Symposium on the Politics of Local Public-Sector Reform: A Global Perspective on Local Government Reinvigoration (original) (raw)

2018, International Public Management Journal

In many countries around the world, local governments are taking center stage in debates and processes of public-sector reform. Compared to the large body of research that now exists on the politics of public-sector reform at the national level (e.g., Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017; Raadschelders and Vigoda-Gadot 2015), less work has been done on the impact of political forces, broadly conceived, on change at the local level. The reforms being debated and implemented are important because of their ability to reshape the form and functioning of the tier of government closest to citizens. They are also important because widespread processes of decentralization mean that local governments have come to assume greater responsibility in planning and delivering a wide range of goods and services on which citizens and communities depend. In light of the potential impact of the reform of local administrative and management practices, advancing our understanding of the political forces driving this reform agenda is paramount. That is the aim of this symposium. Since the beginning of the new public management "revolution" in the 1980s, local governments have traditionally played second fiddle to national administrations in policy debates about public-sector modernization. This has changed, however, in recent years. Eager to reduce the cost of public services while also making them more responsive to the demands and needs of citizens and communities, local and national politicians have taken up the task of reinvigorating management practices and organizational forms in cities and municipalities across Europe, the United States, and beyond. While increased public and political attention to local government reform may be more recent in many places, over the years, scholars working in the fields of public management and public administration, and to some extent political science, have produced a large number of studies about local public-sector reforms. This includes work on the managerial shift from centralized to decentralized and hybrid modes of governance (e.g., Kersting and Vetter 2003), work on the rise of NPM and post-NPM ideas related to open markets, performance management and measurement (e.g., Kuhlmann and Bouckaert 2016), as well as mechanisms for encouraging and coordinating the involvement of new actors in public problem solving (e.g., Vigoda-Gadot 2005