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Future Outlook and Scenarios
(2021)
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.
This introduction and the special issue are a contribution to comparative intergovernmental studies and public administration. This introduction provides an analytical overview of the intergovernmental relations policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic across ten European countries, focussing on the early waves of the disease. These policy responses are analysed in terms of three types of IGR process: (1) a predominantly multi-layered policy process involving limited conflict, (2) a centralised policy process as the central government attempts to suppress conflict and (3) a conflicted policy process where such attempts are contested and tend to contribute to poor policy outcomes. The conclusion, then, reviews the difficulties and trade-offs involved in attaining a balanced multi-layered, intergovernmental process.
Administrative reforms refer to conscious decisions about institution building and institutional change that are taken at the end of political processes and can be conceived as the attempt by politico-administrative actors to change the institutional order (polity) within which they make and implement decisions. In this paper we proceed from the assumption that the role of politics, the constellation of political actors and arenas vary according to the scope and objectives of administrative reforms. Depending on whether they refer to changes between organizational units/levels/sectors ('external institutional policy') or to an internal reorganization ('internal institutional policy'), different actor strategies, patterns of conflict and power constellations can be expected. As external administrative reforms are aimed at changing functional and/or territorial jurisdictions and thus always involve external actors, larger resistance, heavier political conflicts and generally more politicization are likely to occur than in the case of internal administrative reforms. Yet, for internal reforms, too, actor coalitions which support or block institutional changes, promotors, leaders, and moderators have revealed to shape processes and outcomes. Against this background, this chapter examines the influence of politics on various types of administrative reforms making a distinction between external and internal institutional policies. We analyse the role of politico-administrative actors, their strategies and influence on the formulation, trajectories and outcomes of administrative reforms. Our major focus will be on reforms in the multi-level system on the one hand and on (Post-) NPM reforms on the other as two major international trends. Drawing on reform experiences in different European countries, the chapter will reveal to what extent actors' interests and influences have triggered and shaped administrative reforms and which difference these have made for the reform outcome.
Im vorliegenden Beitrag steht das Zusammenspiel von institutioneller Kompetenzverteilung im föderalen Mehrebenensystem und Funktionsfähigkeit der Verwaltung im Bereich der Integrationspolitik im Zentrum. Dieser Verwaltungsbereich gewinnt zunehmend an Bedeutung, da sich für den Personenkreis der ca. 983.000 anerkannten Flüchtlinge, die länger oder dauerhaft in Deutschland bleiben werden, inzwischen neue Problemlagen ergeben, welche vor allem Fragen der Arbeitsmarktintegration, Aus- und Weiterbildung und berufsbezogenen Sprachförderung betreffen. Es wird der Leitfrage nachgegangen, welche institutionellen Strukturen und Aufgabenprofile sich im Bereich der Integrationsverwaltung im föderalen Mehrebenensystem herausgebildet haben und inwieweit diese sich als funktional und leistungsfähig oder als reformbedürftig erwiesen haben. Dabei wird auf Aspekte der Zentralisierung, Dezentralisierung und Verwaltungsverflechtung als wesentliche Institutionalisierungsoptionen eingegangen und aufgezeigt, dass in einigen Bereichen mehr Entflechtung in Form von Dezentralisierung und Aufgabenabschichtung „nach unten“ sinnvoll erscheint, während in anderen Handlungsfeldern verstärkte Bündelung und (besser funktionierende) Verwaltungsverflechtung angebracht wären.
Deutschland landet in europäischen Rankings zur Verwaltungsdigitalisierung regelmäßig im hinteren Mittelfeld. Die bisherige Bilanz der Digitalisierung für die deutsche öffentliche Verwaltung ist trotz verstärkter Anstrengungen aller föderaler Ebenen, wie sie insbesondere in der Umsetzung des Onlinezugangsgesetzes (OZG) zum Ausdruck kommen, nach wie vor als eher ernüchternd einzuschätzen. Vor diesem Hintergrund beschäftigt sich der vorliegende Beitrag mit der Umsetzung, den Hürden und ausgewählten Wirkungsaspekten der Verwaltungsdigitalisierung auf kommunaler Ebene. Die empirische Basis bildet eine 2019 abgeschlossene Studie zur digitalen Transformation in einem Schlüsselbereich bürgerbezogener Leistungserbringung, den städtischen Bürgerämtern, welche die am meisten nachgefragten kommunalen Dienstleistungen bereitstellen. Aus der Analyse lassen sich wichtige Erkenntnisse für die zukünftige Entwicklung der Digitalisierung öffentlicher Leistungserbringung in Deutschland ableiten.
This chapter outlines the organization and allocation of functions at the meso-level of government in Germany (states/Länder administrations). Furthermore, we shed light on the carriers and qualification profiles of the top bureaucrats in meso-level administrations. These high-rank territorial administrators/executives—state appointed heads of administrative districts (Regierungspräsidenten) on the one hand, elected heads of county administrations (Landräte) on the other hand—can be regarded as the German ‘equivalents’ of the prefects in countries with a Napoleonic administrative tradition. Finally, we analyse major reforms that have led to (at times, profound) transformations in territorial administrations, raising the question of to what extent alternative models of territorial bundling and coordination functions are sound and sustainable.