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- Lehrstuhl für Politikwissenschaft (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stephan Grohs) (188) (remove)
From a democratic perspective, the replacement of government or parliament by a public manager to enforce budget discipline marks a serious intervention. Transferred to the local level, the replacement of the mayor and the council in three German municipalities by a state official (a so-called state commissioner) in recent years has raised questions about the legi-timacy and adequacy of such a strong interventionist instrument. One crucial answer to be given to this legitimacy issue concerns effectiveness, in other words whether the instrument can fulfill its designated task by improving the local fiscal situation since the fiscal success of the commissioner is a basic prerequisite for legitimacy. By using a time-series approach of the synthetic control method (SCM) and constructing a synthetic comparison case to the town of Altena, an answer regarding the commissioner’s potential to reduce the short-term debt can be given. The commissioner was successful in limiting the debt increase and seems to have reversed the debt trend. This finding supports the effectiveness of rather hierarchical instruments for ensuring fiscal discipline at the local level and thereby adds to broadening the international public management literature on municipal takeovers.
Public officials have been shown to discriminate against citizens based on race and gender. We suggest that bureaucrats also discriminate based on political beliefs that citizens reveal to them. We support this argument with evidence from the application of freedom of assembly rights in the context of gay marriage. We confront German city administrations with requests about the organization of a political rally and randomize the underlying political belief and cause: the promotion of or opposition to same-sex marriage. We find that none of these causes receives discriminatory treatment per se. Instead, further explorative, yet theory-guided, analysis indicates that the cultural and political environment within which bureaucracies are embedded determines which of the two requests receives worse and less helpful answers. I.e. the treatment effect seems to be moderated by the local prevalence of Catholicism and the strength of sexually conservative political parties that oppose same-sex marriage.
This article asks how and why United Nations organizations reform their administrative structure and processes over time. It explores whether we can observe a convergence towards a coherent administrative model in the United Nations system. Like in most nation states, reform discussions according to models like New Public Management or post-New Public Management have permeated international public administrations. Against this background, the question of administrative convergence discussed for national administra-tive systems also arises for United Nations international public administrations. On the one hand, similar challenges, common reform ‘fashions’ and an increasing exchange within the United Nations system make convergence likely. Yet, on the other hand, distinct tasks, administrative styles and path dependencies might support divergent reform trajectories. This question of convergence is addressed by measuring the frequency, direction and rationales for reforms, using a sample of four international public administrations from the United Nations’ specialized agencies (the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank). We find that conver-gence depends on the area of reform (human resources or organizational matters are more harmonized than others) and time (some international public administrations are faster or earlier than others).
Die Evaluation des Erfolgs von Instrumenten bei der Bekämpfung kommunaler Schulden stellt angesichts der Problemlage vieler Kommunen eine gleichermaßen praxis- wie wissen-schaftsrelevante Forschungslücke dar, ist allerdings mit den Herausforderungen teils geringer Fallzahlen und unklaren Ursache-Wirkungszusammenhängen konfrontiert. Die vorliegende quantitative Analyse nimmt die kausalen Effekte von Sparkommissaren, dem Stärkungspakt Stadtfinanzen und freiwilligen Schuldenbremsen auf die Entwicklung der Verschuldung mithilfe synthetischer Matching-Modelle in den Blick. Die Ergebnisse deuten dabei keineswegs auf einen durchgängigen Erfolg der Instrumente hin und legen den Schluss nahe, dass ein erfolgreicher Einsatz stark kontextspezifisch ist.
Severe fiscal pressure experienced by some German municipalities has led to a shift in the way municipalities are controlled by the responsible state governments. Instead of purely relying on a system of approving budgets and borrowing, some states have established debt relief programmes which combine grants and sanctions, or even sent austerity commis-sioners who take over responsibilities of councils and mayors. Whether these are deemed proportionate and legitimate interventions into the constitutionally guaranteed administra-tive autonomy of the local level depends heavily on their success in limiting local government debt. Based on an innovative synthetic control approach, this paper undertakes an empirical assessment of a recent debt relief programme in North Rhine-Westphalia and the deploy-ment of an austerity commissioner, revealing that both instruments to some degree positive-ly impacted upon local government debt, as compared to non-intervention. Nevertheless, it finds the effect is limited in substantial terms.
Academia and practitioners agree that the local level is crucial for EU cohesion. However, further conceptual and empirical development is needed. The paper introduces an under-standing of European cohesion consisting of a horizontal and a vertical dimension, covering individuals' relationships with each other and the polity. We review the predominantly nation-state-focused, interdisciplinary literature on support for the European Union (vertical dimension) and societal Europeanization (horizontal dimension) through a 'local lens', arguing in favour of combining the two dimensions in one framework of cohesion. We derive empirical expectations about the role of local agency for European cohesion and operationa-lise European cohesion, thus designing a coherent framework for analysing the local foundations of European cohesion.
This chapter focuses on the impact of specific “administrative styles,” understood as the everyday routines of the organization, on the reform patterns in international organizations. Consolidators are hence primarily driven by positional rather than policy interests. Entre-preneurs combine the latter two types; they develop administrative routines that entail intensive bureaucratic advocacy in policy-making and a strong orientation toward institu-tional consolidation to strengthen the administration’s position. In contrast, the picture should be completely different for consolidators. Given consolidators’ dominant motivation to secure their institutional status and legitimacy, organizational reforms will to a far greater degree reveal patterns of emulation of dominant reform paradigms and reform ideas in their organizational environment. Public sector organizations adopted these reports from the private sector as a form of communication with external and internal stakeholders. Most reforms have been identified within the area of organizational reforms, for example, institutional adjustments of the directorates.
Stephan Grohs, Professor für Politikwissenschaften an der Deutschen Universität für Ver-waltungswissenschaften Speyer, klärt zunächst den Begriff „Eigenständige Jugendpolitik“
und die Rolle der kommunalen Ebene für deren Umsetzung. Auf dem Hintergrund der in zwei Projekten gesammelten Erfahrungen, sieht er eine deutliche Diskrepanz zwischen „wohlmeinenden“ Programmen auf Bundes- und Landesebene und den Realisierungs-möglichkeiten der dort formulierten Ziele im Gestrüpp der „rechtlichen, finanziellen und politischen Rahmenbedingungen“ auf der örtlichen Ebene. Er verweist aber auch auf An-satzpunkte dafür, wie es gelingen könnte, die Interessen von Jugendlichen in der Kommu-nalpolitik stärker zur Geltung zu bringen. Dazu müssten sich allerdings sowohl die Akteu-rinnen und Akteure in den Kommunalverwaltungen bzw. der politischen Gremien bewegen, als auch die Vertreterinnen und Vertreter der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe.