Lehrstuhl für Politikwissenschaft (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stephan Grohs)
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Public lecture (20)
- Article (19)
- Part of a Book (6)
- Report (2)
- Working Paper (2)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
- Review (1)
Language
- English (51) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (51)
Keywords
- Administrative Styles (1)
- European Directives (1)
- Europeanization (1)
- Interessengruppen (1)
- Regulierung (1)
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.