Local public management reforms in Germany

Abstract

This article, part of a sequence of comparative articles on local government reforms in The Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany, describes and analyses the recent public management reforms at the local level of Germany. After an overview about the constitutional framework of local self government and the reform waves of the last decades, the paper concentrates on the ‘new steering model’ as the German variant of NPM. The article shows the short history of this reform movement, describes the main elements of the reform concept and explains some of the causes, forces and actors of implementation. It goes on to discuss the present status of implementation, explains several shortcomings of the concept, and presents the – very limited – empirical evidence of achieved results. Finally, the paper draws some conclusions from a comparative view on the similarities and differences of local management reforms in Germany and the two other countries.