DIFU-Extranet
Security in the City
Olaf Winkel
Civic Community and New Public Management in Local Self-Government
Can the civic community model help overcome reform blockade relating to New Public Management? A number of basic observations about political logic and economic logic
1. Introduction
2. The Civic Community Model as a New Hope
3. New Public Management as the Dominant Modernisation Paradigm
4. Political Logic and Economic Logic as Complementary Maxims for Action
5. Civic Community from the Perspective of Political and Economic Logics
6. New Public Management from the Perspective of Political and Economic Logics
6.1 Task Outsourcing and PPP
6.2 Internal Modernisation
7. Dangers of the Dominance of Economic Logic in New Public Management
7.1 Problems with Task Outsourcing and PPP
7.2 Problems with Internal Modernisation
8. The Civic Community Model and New Public Management - Conclusions and Recommendations
9. Postscript on the Legal Aspect
10. Final Remarks
Abstract:
In recent years, problems with administrative modernisation following the New Control Model (NCM) have become undeniable. They are increasingly cited as a reason for integrating NCM with the civic community model. However, reforms enriched by this component have also produced anything but convincing results. This article examines the reasons from a quasi systems-theoretical perspective, according to which the logics of politics and economics can be regarded as maxims for social action which, while indispensable and complementary, are not always easy to reconcile. The study shows that the civic community concept does not readily lend itself for the stabilization of a modernization process in turbulence due to NCM.
1. Introduction
The problems and shortcomings experienced with administrative modernisation in Germany on the New Public Management (NPM) model are becoming more and more evident. They are now increasingly taken as justification to couple NPM and its "German version," the New Control Model (NCM) (Jann 1998: 72), with the civic community model (cf. especially KGSt 1999, as well as Banner 1997: 125 ff., KGSt 1996a: 106 ff., Nährlich 2001: 168 and Plamper 1998: 11 ff.). However, reforms incorporating this new component have also failed to convince. While it is still relatively easy, at least at the theoretical level, to see one's way from bureaucratic-centralist administration to results-oriented, distributed administration, the "road from a service community to a civic community" (Plamper 1998: 11) still seems to run largely in the dark, even at the conceptual level. And there is a lack of convincing practical examples of successful synthesis even less. It is therefore worthwhile to look at the compatibility of the two approaches in greater depth. We adopt a quasi systems-theoretical understanding of social entities, according to which political and economic logics are regarded as indispensable and complementary but also as difficult to reconcile maxims of social action.
2. The Civic Community Model as a New Hope
The concept of civic community (cf especially Holtkamp 2000 and Langfeld 2001, as well as Nährlich 2001: 168 ff., Spitzer 1998: 131 ff. and Wohlfahrt 2001: 27 f.) aims to integrate the citizen as an "amplifier relieving and sharing responsibility" (Spitzer 1998: 132) in the development of the local polity. This requires suitable governance structures, i.e., conditions generating "new forms of cooperation between the state and society, between political and administrative authorities and citizens" (Jansen/Priddat 2001: 36). In particular, civic community is about enhancing the effectiveness and acceptability of politico-administrative action, about promoting volunteering activity to strengthen personal networks, about disburdening local budgets by integrating citizens in the performance of functions, and, not least of all, about greater participation by citizens in democratic decision-making. Participation can, according to Peter Dienel, be defined as "personal participation in joint decision-making with reasonable prospects of success" (Dienel 1997: 28).
Because it can be assumed that the citizen as "co-producer in service delivery" can be activated only if he feels he is taken seriously as a "political customer" (Holtkamp 2000: 11), broadening political participation is vitally important in this context. Lars Holtkamp puts it particularly graphically: "Thrusting a shovel into the citizen's hand will quite certainly not engender any greater public satisfaction or participation in political decision-making. What is more, it will not be possible to exploit the undoubted potential for collaboration to the full if other participative roles are not fostered. Citizens will not collaborate in performing public functions if they realise they have no say in what services are to be delivered, and if they are no more than a stopgap for public authorities withdrawing owing to a budget crisis" (Holtkamp 2000: 12).
