Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis

Across the developed world, the last 50 years have seen a dramatic wave of municipal mergers, often motivated by a quest for economies of scale. Re-examining the theoretical arguments invoked to justify these reforms, we find that, in fact, there is no compelling reason to expect them to yield net gains. Potential savings in, for example, administrative costs are likely to be offset by opposite effects for other domains. Past attempts at empirical assessment have been bedeviled by endogeneity—which municipalities amalgamate is typically nonrandom—creating a danger of bias. We exploit the particular characteristics of a recent Danish reform to provide more credible difference-in-differences estimates of the effect of mergers. The result turns out to be null: cost savings in some areas were offset by deterioration in others, while for most public services jurisdiction size did not matter at all. Given significant transition costs, the finding raises questions about the rationale behind a global movement that has already restructured local government on almost all continents.

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Jurisdiction Size and Local Government Policy Expenditure: Assessing the Effect of Municipal Amalgamation

In selecting the United Kingdom/England, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain and Hungary as comparative cases, and in focusing on three institutional tracks (local leadership, internal administration and external operation), this article first discusses, on the one hand, whether local government has been institutionally strengthened, and on the other, whether governance-type actor networks have expanded in the countries under consideration and whether, across-countries, this developments has shown convergence or divergence. Secondly, it addresses the question of whether the two currents (strengthening of traditional local government and expansion of local governance networks) are conflicting or complementary.

Local Government Reforms in (Seven) European Countries: Between Convergent and Divergent, Conflicting and Complementary Developments

In this paper I aim to show why embracing and exploring the idea of shape-shifting representation can provide an important empirical and analytical focal point for our understanding of political representation, especially in such highly mediatised, narrowcast and panoptical times. Building upon recent innovations in theories of representation, I show in particular how a partial recasting of current analysis of taxonomies of representation (and aspects of the theoretical and motivational frames that give rise to them) can advance us towards a conception that (1) better captures the core practical dynamics of representation today, without (2) sacrificing a sense of the breadth and complexity of existing representative practices.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2136986_code1868257.pdf?abstractid=2104796&mirid=2

Shape-Shifting Representation

The vulnerability of the four south European countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) to the global financial turmoil makes the analysis of their responses to the fiscal crisis particularly interesting for the assessment of the implications of fiscal austerity for public management. Drawing on the historical institutionalist approach, our analysis reveals a picture of variation in the impact of crisis on patterns of public management across south European countries. However, it also shows uniformity in the strategies of retrenchment as in all the four countries under examination governments failed to connect cutback management to ambitious administrative modernization programmes.

Fiscal Retrenchment in Southern Europe: Changing patterns of public management in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain

Patterns of Local Autonomy in Europe

This chapter develops a comprehensive and empirically applicable concept to measure the autonomy of local government in the 39 European countries covered. To this end, we first discuss already existing measurements and typologies of local autonomy and decentralisation. We argue that existing data on fiscal decentralisation only tells part of the story and does not capture the role and discretion of local government in an adequate manner. Subsequently, we present our methodology to measure local autonomy, the coding scheme we developed to code the different countries as well as the different variables used. The chapter contains also information about the organisation of the whole project, the different experts involved and the method applied to gather comparative data.

Measuring Local Autonomy

The main purpose of this paper is understanding public administration formation and change in Spain. Its development before and since the years of Franco from 1939 to 1975, is noticeably path dependent in nature. As this paper will show, the foundations were laid before the Franco regime. Then came a period of political domination of the bureaucracy and the emergence of a key structural element of Spanish administration, the special corps. The paper covers the period of political transition, democratic consolidation, and the many processes of administrative reforms. These include the reforms of the Spanish civil service as well as the deep processes of reform.

Administrative tradition and reforms in spain: adaptation versus innovation

Over the last quarter of a century Spain has experienced profound changes not only in what is referred to as democratic consolidation but also changes which involve a process of territorial devolution, the building of a welfare state, the modernisation of its public administration and its integration in the European Union.

Twenty-five years of democratic local government in Spain

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Carmen Navarro

Papers

Patterns of Local Autonomy in Europe

Measuring Local Autonomy

Administrative tradition and reforms in spain: adaptation versus innovation

Twenty-five years of democratic local government in Spain

Is Local Always Better? Strengths and Limitations of Local Governance for Service Delivery