Reforming local public services

Abstract

The following article is aimed at analysing reforms in public service delivery and management at the local level of government in Germany and France from a cross-countries comparative perspective. Particular attention is paid to the results and effects these reform initiatives have caused with regard to the administrative organization, steering capacities, and output performance. Two major approaches of reform will be addressed: privatization, contracting-out, and ‘corporatization’ of local services on the one hand and public management reforms on the other. Proceeding from the distinct ‘starting conditions’ of reforms in the two local government systems, the question will be pursued, as to whether there has been an increasingly convergent or divergent development in French and German local service provision, and how these evolutions can be explained.

Key words:

• Local government reforms (Germany, France)
• local public services
• new public management
• public administration

Notes

For lack of space, we leave aside here the category of input changes (savings, efficiency gains) and that of ‘productivity’ also introduced by Pollitt and Bouckaert. We also do not refer to the relation between input, output and system change in this article (for empirical evidence on Germany concerning this question see Bogumil et al. 2007: 83–96, 290–306).

The survey was jointly conducted by the German universities of Constance and Bochum (Jörg Bogumil – Project leader, Stephan Grohs, Anna K. Ohm), Potsdam (Werner Jann, Christoph Reichard), Marburg (Leo Kißler) and Berlin (Sabine Kuhlmann, Helmut Wollmann). A more detailed (German language) report on the project findings can be found in Bogumil et al. 2007.

In Germany, case studies were conducted in the Cities of Detmold (North Rhine-Westphalia; 74,000 inhabitants) and Schwerin (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania; 102,000 inhabitants). In France, we selected Le Havre (Normandie; 193,000 inhabitants) and Rouen (Normandie; 109,000 inhabitants; for more details see Kuhlmann 2008). The cases were selected with respect to the ‘ceteris paribus principle’, which allows generalizing conclusions based on systematic case comparison.

Social services in Germany are however an exception to this model of municipal self-production as they are predominantly provided by non-profit actors whereas local governments are restricted to an enabling and financing function.

Empirical basis: analysis of 3,034 corporations of thirty-six big German cities. The study revealed that in the cities under consideration, none of the energy companies were organized as public law corporations (Libbe et al. 2004: 75).

In the water sector, these are: Compagny Générale des Eaux (CGE), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (SLE) and Societé d'aménagement urbain et rural (SAUR).

The KGSt is a non-profit think tank, mainly funded by municipalities, with a long and excellent record in consulting particularly local authorities in administrative and organizational matters.

The survey was conducted by Maurice Basle in 118 French cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, forty-eight of which responded (see Basle 2003).

The empirical basis, here, is a survey of all German and French mayors in cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants (for more detailed information refer to Heinelt and Egner 2004).