TY  - GEN
A1  - Ebinger, Falk
A1  - Richter, Philipp
T1  - Decentralizing for performance?
BT  - a quantitative assessment of functional reforms in the German Länder
T2  - International review of administrative sciences
N2  - In the last 10 years, the governments of most of the German Lander initiated administrative reforms. All of these ventures included the municipalization of substantial sets of tasks. As elsewhere, governments argue that service delivery by communes is more cost-efficient, effective and responsive. Empirical evidence to back these claims is inconsistent at best: a considerable number of case studies cast doubt on unconditionally positive appraisals. Decentralization effects seem to vary depending on the performance dimension and task considered. However, questions of generalizability arise as these findings have not yet been backed by more 'objective' archival data. We provide empirical evidence on decentralization effects for two different policy fields based on two studies. Thereby, the article presents alternative avenues for research on decentralization effects and matches the theoretical expectations on decentralization effects with more robust results. The analysis confirms that overly positive assertions concerning decentralization effects are only partially warranted. As previous case studies suggested, effects have to be looked at in a much more differentiated way, including starting conditions and distinguishing between the various relevant performance dimensions and policy fields.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 92 
KW  - decentralization
KW  - de-concentration
KW  - federalism
KW  - local government
KW  - performance meas- urement
KW  - public service delivery
KW  - social and environmental administration
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405158
ER  -