Management and Organization of Local Governments

Conceptual Overview

The traditional style of local government was associated with a strong public sector, the municipal provision of local services, and after 1945, the emergence of the welfare state. In the United Kingdom and other countries, the private-sector-derived principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) took hold during the 1980s and 1990s. The Australian state government of Victoria changed its organizational culture and decision-making processes and introduced CCT contracting-out services to the private sector to achieve financial savings, as Alam and Pacher wrote about in 2000. In Denmark, according to Sehested, since 1990 there have been structural changes in the organization of local government that have resulted in fewer local authority committees and greater internal decentralization of local authority functions and services.

Sanderson says public sector reforms throughout OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) member states have produced a new model of “public governance” with a reduced role for the state and a strong emphasis on performance management. In the United Kingdom, this style of governance was encouraged by a New Public Management model that was imposed on local government. There was an instrumental focus on performance management to implement a modernizing agenda that emphasized continuous improvement through the concept of Best Value. Other countries have followed a similar path. The New Public Management model inspired reform in German local governments, which Kuhlmann wrote about in 2004, and it shaped reform of local political leadership in New Zealand to focus on joined-up working and partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders at the local level, analyzed by Cheyne in 2004. Meanwhile, in Cambodia there was a decentralization of managerial and administrative responsibilities to local authorities, as Turner observed in 2002.

In 1998, Bogason described how Scandinavian local government moved away from a system of centralized [Page 843]bureaucratic control and local government as the foundation for welfare state provision toward the adoption of new managerial styles similar to those of the New Public Management model. Dutch local government was also encouraged to adopt the New Public Management model with its emphasis on a businesslike practice, which Van Helden and Jansen wrote about in 2003. Desai and Imrie saw a New Public Management revolution and wave of public sector reforms sweeping through developed, developing, and transitional countries. Social and political change in Korea from the 1990s has increased local democracy and strengthened civil society through a process of decentralization that improved citizen participation at the local level, as Myung-goo noted. The Japanese take on New Public Management, on the other hand, developed from Anglo-Saxon experiences but was implemented in a unique way in response to a crisis in public finances and a need for public sector reform that resulted in self-reform by the bureaucracy itself. This caused some reorganization of local government institutions, which Kudo has observed and commented on.

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