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- Lehrstuhl für Politikwissenschaft (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stephan Grohs) (188) (remove)
Die kommunale Europaarbeit ist mit einer Vielzahl von Herausforderungen konfrontiert. In diesem Working Paper stellen wir Beispiele bester Praktiken vor, die unterschiedliche Aspek-te dieser Herausforderungen adressieren. Von der Fördermittelakquise über Netzwerkarbeit, Zielgruppenansprache und Städtepartnerschaftsarbeit bis hin zur internen Europaarbeit finden sich ganz unterschiedliche Beispiele, wie Europaarbeit lokal organisiert werden kann. Die Steckbriefe geben dabei eine schnelle Übersicht, mit welchem Ressourcenaufwand das jeweilige Projekt durchgeführt werden kann und beinhalten Hinweise zu Herausforderungen und Nutzen des Projekts. So können Ideen einfach und passgenau adaptiert werden.
One of the standard textbooks of German-language evaluation research has undergone a new edition. Since the first edition from 2007, 15 years have passed. In the meantime, a lot has happened with regard to the institutionalisation and professionalisation of evaluation research. With the new edition of the Handbook for Evaluation, students, practitioners and also experienced evaluators receive a significantly expanded and updated version of the classic. The volume documents the steps taken so far in the institutionalisation and professionalisation of evaluation and provides practical advice for conducting evaluations throughout their entire course. Despite some desiderata, the handbook is still the most comprehensive introduction to evaluation research for many practitioners and students in German language. It offers orientation and serves as a reference work even for experienced evaluators. Stockmann’s commitment to the professionalisation and institutionalisation of evaluation has thus created an institution of its own kind in the form of the Handbook, the reception of which will hopefully help to clear up the misunderstandings often found about the status and quality characteristics of evaluations.
Influence of "hard" law on national policies still is a central topic in Europeanisation research. One aspect often overlooked is the impact of "soft" law instruments such as the "Open Method of Coordination" (OMC). Through the OMC all member states agree on common goals and exchange "best practices" to improve policy coordination in a certain area without the obligation (how) to design policies. OMC impacts in individual member states have been studied extensively, yet a comparative perspective explaining their variance is lacking. This study by Niclas Beinborn tries to fill this gap by analysing the different impacts of a recent OMC: the European Youth Strategy 2010 (EUYS). His analysis is twofold: in a first step he applies theory-driven fuzzy-set QCA to a novel dataset depicting the variance of national activities around the EUYS. As causalities remain unclear, in a second step he presents an innovative analysis framework encompassing two dimensions - national motivation and relative openness to implement non-binding EU law - to define ideal types of OMC adaptation. Case studies on the EUYS in Germany and Ireland proof the potential of this framework to explain why and how OMCs work (differently).
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.
Europeanisation situates local governments in a constantly changing environment, bringing challenges, opportunities, and constraints. These circumstances raise the question, how
local authorities adapt to the process of European integration, face its challenges, and use
its diverse opportunity structures. The article explores four dimensions, through which Europeanisation hits the ground of local government: downloading, uploading, dissemi-nation, and horizontal networking. It examines the distribution of different types of Europe-related activities at the local level using data from a survey sent to all 396 independent cities, towns, and municipalities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Our empirical analysis provides an overview of the most and least frequent Europe-related activities within the different types of local authorities. The findings of our multivariate analysis shows that next to the direct affectedness by Europeanisation, the municipalities’ capacities in terms of financial and institutional resources have a major influence on their efforts towards Europe.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Die Einbindung gesellschaftlicher Interessen in ministerielle Entscheidungen ist im Rahmen der governance-Forschung längst akzeptiert. Gesellschaftliche Interessen, dazu zählt die ganze Bandbreite der artikulierten und aggregierten Interessen, erhöhen nicht nur die Legitimität der ministeriellen Entscheidungen, sondern erweitern auch das Informations-spektrum der Behörden. Theoretisch begreifen insbesondere organisationsökonomische Ansätze diese Ergänzung durch gesellschaftliche Akteure als effizient. Demokratietheoretische Ansätze betonen hingegen die Herausforderungen transparenter und gleicher Betrachtung diverser Interessen.
Dieser Aufsatz vergleicht die ministeriellen Netzwerke in Deutschland, Niederlande, Schweden, und dem Vereinigten Königreich und versucht sich an der Einschätzung, welche Akteure, welche Informationen zu welcher Nützlichkeit für das Ministerium anbieten. Dazu greift das Papier auf knapp 100 Interviews mit nationalen Ministerien und ihren Kooperationsnetzwerken bezüglich verschiedene EU-Richtlinien zurück. Der Aufsatz stellt fest, dass die Integration und Betrachtung verschiedener gesellschaftlicher Interessen zwischen Politikfeld, Land und auch auf der policy-Ebene variiert. Weil die administrativen Prozesse zur Bildung und Nutzung dieser Netzwerke nur bedingt voneinander abweichen, fehlt es bis dato an einer Erklärung der Abweichungen.
The regulation of interest mediation in democratic, economic relevant countries has not been systematically analyzed in a big N-study so far (smaller exceptions are (Chari et al., 2010; Holman and Luneburg, 2012)). This is surprising since interest mediation itself, the integration of societal actors into the decision-making processes, has been studied from many different perspectives using varying methodological approaches (Reutter, 2012; Willems and von Winter, 2007; Beyers et al., 2008; Eising et al., 2017).
This paper starts with the assumption that each country has a distinct way of dealing with the interests in its society, ranging from social, environmental, religious to economic ones, just to name a few. Each democratic country has to decide, how and in which ways societal interests are integrated into decision-making and which rules apply for these processes.
Existing research in interest mediation in general has in common that the concept of institutions helps us to map similarities as well as differences in the system of interest mediation. Institutions are understood as man-made, formalized (written) or non-formalized (unwritten) common conceptions or understandings of how power and other resources are distributed and exerted, how competences and responsibilities are defined, shaped and shared, as well as how interdependencies are structured (Morisse-Schilbach, 2012; March and Olsen, 1989; Mayntz and Scharpf, 1995).
The paper offers a conceptual framework to map the existing institutions relevant for regulating interest mediation in OECD countries to help understand the qualitative similarities and differences. To do so, it looks at formalized (written) or non-formalized (unwritten) rules, in terms of laws and by-laws, administrative procedures, and patterns of practices. The aim is to measure a) the openness of the interest mediation system in terms of equal access for all societal interests, and b) the level of formalized and non-formalized regulation to arrive at a typology of either open or closed as well as regulated or unregulated interest mediation systems.
The German Environment Agency has developed a guide in English to provide a concise introduction to the German environmental administration for an international readership. The guide is divided into five sections: After the introduction in Section 1, Section 2 introduces the wide range of subjects related to environmental protection in Germany. This is followed by Section 3, which describes the array of instruments the German environmental administration uses in pursuing its goals. The administrative structure in the Federal Republic of Germany, especially the division of tasks between the federal level, the level of the (Bundes-)Länder (federal states) and the local-level are explained in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 provides examples of important procedures and instruments in administrative environmental protection.
Short presentation of the corresponding conference paper "A soft shell with a powerful core? Soft Europeanisation and social policy: a new understanding of the Open Method of Coordination and its potential to enhance social welfare in Europe", focussing on the theoretical idea and empirical evidence.
Die öffentliche Verwaltung tritt in Evaluationsprozessen als Auftraggeberin, durchführende Instanz oder als Evaluationsgegenstand auf. Aufgrund der sehr unterschiedlichen Evalua-tionspraxis im Handlungsfeld und des Öffentlichkeitsbezugs, aus dem sich besondere Rechenschaftspflichten ergeben, sollte die Berücksichtigung spezifischer Standards wie beispielweise der DeGEval-Standards selbstverständlich sein. Gleichwohl zeigt zumindest die oberflächliche und teilweise anekdotische Evidenz des Beitrags, dass die DeGEval-Standards im Handlungsfeld „Öffentliche Verwaltung“ nur eine nachgeordnete Rolle spielen, vielfach sogar sowohl bei Auftraggeberinnen/Auftraggebern als auch bei Evaluatorinnen/Evaluatoren unbekannt sind.
