten nuanceerden deze veronderstelling: een aantal gemeenten, met een aantal gemeenschappelijke organisatiekenmerken, slaagden er consequent beter in om beide hervormingen te implementeren. Dat betekent evenwel dat een aantal lokale besturen er niet of slechts in beperkte mate in slaagden om deze hervormingen te implementeren.In de tweede deelstudie werden een aantal opdrachten rond kinderopvang onderzocht. ...
... Nowadays, governing locally is very demanding. And the various requirements to be (more) responsive, effective, efficient as well as having to meet many other standards at the same time have pushed a lot of local governments to drastically and autonomously reform their political and administrative ways of working (Kuhlmann and Bouckaert 2016;Wayenberg and Kuhlmann 2018). From north to south, east to west, European cities and municipalities are remoulding their organisational structures, procedures and ways of service provision. ...
... Local governments all over Europe have been massively affected by various waves of crises, such as the global financial crisis, austerity policies, the refugee crisis and, most recently, Covid-19 (Franzke & Kuhlmann, 2021;Kuhlmann et al., 2021aKuhlmann et al., , 2021b. Reforms used to deal with these crises have taken a variety of trajectories-from New Public Management (NPM), to re-organization of service delivery between the local public, private and non-profit sectors, functional re-scaling, territorial consolidation, and inter-local co-operation (Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016;Kuhlmann et al., 2021c). Local governments are now shifting to 'post-NPM' reforms (Halligan, 2010;, such as digital transformation (Dunleavy et al., 2006). ...
IMPACT
The digital transformation of public administration is expected to fundamentally reshape the institutional setting of local service delivery, administration, and governance in Europe. Against this background, it is a cause for concern and criticism that the actual state of implementation, the impacts, and the hurdles faced at the local level of government have only scarcely been studied in public administration. The results of this study reveal several unintended and negative impacts of digital government reforms on public employees and citizens. This article provides policy-makers and managers with guiding principles for the implementation of digital change in organizations.
... The chapters in this book clarify what further adjustments to the idea of local autonomy can be expected. Many challenges at the local level are similar in the European countries (see Bouckaert and Kuhlmann 2016), although local structures within the EU remain heterogeneous (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019). It is difficult to describe general trends associated with 'local authorities'. ...
Where is local self-government heading in the future? Among trends identified is firstly an intensification of multilevel, intermunicipal, and cross-border governance. In the future even more of cooperation and coordination among different political and administrative levels will be required. Territorial boundaries have become increasingly incongruent with functional public activities. Secondly, the innovative potential of introducing markets as templates for organisational reform has reached its end. Future reforms will most likely try to adapt market reforms to local public contexts, or even reverse the development. Finally, a tightening of state steering and an increased dependence on state funding to uphold local services is expected. Waves of amalgamations might slow down this process but they will not make financial problems disappear completely.
... The first is the basic characteristics of the administrative and governmental system. Prominent for our topic is the distinction between public and private administrative traditions and the distribution of competencies between political levels (Sellers and Kwak 2011;Lijphart 2012;Bouckaert and Kuhlmann 2016;Teles et al. 2020). The second is the tradition and practice of associational organisation, especially in the field of economics. ...
Chambers of commerce are omnipresent in domestic public policy and play a crucial role in business self-governance. However, they are rather neglected in both public and scientific debates and seem to be in decline. This volume fills this gap in research on organised business and state-market coordination in Europe. The contributions discuss chambers of commerce as interest groups and actors in political systems, and address the institutional changes that this kind of self-governance is undergoing. The development of chambers of commerce in recent decades shows a wide array of mechanisms for institutional adaptation, ranging from displacement and conversion to enduring stability. This volume gives an insight into the dynamics and factors affecting these changes, with case studies on Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and the United Kingdom, all conducted by recognised experts in this field.
Detlef Sack is Professor for Comparative Policy and Governance at the Faculty for Sociology, University of Bielefeld, Germany. His main areas of research include comparative policy research, state-market governance, organised business, and theories of democracy.
... The main research question is about what local governments in Germany do when they claim to have implemented managerial practices which, in the German case, are typically subsumed under the term "strategic management". The case of German local governments is interesting because managerial ideas and instruments were adopted voluntarily here, in a rule-of-law oriented continental federal type of government (Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016), mainly on the local level and without legal requirements (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011;Reichard, 2003;Wollmann, 2000). From the perspective of a transformative framework (Christensen & Laegreid, 2002), it is quite clear that these reform activities were mainly driven by internal motives of local governments and popular reform fashions (Mussari et al., 2016). ...
By analyzing how public administrations in a rule-of-law oriented , continental European federal government system adopted managerial practices on a voluntary basis, this article contributes to the knowledge about actual managerial practices in public administration. Its main research question is about what local governments in Germany do when they claim to have implemented managerial practices. For ten municipalities which have been identified as good practices, actual managerial practices are characterized and analyzed based on a model using established theoretical concepts of performance management and strategic management. Data stem from systematic reviews of strategy documents and budget plans as well as additional interviews. It can be shown that these municipalities have implemented managerial practices which generally follow the ideas of popular German reform blueprints and comply with general ideas of public administration research. Results suggest an inherent connection between performance management and strategic management whereas actual practices, even between the ten cases under review, differ significantly. The conclusion argues that more qualitative research about managerial practices could substantially enrich public scholars' perspective on theoretical concepts such as performance management and strategic management and on the preconditions under which these concepts could create benefits for the public.
... Indeed, although there are similarities in the implementation of NPM models among homogeneous groups of developed countries, there probably does not exist a single global standard by which NPM reforms can be implemented by all countries (Caiden and Argyriades, 2006;Haque, 2006). These differences seem to be caused mainly by the various contextual or starting conditions for reforms (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2014;Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016;Heinelt et al. 2017), which lies on the historical, institutional and cultural dimension (Schwab et al., 2017). These contextual conditions, within which local actors operate, must be considered an important factor for understanding and explaining reform movements and outcomes. ...
Purpose
This paper is framed under the relevance of collaborative governance models in smart cities that are members of the EUROCITIES network and are involved in a working group about “creative citizenship” and seeks to analyse the use of new technologies by city governments in smart cities with the aim at improving e-participation of the citizenry in the public arena.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is based on two data collection methods. First, this paper performs an e-survey sent to leading European smart cities about the relevance of collaborative governance in strategies of cities, about the main pillars and outcomes of smart governance and about the model of participation in developing a smart city. Second, an examination of 47 local governments of smart cities included in the working group of “creative citizenship” in the EUROCITIES network is performed during March 2017 with the specific purpose of collecting data about smart technologies used for e-participation.
Findings
Sample smart cities believe that collaborative governance is necessary to be implemented in public sector management under the smart environment but less than 50% of them have created citizen participation platforms to promote citizen involvement in public affairs and only a few of them promote online public consultations, discussions and petitions. Also, there are differences in perceptions and in e-participation tools used by sample smart cities in accordance with the administrative culture of the country in which these cities are located.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to fill the gap in the analysis of the relevance of collaborative governance models in smart cities and the use in these cities of transparency websites, open data projects or e-participation platforms to promote citizen involvement in the public affairs of the city.
