Background and Objectives
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 âsomething differentâ in order to correct the shortcomings of earlier NPM measures, which some commentators have labeled âpost-NPMâ (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, âother-than-NPM measuresâ 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.
Against this background, it is cause for concern and criticism that analysis of the local level is conspicuously neglected in the current comparative research concerning public sector modernization. Even recent comparative studies on public management reform (see Bouckaert et al. 2010; LĂŚgreid and Verhoest 2010; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011) as well as investigations reported by the OECD (2010) and World Bank (2007) deal almost exclusively with central government and national administrative levels. A pressing need remains to assess how far those reforms have changed local governments, how they differ between various countries, to what extent they represent a new âwaveâ of reforms (is the pendulum really swinging back?), and whether all this makes a difference to the performance and functioning of local governments.
Based on the results of the COST Action âLocal Public Sector Reforms: an International Comparison (LocRef),â this volume contributes to filling the respective gaps in comparative research by taking into account the huge spectrum of the abovementioned reforms from a European-scale comparative perspective. Capturing not only NPM/post-NPM, but also alternative approaches and reform trajectories, the overarching question of the volume is:
Which approaches and effects of local public sector reform can be identified from a cross-countries comparative perspective and how can these be explained?
The COST Action LocRef embraces 31 countries, 28 of which are referred to in at least one contribution of this book. These 28 countries represent six clusters of administrative traditions and local government systems in Europe characterized by specific combinations of institutional/cultural core features (see further below). In this chapter, we will elaborate a conceptual framework for understanding local public sector reforms from a cross-countries comparative perspective, on which, at the same time, the COST Action LocRef has drawn.
Conceptualizing Local Public Sector Reforms
We conceptualize local public sector reforms as a specific type of policy, namely institutional policies, which are directed at political and administrative institutional structures. The following areas of institutional analysis will be distinguished, and these also cover the main guiding questions of the LocRef conceptual framework:
- The first area of analysis pertains to the emergence of reform discourses, the causes of specific (national/local) reform agendas, and the formulation of institutional reform packages/policies by relevant stakeholders.
- The focus of the second area of analysis is on the actual adoption of reform measures, institutional changes, and degrees of reform implementation from a comparative perspective.
- The third analytical area deals with the effects of reform and the question of how specific measures influence the actual performance of local governments, citizensâ satisfaction, and perceptions of how local government works, and whether there are also unintended (side) effects of various modernization efforts.
Our approach is not meant, however, to presume a deterministic relationship between the type of institutional policy and its implementation and performance. There are a number of factors to be taken into account when it comes to explaining modes, measures, and outcomes of institutional policies from a comparative perspective. One of these factors is the nature of the local tasks and functions subject to reforms. We might, for instance, assume more straightforward positive impacts of NPM-guided customer-oriented modernization efforts in the field of local service delivery functions that immediately affect the citizens than in the field of technical or environmental functions. Another important explanatory factor to be explored in more detail further below is âcontextâ (see Pollitt 2013), that is, the institutional and cultural âstarting conditionsâ (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011) of reforms in a given country (cluster) which we assume to exert major influence on the trajectories, adoption, and effects of local public sector reforms.
When local public sector reforms are viewed as institutional policy and conceptualized along the ideal type inputâoutput model of the politico-administrative system, then a distinction can be made between more input-oriented democratic reforms and more output-oriented administrative reforms (see Scharpf 2002). Of course, empirically, there will most often be a mixture of both types. However, for analytical purposes, we differentiate between reforms directed at strengthening the input legitimacy by way of introducing new participatory instruments and elements of democratic innovation (democratic reforms) and reforms targeted at enhancing output legitimacy (administrative reforms; see also Kersting and Vetter 2003). The latter are aimed at improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of public service delivery through organizational, procedural, and instrumental changes within the public administration. Depending on which elements of institutional order are on the reform agenda, administrative reforms can be classified as external and internal variants. The external variant is intended to change the shape of the institutional order overall and to redefine institutional boundaries, functional and/or territorial jurisdictions, membership rules, and relations between organizations at different levels or sectors. Internal administrative reforms, by contrast, are concerned with changes in the distribution of responsibilities and resources within administrative organizations as well as the internal reorganization of decision-making rules.
External Administrative Reforms
- (1)Territorial re-scaling: European local governments have beenâto varying degreesâsubject to both territorial upscaling (amalgamation) and/or trans-scaling (inter-local cooperation) of subnational jurisdictions fueled, in part, by recent austerity measures and the hopes of national policy makers that such reforms will facilitate economies of scale. On the one hand, a group of countries can be identified in which national governments acted to reinforce the admini...