The European Semester is an instrument for coordinating and monitoring the economic and fiscal policies of the EU member states. However, since the European Commission explicitly emphasizes the importance of the countries’ public administration for economic growth, it seems reasonable to assume that the member states’ bureaucracy will also be addressed within the framework of the European Semester. This article therefore examines the admi-nistrative policy ideas and reform proposals of the European Commission by analysing the annual country-specific recommendations addressed to all EU member states between 2011 and 2019 under the European Semester. Applying quantitative text analysis to all CSRs during the investigation period shows that the European Semester is used to a considerable extent to propose administrative reforms to the Member States. Out of the 466 reform proposals identified, more than half were related to either the management of public finances or the administrative structure in the member states. On the average (without Greece), each country received 17,3 reform proposals with administrative policy implications over the entire period. However, the differences between the EU member states are significant, as can be seen from the distribution of the reform proposals.
Region
(2019)
4. Speyerer Weintagung
(2012)
3. Speyerer Weintagung
(2011)
Verwaltungsstile
(2019)
Die nationale Koordination in europäisierten Politikfeldern gehört zweifelsohne zu jenen Bereichen, in denen die ministeriellen Organisationsstrukturen und Koordinationsmechanismen mit einer zunehmenden Komplexität der alltäglichen Problemstellungen konfrontiert sind. Dies stellt das politisch-administrative System der bundesdeutsche Ministerialbürokratie im zunehmend von der EU bestimmten Tagesgeschäft vor die Herausforderung, trotz veränderter Rah-menbedingungen Kohärenz und Konsistenz sowohl bei der Formulierung europapolitischer Positionen als auch der Umsetzung europäischen Rechts an den Tag zu legen.
In dem vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Strukturen und administrativen Verfahrensweisen bei der Implementation von EU-Recht in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland analysiert. Zu diesem Zweck werden zum einen die Erkenntnisse aus leitfadengestützten Interviews mit Ministerialbeamten aus dem BMI sowie BMAS zum Ablauf der administrativen Verfahrensweisen bei der Transposition von EU-Richtlinien dargestellt und zum anderen die Ergebnisse einer Befragung zur personellen Ausstattung der Bundesministerien präsentiert. Der Beitrag kommt zu dem Er-gebnis, die Organisationsstrukturen und administrativen Verfahrensweisen innerhalb der deutschen Ministerialverwaltung bei der Umsetzung von EU-Recht weitgehend einem dezentralen Koordinationsmuster entsprechen.
Wirksame Finanzaufsicht über die Kommunen. Dimensionen und Determinanten der Umsetzungspraxis
(2018)
In Zeiten einer in vielen Kommunen Deutschlands ungebremsten Haushaltskrise kommt der Frage nach der Rolle der staatlichen Finanzaufsicht über die Kommunen eine ungebrochene praktische Bedeutung zu. Obwohl die Finanzaufsicht in allen deutschen Ländern die Vorgabe ausgeglichener kommunaler Haushalte garantieren soll, beschränkte sich die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Institution meist nur auf rechtlichformale Betrachtungen. Dieser Beitrag nimmt explizit
die bisher vernachlässigte Vollzugspraxis der kommunalen Finanzaufsicht in den Blick und analysiert drei für ihre Wirksamkeit als konstitutiv erachtete Aspekte: Die politische Unabhängigkeit der Aufsichtsbehörden, deren urchsetzungsfähigkeit
sowie die Kooperation mit den Kommunen. Der zentralen Frage nach der Bedeutung dieser Dimensionen und deren Bewertung in der Praxis wird in einem ersten, deskriptiven Schritt auf der Basis von bislang einzigartigen Umfragedaten und qualitativen Interviews begegnet. Konsequenterweise ergibt sich daraus die Frage nach zentralen Determinanten der einzelnen Dimensionen, die in einem zweiten, analytischen Schritt durch theoretisch hergeleitete politische und haushaltsbezogene Variablen empirisch beantwortet wird. Die Ergebnisse sind eindeutig: Die Wahrnehmung der Praxis kommunaler Finanzaufsicht ist am ehesten von der fiskalischen Problemlage vor Ort determiniert,
Parteicouleur oder parteipolitische Kongruenz zwischen
Bürgermeister und Landrat spielen keine Rolle.