... As to methods and sources, the article builds, in addition to the author's own work, on available research, particularly on work conducted by the members of an international working group that was formed between 2013 and 2015 within the European-Union-funded COST Action "Local Public Sector Reforms" (see Bouckaert and Kuhlmann 2016). Reports of their findings have been published in (for a summary, see Wollmann 2016b) and will be drawn upon and quoted in the following. ...
The article discusses the provision of public services (public utilities) and personal social services in European countries. In pursuing a historical perspective four stages are discerned, to wit, the pre-welfare state late 19th century, the advanced welfare state climaxing in the 1970s, the neo-liberal policy phase since the early 1980s and the recent phase since the mid-2000′s. It is argued that during each phase the prevalent organizational form of service provision (whether municipal/public, private or third sector) was shaped by the current dominant political beliefs and discourse, that is, by the ‘social democratic’ assumption of the operational preference of public/municipal sector provision until the 1970s and the neo-liberal trust in the operational superiority of market-liberalization and privatization. In the recent phase since the mid-2000s divergent trends are observed: On the one hand, the neo-liberal market and privatization drive has persisted while, on the other, in reaction to the downturn of the neo-liberal policy tenets and the socio-economic fallout of fiscal austerity policies a comeback of the public/municipal sector (remunicipalization) in public service provision and a (re-)emergence of third sector organizations and actors in the provision of personal social services and care has taken shape somewhat reminiscent of the pre-welfare state engagement of societal actors.
We contribute to the limited knowledge of the consequences of municipal splits by estimating how break-ups of seven Swedish municipalities affected per capita expenditures. To predict what would have happened had the break-ups not taken place, we apply the matrix completion method with nuclear norm minimization. We find that smaller municipalities not necessarily imply higher per capita expenditures. Instead, expenditures increase in some cases, are unaffected in others, and in others, decrease. The results point to the complex nature of territorial reforms and underscore the perils of policy recommendations that take uniform outcomes of either amalgamations or break-ups for granted.
Background: Municipal amalgamation has become a prevalent trend in many modern nations, driven by a desire to enhance the size and scope of local government units. This expansion is primarily motivated by the prospects of economies of scale. Municipal mergers are seen as a method to guarantee that municipalities possess the necessary financial and technical proficiency to provide a wide range of services to their residents.
Aim: To ascertain the feasibility of economies of scale in local government and conditions that should be met in order to successfully achieve economies of scale.
Methods: This study utilised a qualitative research approach, which involved a content analysis of strategic documents from the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, including the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and the Growth and Development Strategy 2055 document.
Results: Economies of scale have not consistently served as an effective foundation for municipal reforms, as the merging of municipalities does not always result in improved service delivery or economies of scale.
Conclusion: Although municipal amalgamations are anticipated to enhance economic, social, administrative, and financial sustainability, thereby creating financially viable municipalities, they often prioritise sound financial management, institutional capacity building, good governance, and basic service delivery. However, this study discovered that these outcomes are not always realised.
Contribution: Municipal amalgamation is a relatively new concept in Africa and South Africa and, as a result, there is limited literature. This study aimed to provide a local context and perspective of municipal amalgamations.
The two main criticisms of two-tier local government are that it is confusing to the public, who may not understand the division of functions between a county and district; and that it results in an overlap and duplication between the two tiers. Any such confusion is negligible, compared with difficulties the public may have in understanding the division of responsibilities among the large number of public sector organisations who operate in any given area. Overlap and duplication can be seen in positive terms, as providing mechanisms for the expression of different political views—local and strategic—about a particular issue or policy and an opportunity for debate and resolution. Two- or in some cases three-tier systems of local government are to be found in almost all European countries (and in the USA), where they are not seen as problematical. The unitary obsession and the preference for large conglomerate local authorities are peculiar to Britain and is still being played out across England.KeywordsTwo-tier local governmentLocal government sizeLocal government efficiencyInter-municipal cooperationSubsidiarityJoint working/collaborationCombined authorityRegionsDevolution
Private-sector management practices have been used by cities and municipalities in their public administration for several years. Yet, little is known about the effects of these management reforms, especially in a culturally heterogeneous environment. On the basis of a national survey covering 1,868 Swiss cities and municipalities, information was collected and analysed on the management reforms applied and their impact on public administration performance and democracy. The results of this interdisciplinary study show that management reforms in Switzerland have had positive effects, regardless of the linguistic and cultural context in which they were enacted. However, the use of private-sector approaches is more common in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and in cities.
In many European countries, the administration of legally regulated tasks and services is mainly organised locally and in a decentralised manner. The decentralisation reforms since the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. in France, Italy and Eastern Europe) have, in part, intensified this trend. However, in some countries, financial crises (e.g. Greece, Italy, and the UK) and political shifts (Hungary) are stimulating emerging recentralisation tendencies, which are limiting the previously established scope of local action. The following chapter first presents the position of local self-government in different European administrative models (Sect. 2.1) as well as essential comparison-related dimensions of local government systems (Sect. 2.2) based on relevant concepts of comparative public administration. This is followed by an analysis of the local government systems of typical country representatives of the five most important European administrative profiles, based on five central analytical dimensions: local autonomy (Sect. 2.3), local government task models and self-governance of common goods (Sect. 2.4), the position of local governments in the multilevel system and the relationship between state and local governments (Sect. 2.5), territorial profiles (Sect. 2.6), and local policy profiles/democracy models (Sect. 2.7). The country cases selected represent variants of local government and administrative systems across Europe, each of which has had a significant impact on administrative development and on reform policy as a whole. Against this background, a more detailed analysis of their local government systems is useful for assessing the future capacity of local actors in Europe.KeywordsLocal governmentComparative public administrationEuropeLocal autonomy
The following chapter discusses the main reform trends in European local governments in recent decades. Due to their importance in the European and international context, four reform approaches are examined in greater depth (cf. Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, Introduction: Comparing Local Public Sector Reforms: Institutional Policies in Context. In Local Public Sector Reforms in Times of Crisis: National Trajectories and International Comparisons. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 3):
Recentralisation/decentralisation
Territorial reform
New Public Management and privatisation of public tasks
Post-New Public Management and remunicipalisation.
KeywordsLocal governmentComparative public administrationEuropeLocal autonomy
Le présent article propose un cadre conceptuel pour l’analyse de la gouvernance de la crise du COVID-19 au cours du premier semestre 2020 dans une perspective comparative internationale. Notre article porte plus particulièrement sur la question de la gestion des opportunités, c’est-à-dire sur la façon dont les acteurs concernés appartenant à des cultures administratives distinctes ont fait de la crise une fenêtre d’opportunité. Nous sommes partis d’un intérêt général pour les facteurs qui ont influencé les politiques nationales de gestion de crise pour répondre à la question de savoir si et comment les acteurs politiques et administratifs de différents pays ont fait de la crise une opportunité pour faciliter, accélérer ou empêcher des évolutions dans les cadres institutionnels. Notre objectif est d’étudier les cadres institutionnels et les structures de gouvernance, les solutions et remèdes (présumés), ainsi que les constellations d’acteurs et de préférences qui ont influencé le mode de gestion de la crise et des opportunités. Enfin, notre article résume certains résultats comparatifs majeurs tirés des études par pays de ce numéro spécial, en se concentrant sur les similitudes et les différences dans les réponses apportées à la crise et les modes de gestion des opportunités. Remarques à l’intention des praticiens Les crises apparaissant dans des séquences de temps de plus en plus courtes, la gestion des troubles et l’exploitation des crises pour des décisions institutionnelles stratégiques sont devenues une question de plus en plus importante pour les décideurs politiques. Afin d’apporter des réponses efficaces et proportionnées, les décideurs politiques doivent tenir compte des conditions institutionnelles, des traditions administratives et des constellations d’acteurs pertinentes dans la gestion de crise, autant d’aspects essentiels pour tirer des enseignements des expériences d’autres pays. La comparaison de ces expériences et l’analyse des politiques de gouvernance de crise dans une perspective transnationale peuvent aider les décideurs politiques à identifier les forces et les faiblesses de leurs propres approches nationales/régionales et à saisir les opportunités découlant de la crise pour procéder à des réformes institutionnelles aux niveaux national et international. 2
This article provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of COVID-19 crisis governance in the first half of 2020 from a cross-country comparative perspective. It focuses on the issue of opportunity management, that is, how the crisis was used by relevant actors of distinctly different administrative cultures as a window of opportunity. We started from an overall interest in the factors that have influenced the national politics of crisis management to answer the question of whether and how political and administrative actors in various countries have used the crisis as an opportunity to facilitate, accelerate or prevent changes in institutional settings. The objective is to study the institutional settings and governance structures, (alleged) solutions and remedies, and constellations of actors and preferences that have influenced the mode of crisis and opportunity management. Finally, the article summarizes some major comparative findings drawn from the country studies of this Special Issue, focusing on similarities and differences in crisis responses and patterns of opportunity management.
Points for practitioners
With crises emerging in ever shorter sequences of time, governing turbulence and using crises for strategic institutional decisions has become an increasingly important issue for policymakers. Aiming at effective and proportionate responses, policymakers must take the institutional conditions, administrative traditions and relevant actor constellations of crisis management into account, which are key to learn from other countries’ experiences. Comparing these experiences and analyzing the politics of crisis governance from a cross-country perspective may help policymakers to identify strengths and weaknesses of their own national/regional approaches and to seize crisis-related windows of opportunity for institutional reforms at the national and international levels.
Finnish municipalities have strived to manage an extensive number of statutory tasks with insufficient financial resources. Local government reforms have followed the politics of bigger scales, which is feared to cause problems in implementing the principles of locality and subsidiarity. This chapter aims to discuss what is happening to local self-government in Finland in the context of recent reforms. We reflect on the municipalities’ struggle with the concept of local self-governance and the contents of the European Charter of local self-government. The chapter builds on knowledge based on the previous literature and recent studies. Strengthening local autonomy and supporting municipalities’ financial resources would require loosening regulation at the central government level, while at the local level municipalities need to seek their essence and reinvent themselves.
Reform of local government in Ireland has tended to involve both reform initiatives that mirror broader trends in public service reform nationally, as well as reform initiatives that are distinctive to the local government sector. Amongst the former we can include managerial reforms, digitisation and efforts to make local government more open and accountable. Other initiatives have included changes to the service portfolio of local government, pointing to an enhanced role in some fields and a reduced role in others. Some reforms can be characterised as enduring – in that they have been recurring themes in successive reform programmes. Other reform themes have been somewhat more occasional or sporadic and arguably brought about by the specific circumstances in which they were implemented. Looking to the future, we might speculate that upcoming challenges may include how public services generally can cope with diversity in addressing challenges that are likely to vary in different parts of Ireland, for example, based on distinctions between urban, suburban and rural areas. The article appeals for a more evidence-based approach to reform in the local government sector – this should be aided by existing research contributions and the enhanced evaluation capacity that exists in the Irish public service.
European chambers of commerce are in flux and under pressure. It is the purpose of the volume to describe and explain the institutional change that has taken place in this kind of business organisation. The introduction defines chambers of commerce as a distinct category of business association, whose members comprise enterprises of different sizes and from different sectors. Its domain is the local and regional levels of the political system. Chambers of commerce are interest groups, associations for business self-governance, and they are integrated in public policy. This introduction informs the reader about the distinction between public-law and private-law chambers. It then provides a brief overview of the different (sub)types in regions of the European Union and sketches out the changes that have been faced by chambers in the last two decades. It also outlines research perspectives for different sub-disciplines of political science before turning to the Mahoney-Thelen Framework (Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, Cambridge University Press, 2010) in order to explain the ways in which chambers of commerce have been gradually transformed. Finally, a brief overview is presented of the contributions that make up this volume.
There are good reasons to expect that citizens will appreciate local government more than central government. Sure enough, previous studies have found support for this assumption. Nevertheless, I will argue that it is theoretically far too simple to think that decentralization and citizen’s proximity to decision-making by definition trumps centralization and distance. As with comparative country studies, institutional quality must be taken into account in analyses of local government and multilevel trust. To illustrate this point, a closer investigation of Sweden – a decentralised, high-trust and low-corruption country – is conducted. Looking back over the past 20 years, and studying several indicators of trust, Sweden turns out to be a curious outlier from the general pattern: Swedes trust municipalities far less than the state. Ex ante, these findings are puzzling. To make them intelligible, while at the same time aiming to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of multilevel trust, I argue that the unfortunate combination of three factors have brought about this curious circumstance: 1) the far-reaching decentralisation and principal role Swedish municipalities have successively been given in implementing assignments which lie at the heart of Swedish welfare state policies; 2) that several of the municipalities’ assignments are particularly susceptible to corruption; and 3) that the increase in responsibilities as well as the increased danger zones for corruption has not been accompanied by institutions that ensure transparency and checks-and-balances in local government, ultimately leaving Swedish local government with institutions that obfuscate accountability.
This article focuses on how the Turkish state has been responding to limit the public health effects of COVID-19 pandemic to date. It aims to explain and understand the introduction, implementation and effect of health policy instrument mixes. It argues that although ‘presidentialisation’ of executive, and ‘presidential bureaucracy’ under presidential system of government are critical to introduce policies and implement their instrument mixes without delay or being vetoed or watered down which would otherwise occur in the parliamentary system of government, these features of impositional and exclusive policy style pose risks of policy design and implementation failures when the policy problems are poorly diagnosed, their policy solutions are wrong and/or complementary policy instrument mixes implemented ineffectively. However, a temporal, albeit temporary divergence from a dominant administrative tradition and policy style is most likely when a policy issue is esoteric (i.e. technical, scientific and expert-led) and framed as an existential crisis under high uncertainty that require scientific, expert-led, inclusive, early, quick and decisive responses to pressing policy problems.
Gemeindefusionen sind ein ungebrochen aktuelles Thema, das sowohl in der Praxis als auch in der Wissenschaft rege diskutiert wird. Der Stand der Forschung zeigt, dass die Befunde bezüglich der Auswirkungen von Gebietsreformen heterogen sind und die Reformaktivitäten in Österreich bislang kaum beleuchtet wurden. Dieser Beitrag bietet einen Überblick zu den jüngsten Strukturreformen in Österreich und spezifische Einblicke in eine steirische Fusionsgemeinde als Einzelfallstudie. Hierfür wurden einerseits vor der Fusion mittels Leitfadeninterviews die Erwartungen von Vertretern aus Gemeindepolitik und -verwaltung eruiert. Andererseits wurden drei Jahre nach der Fusion (vollzogen per 1.1.2015) erneut Interviews mit Repräsentanten und Mitarbeitern dieser Gemeinde geführt, sodass den ex-ante artikulierten Erwartungen die ex-post wahrgenommenen Auswirkungen gegenübergestellt werden können.
Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, inwieweit sich im Zuge von (Post) New Public Management Reformen die Konturen eines Neo-Weberianischen Staates (NWS) herausgebildet haben. Dabei wird zum einen auf die Hybridisierung von klassisch-Weberianischen Elementen und „Neo-/NPM-Elementen“ eingegangen und danach gefragt, ob es hier zu einer fruchtbaren Kombination oder eher zu dysfunktionalen Mischungen gekommen ist. Zum anderen werden die Umkehr von früheren NPM-Elementen und die Umsetzung von alternativen (Gegen-) Konzepten betrachtet.
Der Beitrag behandelt Verwaltungstraditionen und Verwaltungssysteme in Europa, wobei jeweils zwischen institutionellen, kulturellen und historischen Vergleichsdimensionen unterschieden wird. Es werden fünf Typen von Verwaltungsprofilen vorgestellt: (1) das kontinentaleuropäisch-napoleonische, (2) das kontinentaleuropäisch-föderale, (3) das angelsächsische, (4) das nordisch-skandinavische und (5) das mittel- und südosteuropäische Verwaltungsprofil. Diese fünf Verwaltungsprofile zeichnen sich jeweils durch typische Kombinationen der genannten Vergleichskriterien aus, welche ihrerseits Einfluss auf die Responsivität der Verwaltungssysteme gegenüber verschiedenen Ansätzen der Verwaltungsreform haben.
Allt fler vill se en ny svensk kommunreform med väsentligt större – och därmed färre – kommuner. Mot den bakgrunden har syftet med föreliggande rapport varit att inventera forskning från andra utvecklade demokratier för att se om sammanläggningar har varit ett ändamålsenligt sätt att möta de problem de respektive ländernas kommunsektorer har tampats med. En delambition har också varit att uppmärksamma forskning om förekomst och effekter av mellankommunala samarbeten, för att försöka utröna om det skulle kunna vara ett alternativt (eller kompletterande) verktyg.
This article investigates reputation reform in Norwegian and Danish local government and whether they have the same strategy content depending on the degree of administrative involvement and municipality size. Political and administrative actors are likely to cultivate different types of reputation strategies (place or organisational reputation), which explicitly embrace the potentially diverging interests cultivated by the two types of actors. We use a comparative design and quantitative method with an empirical ambition to explore local government reputation strategies in two national contexts. We find that local government responses to reputation reform depend on the size of the municipality and the type of actors involved; the larger the municipality, the more the administration is involved. And the more that administrative actors are involved, the more the strategies target organisational reputation. The country-specific factors do not appear to be the most important determinants for reputation reform strategies.
Kuhlmann, Laffin and Wayenberg point out three main strands of subnational changes that have significantly dominated the research field and focus of Permanent Study Group 5. Elaborating upon the Study Group’s contributions, the chapter overviews relevant research questions, approaches and findings that have been touched upon concerning local and regional government systems, subnational reforms and their evaluation in a multi-level governance setting. The chapter concludes with zooming in on austerity as a main driver of future developments upon and amongst all levels of government.
Purpose
This paper discusses different approaches of performance measurement and benchmarking as "reflexive instituions" for local governments in England, Germany, and Sweden from a comparative perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
These three countries have been selected because they represent typical (most different) cases of European local government systems and reforms. Existing theories on “institutional reflexivity” point to the potential contribution of benchmarking to public sector innovation and organizational learning. Based on survey findings, in-depth case studies, interviews and document analyses in these three countries, the paper addresses the major research question as to what extent and why benchmarking regimes vary across countries. It derives hypotheses about the impacts of benchmarking on institutional learning and innovation.
Findings
The outcomes suggest that the combination of three key features of benchmarking, namely “obligation”, “sanctions” and “benchmarking authority” – in conjunction with country-specific administrative context conditions and local actor constellations – influences the impact of benchmarking as a reflexive institution.
Originality/value
It is shown in the paper that compulsory benchmarking on its own does not lead to reflexivity and learning, but that there is a need for autonomy and leeway for local actors to cope with benchmarking results.These findings are relevant because policy makers must decide upon the specific “governance mix” of benchmarking exercises taking their national and local contexts into account if they want them to promote institutional learning and innovation.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the initiatives of local governments to launch modernisation processes are facilitated by local autonomy, which is increasingly important in both the theory and practice of public policy and management.
Design/methodology/approach
Local government reforms are distinguished according to the institutional structure at which they are directed and local autonomy is assessed as a multidimensional concept. Drawing on a multilevel analysis of the Swiss case, this paper combines data stemming from a survey conducted at the local tier with secondary data from the regional tier.
Findings
The main empirical findings are threefold. First, when local governments undertake managerial or political reform initiatives, their autonomy with respect to higher levels of government matters. Second, it is not local autonomy but rather the perception of structural problems that is the force driving territorial reforms. Third, it is not the autonomy enjoyed by local governments vis-à-vis local factors, but rather the pressures stemming from that context that may lead to reforms.
Originality/value
By adopting a comparative approach to local autonomy, this paper shows that local governments which have sufficient latitude for local policy making are likely to take initiatives to improve service delivery in accordance with local preferences.
This book explores sub-municipal units’ (SMU) role in decision making, decentralized institutional innovation, social innovation and, in rural areas, service delivery. Focusing on fourteen European countries, the book examines the impact of political cultures, administrative traditions and local government systems on the functioning of the SMUs. An under-explored topic in the literature, this book provides a comprehensive, comparative European, thematically broad, descriptive book on sub-municipal governance.
This chapter discusses the evolution of sub-municipal governance in Greece, which has been top-down conceptualized and implemented. Starting from big cities and the “participatory euphoria” of the eighties, sub-municipal institutions increased spectacularly by numbers with the two major waves of amalgamations in 1998 and 2010. Top-down conceived and imposed, initially differentiating big cities and rural areas, these institutions developed in a muddling through manner that created a complex situation. For the biggest part, sub-municipal institutions were supposed to facilitate comprehensive amalgamation reforms and to compensate for the loss of municipal independence. We argue that these institutions are trapped between identity politics and the politics of scale. Local authorities are reluctant to intra-municipal decentralization, often restricting sub-municipal entities to symbolisms. The lack of meaningful representation at the sub-municipal level is already leading to visible disintegration in many cases and to restrain from local politics. Therefore, a reform debate was initiated, but the final outcome remains an open question.
Local autonomy is a highly valued feature of good governance. The continuous efforts of many European countries to strengthen the autonomy of local government show the importance given to decentralization and the transfer of far-reaching competences to the lowest units. Measuring and comparing local autonomy, however, has proven to be challenging. Not only are there diverging ideas about the core elements of local autonomy, there are also considerable difficulties applying specific concepts to different countries. This paper outlines a comprehensive methodology for measuring local autonomy. It analyses 39 European countries and reports changes between 1990 and 2014. A network of experts on local government assessed the autonomy of local government of their respective countries on the basis of a common code book. The 11 variables measured show an overall increase of local autonomy but significant variation between the countries. The variables also add up to an overall measurement of local autonomy.
Since the 1990s there has been a trend towards more dialogue-oriented political participation—a “deliberative turn,” in the phrase of Dryzek (2003). Deliberative dialogical democracy often develops a path to come from conflict to consensual deliberative decision making. Deliberative instruments were positively influenced by local agenda processes in the 1990s. In the new millennium participatory instruments such as participatory budgeting have spread all over Europe. What kind of instruments are implemented? Who are the key actors? Who is included and who is excluded? Are these instruments enhancing legitimacy and are they able to channel growing political protest? In four systematically analyzed case studies from Estonia, Slovakia, Spain, and Germany different types become apparent.
The introduction of performance-related pay (PRP) in the public sector has been one of the main trends in public management reform in the last two decades. However, it seems that PRP regimes have been loosened or even taken off the reform agenda, often with the notion that they were not used as planned, failed to deliver, and ultimately were stalled as being a control instrument incompatible with the existing administrative culture. Focusing on the local government level in Germany, France, and Italy, the authors explore the why PRP systems have failed to manifest a core position within in performance-oriented reform agendas. Diffusion and implementation practices in the three countries show significant differences, which have led to significant heterogeneity to as well as variance in the implementation of PRP.
This chapter examines the diffusion of performance measurement and management systems (PMMS) as outposts of NPM reforms in local governments of the Napoleonic administrative cluster (France, Turkey, and Portugal). We use in-depth analyses of three municipalities selected as “paradigmatic” cases for the national contexts, meant to provide an average feel of how local governments reacted to national reforms, contexts, and variations of the Napoleonic model. Case classifications reveal little in-sample variation of the PMMS, all appearing as slight adaptations of Bouckaert and Halligan’s, (2008) “performance administration” model despite distinct national patterns of local decentralization, reforms strategies, and state mechanisms of funding, steering, and control. This conservatism may confirm the infertile ground of Napoleonic LGs for NPM values and performance reforms. Yet the variety of mechanisms at work across countries calls for attention to pending evolutions of the Napoleonic model.
The chapter provides an overview of the municipal structures, reform objectives, strategies, patterns of conflicts, and outcomes associated with amalgamation reforms in European countries on the basis of the perception of country experts. The results indicate that the objectives of amalgamation reforms primarily concern efficiency and service delivery criteria. The amalgamation strategies chosen by the countries are very heterogeneous. Whereas some countries chose top-down strategies with intervention from the central government, others prefer bottom-up strategies. Patterns of conflict during amalgamation processes are primarily related to the divide between central and local government as well as between small and large municipalities. The results indicate that the most important outcomes are improved service quality and, to some extent, cost savings.
The chapter draws on the research and discussion that have been conducted in COST Working Group 1 which has been devoted to the comparative study of public and social services provision in some 25 (Western as well as Central Eastern European) countries. Three developmental phases have been discerned. First, during the advanced welfare state that climaxed in the early 1970s service provisions was largely public/municipal sector-based. Subsequently under the impact of neo-liberal market liberalization and New Public Management guided modernization the public/municipal sector dominance gave way to pluralized and privatized service provision. Since the mid/late 1990s divergent institutional trajectories have taken shape—between further marketization, pluralization and privatization of service provision on the one hand, and a comeback” of public/municipal sector provision (“remunicipalization”) on the other.
The most widely used typologies of European local government systems are based on research conducted in the 1980s. The most popular are those of Page and Goldsmith (1987), distinguishing between Northern and Southern European systems, and Hesse and Sharpe (1991), distinguishing between Southern, Northern and Anglo-Saxon models. The rare attempts to include the Eastern part of the continent are far from comprehensive or satisfactory. They usually view the whole region as a distinct group, referring to its specific historical background and recent radical decentralisation (Bennett 1993, Heinelt and Hlepas 2006). Disappointingly, the same approach is presented in the most recent comprehensive analysis of European local government systems (Loughlin et al. 2010). This article tries to fill the gap produced by this simplification, by offering a comprehensive picture of the variation within the Eastern European region and suggesting a first attempt at a typology of around 20 countries of the region. The criteria for this typology refers to those used in earlier classifications of the Western European systems and include: (i) territorial organisation and tiers of elected local governments, (ii) scope of functions provided by local governments (functional decentralisation), (iii) financial autonomy, (iv) horizontal power relations within local government institutions (election systems and relationships between mayors and councils).
New Public Management hat in den vergangenen Jahren die Ansätze und das Verständnis moderner Verwaltungsführung massgebend beeinflusst. Stossrichtungen und Grundanliegen dieses Modell wurden zum Teil in die Führungspraxis übernommen und stellen in vielerlei Hinsicht nach wie vor Entwicklungsziele und Leitlinien für die Steuerung und Führung der öffentlichen Verwaltung dar. Das Hauptanliegen ist, die öffentlichen Verwaltung an geforderte Neuausrichtungen anzupassen und effizienter zu gestalten. Ziele und Gestaltung der öffentlichen Verwaltung unter NPM und die dazu notwendigen Instrumente werden in diesem Lehrbuch umfassend und strukturiert erläutert. Besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf die Veränderungslinien und -ansätze für die Verwaltungsführung gelegt.
New Public Management hat in den vergangenen Jahren die Ansätze und das Verständnis moderner Verwaltungsführung maßgebend beeinflusst. Stossrichtungen und Grundanliegen dieses Modells wurden zum Teil in die Führungspraxis übernommen und stellen in vielerlei Hinsicht nach wie vor Entwicklungsziele und Leitlinien für die Steuerung und Führung der öffentlichen Verwaltung dar. NPM soll die öffentliche Verwaltung an geforderte Neuausrichtungen anpassen und effizienter gestalten. Ziele und Gestaltung der öffentlichen Verwaltung unter NPM und die dazu notwendigen Instrumente werden in diesem Lehrbuch umfassend und strukturiert erläutert. Besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf die Veränderungslinien und -ansätze für die Verwaltungsführung gelegt.
‘Putting into context’ is a very common phrase - both in the social sciences and beyond. But what exactly do we mean by this, and how do we do it? In this book, leading scholars in public policy and management tackle these issues. They show how ideas of context are central to a range of theories and explanations and use an international range of case studies to exemplify context-based explanation. The book uncovers the complexity that lies behind an apparently simple notion, and offers a variety of approaches to decipher that complexity. Context is indeed a missing link, which enables us to make sense of the vital relationship between the general and the particular.
Dem Buch liegen die Ergebnisse eines vergleichenden (im Auftrag der Wüstenrot Stiftung am IfS Institut für Stadtforschung und Strukturpolitik GmbH, Berlin, durchgeführten) Forschungsprojekts zu Grunde, in dem die Reformen der kommunalen Politik und Verwaltung in Großbritannien/England, Schweden, Frankreich und Deutschland untersucht wurden. Diese vier Länder können als Prototypen europäischer Kommunalsysteme gelten, die sich für eine vergleichende Analyse der maßgeblichen Entwicklungslinien, Reformen und ihrer Bestimmungsfaktoren (Pfadabhängigkeit, Europäisierung, internationale Reformdiskurse, Finanzkrise usw.) in besonderem Maße eignen.
Um einen umfassenden Über- und Einblick zu gewinnen, wird der Vergleich der allgemeinen kommunalen Strukturen (territoriale Gliederung, kommunale Aufgaben, lokale Demokratie, kommunale Leistungsstrukturen, Organisations- und Personalstrukturen, kommunale Finanzen) durch die Untersuchung ausgewählter relevanter kommunaler Handlungsfelder (kommunale Sozialpolitik, einschließlich kommunaler Beschäftigungspolitik, sowie städtebauliche Planung und Baugenehmigung) ergänzt und vertieft. Abschließend wird für die Handlungsfähigkeit der vier Kommunalsysteme eine Rangfolge („ranking“) vorgeschlagen.
Book synopsis: `Its strength lies in combining theoretical insights with an impressive range of empirical material. The analysis is subtle and multi-layered.... This is a timely and important book' - Political Studies `Local governance have gained massive attention among scholars and practitioners during the past several years. Peter John's book fills a void in the literature by tracing the historical roots of local governance and by placing his findings in a comparative perspective' - Professor Jon Pierre, University of Gothenburg, Sweden `Peter John has produced a fascinating and stimulating book in which he assesses current developments in urban politics and local government in Europe and suggests how these changes are leading to different patterns of sub-national territorial politics in the EU today. What he has to say is of important interest to all students of local government; comparative politics and of territorial politics more generally' - Michael Goldsmith, University of Salford `this book offers a fascinating comparative analysis... themes such as New Public Management, globalisation, regionalism and privatisation will be relevant to numerous courses in government, politics, public administration and public policy' - West European Politics This text provides a comprehensive introduction to local government and urban politics in contemporary Western Europe. It is the first book to map and explain the change in local political systems and to place these in comparative context. The book introduces students to the traditional structures and institutions of local government and shows how these have been transformed in response to increased economic and political competition, new ideas, institutional reform and the Europeanization of public policy. At the book's core is the perceived transition from local government to local governance. The book traces this key development thematically across a wide range of West European states including: Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.
This article contributes to the debate on the incorporation of performance information in European local government budgets. At the core is the development of an analytical model for comparing efforts of performance budgeting (PB). Evidence in ten cases indicates that performance structures and the span of performance differ, that performance indicators are far from always measuring outcomes or outputs, and that future and past performance figures are often absent. Nevertheless similar learning trajectories do exist. Possible explanations for the variation involve the varying degrees of reform implementation, experience with PB and prevailing institutional arrangements.
The reform of Human Resource Management (HRM) is only one approach in reforming local governments but a very important one. As recent studies showed, there is still a lack of empirical evidence linking HRM reforms with results. By analyzing three European cities of “presumed” excellence in their local administrative reform and change management approaches (e.g. Bilbao in Spain, Tampere in Finland, and Mannheim in Germany), this chapter tries to establish whether or not there are major commonalities or differences in the reform approaches of the cities and whether the institutional change (organizational, personnel, and instrumental) implemented has affected organizational performance. Correlations between change management and HRM reforms and their (presumed) effects are highlighted, along with the ambiguities, tensions, and problems inherent within the processes of change.
A lot has been written about normative and theoretical expectations of local government. In this chapter we give the word to the citizens. How satisfied are they with the way local democracy works in their municipality and what do they expect from their municipalities in terms of facilities and services? With the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, our study covers four relatively well-off countries holding top positions in most overall assessments of democracy. We start with a general evaluation of the citizens’ satisfaction with their life in their municipality. In a next step we address the different ideas citizens have about the very essence of local democracy and local governance. The chapter ends with a discussion of varying degrees of satisfaction considering the different expectations.
The authors show how institutions for citizen participation in European local government have changed from 1990 until today. Relying on data from an expert survey and focusing on the right of free access to information, the direct election of mayors, and binding local referenda, the authors discover a clear trend of democratic renewal in European local politics. However, the trend is not uniform. The authors also offer some interpretations for the pattern of change they found: Democratic reforms are the result of domestic political factors. But as diffusion theory suggests, the reforms are also externally determined by factors like coercion, learning, and imitation.
Since the post-war expansion of the welfare state, citizens have raised their expectations about the role of government. However, in most OECD countries the growth rate of GDP slowed down until its dramatic drop in 2007 due to the worldwide financial crisis. Therefore, budgeting processes and formats have become even more important for supporting political choices, fostering organizational efficiency, and monitoring results. This chapter focuses consistently on performance budgeting as a tool for strategic steering and control—the internal dimension of (post) New Public Management reforms. Based on the transformative approach of Christensen and Lægreid in their book New public management. The transformation of ideas and practice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), we deal with patterns of reform that have introduced steering and control instruments inspired to performance-like measures (accrual accounting, performance-based budget, management control and so on) into four European countries (Germany, Italy, Lithuania, and Norway) at the local government level over last 20 years.
Whether citizens should directly elect the mayor or whether only councilors should be able to indirectly choose the local political governing body to the exclusion of the public from the process is one of the most controversial debates around the reform of local government—at least for policy makers and councilors. Debates about direct or indirect election of local political leaders focus on different interpretations of political concepts such as: the legitimacy to act, visibility and profile of local leaders, transparency of political decision-making processes, accountability, and the role of the citizen in local representative democracy. The chapter takes five European countries selected because of their different political traditions and structures, to assess the nature of the policy debate about the selection of the local political leader. It does this to assess how far path-dependent responses to reform have influenced political change or whether crisis moments provide opportunities for new considerations about the reform of local politics to emerge.
This chapter contributes to the ongoing debate on the ‘remunicipalisation’ of local public services by looking back at more than 100 years of service provision in Germany and a broad range of local public services. The analysis shows that there is indeed some evidence of a ‘return of the pendulum’. However, there are strong sectoral differences, and the extent of remunicipalisation is only partly related to the degree of the original privatisation. Moreover, even in the sectors that have experienced a strong renaissance in local authority involvement there are striking differences between the ‘post-liberal’ present and the ‘pre-liberal’ past. Both these observations demonstrate that the recent trend towards remunicipalisation should thus be interpreted as a partial re-balancing rather than a fundamental rollback of market reforms.
This concluding chapter is meant to highlight some of the findings that have been presented in the preceding chapters of this book. In pursuing the comparative study of public and social services provision in some 25 (Western as well as Central Eastern European) countries, three developmental phases have been discerned. During the advanced welfare state that climaxed in the early 1970s service provision was largely public/municipal sector-based. Subsequently, under the impact of neo-liberal market liberalisation and New Public Management guided modernisation, the public/municipal sector dominance gave way to pluralised and privatised service provision. Since the mid-/late 1990s divergent institutional trajectories have taken shape between further marketisation, pluralisation and privatisation of service provision, on the one hand, and a ‘comeback’ of public/municipal sector provision (‘remunicipalisation’), on the other.
The reallocation of public tasks is a common reform strategy in most of the Western European states. On the one hand, there is a trend toward decentralization, on the other also some centralizing measures. Next to the appraisal of decentralization seen in some strands of the literature (see the next section), a comparative view offers a more nuanced angle. If we take into account that the actual strategies of decentralization, the fiscal measures, and the specific nature of delegated functions vary significantly across countries and regions, some differentiation is to be expected regarding the effects of such measures. Against this backdrop, we seek to analyze decentralization policies in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.1 In these three countries, varying decentralization strategies have been pursued, the impacts of which partly confirm and partly disprove common assumptions. Taking an evaluative approach, we seek to identify the conditions under which decentralization fulfills the promises (transparency and accountability, efficiency gains, improved citizen- centered services, better coordination, and service quality) that have made it one of the most prominent reform strategies worldwide (Treisman, 2007).
As a result of decentring and the proliferation of central government agencies public sectors have become characterized by fragmentation, lack of coherence and attenuated central control. It is generally accepted that that the injunctions to disaggregate and devolve under the influence of new public management (NPM) maxims fuelled the movement towards distributed governance. In the post-NPM era there has been a counter-movement towards reintegrating the fragmented state by focusing on government as a whole and joining up the parts through horizontal (and vertical) coordination. Two processes are at work: countering the limitations of NPM and the search for balance between decentralized modes of operating and central needs for direction and control.
The following families or groups of countries, each sharing some common administrative inheritance, are covered in this chapter:
1.
Anglo-American
2.
Napoleonic
3.
Germanic
4.
Scandinavian
5.
Latin American
6.
Postcolonial South Asian and African
7.
East Asian
8.
Soviet
9.
Islamic
This chapter examines administrative reform in Sweden through the conceptual lens of administrative traditions occurring in the face of globalization.1 There is today an immense literature on the extent to which globalization manifests itself in pressures for uniform administrative reform, hence leading to a convergence among different national contexts in terms of reform strategy and outcomes (see, for instance, Nye and Donahue 2000; Pollitt 2001a, 2002; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). Pollitt (2002: 484) is skeptical about the convergence thesis, suggesting that, even when there are distinct global pressures for reform, ‘different states occupy markedly different niches in the global economy and this, apart from anything else, would be likely to encourage differences of response’. In addition to differences in economic development, countries also differ in terms of the legal nature of the public administration and its degree of centralization and social embeddedness. These and several other factors are essential variables in understanding the complex linkage between globalization and domestic administrative reform.
Reformers of public administration are on a perennial quest for a better fit between the scale of problems confronted by governments and the scale of governmental institutions that are responsible for solving those problems. Such a fit, however, can never be a permanent one; societies change and so do the extent and nature of challenges confronting governments. Institutions, moreover, have an inbuilt inertia that often confounds reformers and leads to intractable solutions — or to surprising innovations and variations in the way problems are confronted. Nowhere are these parallel trends more visible than in the field of local and regional governance, where daring experiments often coexist with long-standing deadlocks and antiquated institutional patterns.
Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, since returning to independence, have experienced a transition period from a command economy to a free market economy. One of the most important tasks in the transition period is to carry out local government reforms which have been undertaken in all three Baltic states. The main goals of the local government reforms concern the further democratization and decentralization of state power and administration, improving the quality of public services rendered to the local residents and involving them in the process of administration.
With this book we aim at describing and analysing the selection, daily life, networks and values of local top political leaders in seventeen European countries. The empirical nourishment to the investigation into town halls across Europe is a survey conducted in 2003 with mayors and corresponding top local political leaders. The data covering responses from 2700 leaders is a unique and rich material allowing descriptions and analyses pursuing a number of lines of inquiry. © VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2006.
'This book gives a comprehensive analysis and explanation of social and public services in five European countries. Despite Norway not being a member of the EU, these policy areas deliver a keen lesson in the Europeanization of public policy and the convergence of European states' approach to governance. It is a book that will become required reading on MPAs and public administration/public management courses.' - Andrew Massey, University of Exeter, UK. © Hellmut Wollmann and Gérard Marcou 2010. All rights reserved.
Local government systems are usually perceived as independent variables when considering (possible) differences in recruitment patterns, professionalisation, the position of mayors in local and multi-level governance arrangements (or horizontal and vertical policy networks), the interpretation (or notion) of democracy, problem definition as well as attitudes and opinions towards decentralisation or centralisation and reforms ('modernisation') of the public sector ('new public management'). However, a decision on the most suitable conceptualisation or typology of local government systems for joint research such as that undertaken here is more problematic than might be assumed: firstly, a lot of typologies are available in the scholarly debate, and secondly, it proves difficult to apply the available typologies because none of them cover the whole spectrum of countries included in this study, and many do not include the 'new democracies' in Middle-Eastern Europe. Therefore, existing typologies will necessarily have to be adjusted and updated. © VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2006.
Territory and scale have been some of the most relevant topics in recent political science, but do we know enough about cooperation between local governments? How we think about local government has changed significantly and requires us to be equipped with new epistemological gear, considering more variables and social functions of local government than before. For instance, is inter-municipal cooperation a special arrangement? The answer is certainly positive, not as a consequence of its nature when compared to other alternatives of policy coordination and service delivery, but because it captures almost every facet of the complexity of contemporary territorial governance. Bringing relevant case-studies, previous research, and available literature together, this book will help researchers, students and practitioners with these ideas. The author provides comprehensive information about inter-municipal cooperation and identifies the main gaps in contemporary research.
Comparative literature on institutional reforms in multi-level systems proceeds from a global trend towards the decentralization of state functions. However, there is only scarce knowledge about the impact that decentralization has had, in particular, upon the sub-central governments involved. How does it affect regional and local governments? Do these reforms also have unintended outcomes on the sub-central level and how can this be explained? This article aims to develop a conceptual framework to assess the impacts of decentralization on the sub-central level from a comparative and policy-oriented perspective. This framework is intended to outline the major patterns and models of decentralization and the theoretical assumptions regarding de-/re-centralization impacts, as well as pertinent cross-country approaches meant to evaluate and compare institutional reforms. It will also serve as an analytical guideline and a structural basis for all the country-related articles in this Special Issue.
Points for practitioners
Decentralization reforms are approved as having a key role to play in the attainment of ‘good governance’. Yet, there is also the enticement on the part of state governments to offload an ever-increasing amount of responsibilities to, and overtask, local levels of government, which can lead to increasing performance disparities within local sub-state jurisdictions. Against this background, the article provides a conceptual framework to assess reform impacts from a comparative perspective. The analytical framework can be used by practitioners to support their decisions about new decentralization strategies or necessary adjustments regarding ongoing reform measures.
Central and Local Government Relations considers how best to organize local government units, and what powers and responsibilities should be devolved to local government. The book presents a comparative analysis of local governments in seven unitary states - Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Britain, France, Italy and Spain. It tests the hypothesis that any convincing explanation for the emergence of a particular pattern of central-local relations in one country must be able to explain why identical patterns are or are not found in others. The ability of local government to shape public services is discussed on the basis of three dimensions - the functions of local government, the type of discretion that it has, and the extent to which local political actors can influence central processes of decision making. The editors distinguish between the type of local governmnent system found in Britain and Scandinavia and that found in Southern European nations, and explore the reasons which explain these differences.
I need hardly remind this audience that one of the characteristics of our field is the large number of old and quite elemental questions—elemental but by no means elementary—for which we have no compelling answers. I don't mean that we have no answers to these questions. On the contrary, we often have a rich variety of conflicting answers. But no answer compels acceptance in the same way as a proof of a theorem in mathematics, or a very nice fit between a hypothesis and a satisfactory set of data.
Whether the obstacles that prevent us from achieving tight closure on solutions lie in ourselves—our approaches, methods, and theories—or are inherent in the problems is, paradoxically, one of these persistent and elemental questions for which we have a number of conflicting answers. For whatever it may be worth, my private hunch is that the main obstacles to closure are in the problems themselves—in their extraordinary complexity, the number and variety of variables, dimensions qualities, and relationships, and in the impediments to observation and data-gathering.
However that may be, a question of this sort often lies dormant for decades or even centuries, not because it has been solved but because it seems irrelevant. For even when no satisfactory theoretical answer exists to a very fundamental question, historical circumstances may allow it to be ignored for long periods of time. Even specialists may refuse to take a question seriously that history seems to have shoved into the attic. What seem like fundamental controversies in one age are very likely to be boring historical curiosities in the next. And conversely it is my impression that a great many of the elemental political questions regarded as settled in one age have a way of surfacing later on.
How large should local governments be, and what are the implications of changing the scale of local governments for the quality of local democracy? These questions have stood at the centre of debates among scholars and public sector reformers alike from antiquity to the present. This monograph offers the first systematic cross-national investigation of these questions using empirical evidence gathered specifically for this purpose. Results provide insights that offer important touchstones for reform activities and academic research efforts in many countries.
This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics, and greatly improve the theories and methods that we use to explain them. Politics in Time opens a new window on the temporal aspects of the social world. It explores a range of important features and implications of evolving social processes: the variety of processes that unfold over significant periods of time, the circumstances under which such different processes are likely to occur, and above all, the significance of these temporal dimensions of social life for our understanding of important political and social outcomes. Ranging widely across the social sciences, Pierson's analysis reveals the high price social science pays when it becomes ahistorical. And it provides a wealth of ideas for restoring our sense of historical process. By placing politics back in time, Pierson's book is destined to have a resounding and enduring impact on the work of scholars and students in fields from political science, history, and sociology to economics and policy analysis.
The public bureaucracies of Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain may be set apart from the rest of West European bureaucracies. Until the mid-1990s, the former were distinguished from the latter by certain interrelated structural characteristics. These characteristics were extended politicisation of the top administrative ranks; enduring patronage patterns in recruitment to the public sector; uneven distribution of human resources; formalism and legalism; and, with the exception of Spain, absence of a typical European administrative elite. The characteristics were related to the type of capitalism and political development in Southern Europe. South European bureaucracies have started evolving towards decentralisation and privatisation. However, convergence with the bureaucracies of other EU member-states is an open question.
1. Political Democracy in a Capitalist Economy 2. Negative and Positive Integration 3. Regulatory Competition and Re-Regulation 4. National Solutions without Boundary Control 5. The European Contribution Conclusion: Multi-level Problem-Solving in Europe References Index
Although the relationship between elected officials and appointed executives has often been viewed as a struggle between master and servant—with disagreements as to which individuals occupy which roles—Poul Erik Mouritzenâs and James Svaraâs comparison of city governments in fourteen countries reveals more interdependence and shared influence than conflict over control. Mouritzen and Svara bring local government to the forefront, emphasizing the sophisticated level of city management in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their findings lead to a revision of the general view concerning the boundaries of public administration. Leadership at the Apex illustrates in practical ways how the democratic control of government and professional administration can coexist without undermining the logic or integrity of each other.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and at a Conference on ‘What is Institutionalism Now?’ at the University of Maryland, October 1994. We would like to acknowledge the hospitality and stimulation that W. Richard Scott, the Stanford Center for Organizations Research, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences provided while the preliminary work for this paper was being done, and we are grateful to Paul Pierson for many helpful discussions about these issues. For written comments on this earlier draft, we are grateful to Robert Bates, Paul DiMaggio, Frank Dobbin, James Ennis, Barbara Geddes, Peter Gourevitch, Ian Lustick, Cathie Jo Martin, Lisa Martin, Paul Pierson, Mark Pollack, Bo Rothstein, Kenneth Shepsle, Rogers Smith, Marc Smyrl, Barry Weingast, and Deborah Yashar.
Auf dem Weg zu einer Neo-Weberianischen Verwaltung. New Public Management im internationalen Vergleich
- G Bouckaert
Roles and styles of local political leaders on the territory of the former Yugoslavia: Between authoritarian local political top bosses and citizen-oriented local managers
- I Koprić