Value change research in the tradition of Helmut Klages (cf. Klages 1992; 1993; 1995) shows that many people do respond to the concrete demands of the local community. Findings reveal not only that public "disaffection" with the "political class" is increasing (Klages 1993: 14), but also that people are willing to contribute in new ways and in "roles of responsibility" - for example self-help groups, volunteer agencies, or civic action groups - towards resolving social problems, and to participate in political decision-making (Klages 1995: 86).
3. New Public Management as the Dominant Modernisation Paradigm
The three key areas of action in the NPM (see Budäus 1998, Naschold 1995, and Schedler/Proeller 2000, as well as Schröter/Wollmann 1998: 59 ff.) are task outsourcing, public private partnership (PPP), and reform of internal administrative structures. Task outsourcing can be realised in various ways, including formal privatization, largely without material consequences (pseudo-privatization), contracting out (service delivery in collaboration with the private sector), and total privatization (genuine privatization). PPP, according to a widely accepted minimum definition, can be described as an "institutionalised form of cooperation" between public authorities and private actors for their mutual benefit (Schedler/Proeller 2000: 209). Reform of internal administrative structures aims to revamp organisational structures and operations, largely following private enterprise models, to restructure the interface between politics and administration, and to introduce cultural adjustments, e.g., competitive thinking and cost awareness among administrative staff.
The New Control Model developed by the Cooperative Association of Municipal Authorities (KGSt), which has dominated local government reform activities in Germany since the mid-1990s (cf. KGSt 1993; 1995; as well as Jann 1998: 70 ff. and Winkel 1997: 245 ff.) focuses on internal modernisation, prioritizing the establishment of a distributed management and organisational structure, output control, and the introduction of competition as a dynamizing factor. To these three interlinked "core elements" (Jann 1998: 73) various "sub-elements" (ibid.) are assigned which are also intended to achieve the desired effect not in isolation but in mutual interaction. In distributed management and organisational structure, these components are decentralized overall responsibility, central steering and controlling, and contract management; in output control the components are product orientation, business accounting, and quality management; and in competition they are performance comparison, tendering, and outsourcing. In addition, modern human resources management is to replace traditional reactive personnel administration and strategic principles are to be developed to guide politico-administrative action.
4. Political Logic and Economic Logic as Complementary Maxims for Action
Just as, from a structural-functional theory perspective, the political and economic systems perform "fundamental functions of social systems" (Fuchs-Heinritz 1995: 25), and are thus both indispensable and complementary components of societal communication systems,(1) the corresponding system logics also appear to be indispensable and complementary societal maxims for action (for details on the basics of Talcott Parsons' structural-functional systems theory, see Bosetzky/Heinrich/Schulz zur Wiesch 1994: 46 ff, Fuchs-Heinritz 1995: 25, Gukenbiehl 1995: 316 ff. and Gerhardt 2000: 343 ff.). Political logic can be described as the logic of defining and realising collectively binding goals, while economic logic is that of developing relations with the system's environment on resource-safeguarding lines by optimising the cost-return ratio. Because people are integrated into a wide range of action systems, they are exposed simultaneously to the demands of a wide range of functional logics in their life worlds, which can generate tensions and conflicts not only at the individual level but also in social entities like an administrative authority.
The strength of economic logic, which also makes it interesting for the reorganisation of public administration (cf. Kraft 1997: 370 ff. and Prümm/Pracher 1996: 59 ff), lies in its ability to direct the actions of individuals and organisations towards attaining short-term and quantitatively determinable goals. Political logic, in contrast, is crucial when it comes to directing individual or collective action towards long-term and only qualitatively definable goals. At the same time, political logic can be seen as the logic of democratic participation, for political participation is, of course, only practicable where there is scope for formative political action and political engagement.
Because both aspects are vital for politico-administrative action, it is necessary to establish a balance between an economic cost-benefit orientation and political competence for formative action. A neo-liberal or ultra-liberal position that seeks to reorganise relations between political and economic logics through regulatory reorientation towards the economic pole must therefore also be rejected. At the level of society as a whole, economic logic has for quite some time now been gaining the upper hand over political logic. This disequilibrium is particularly attributable to the globalisation and differentiation of modern society - phenomena that in many regards overtax forms of problem processing that are still based primarily on the nation state (cf. Beck 1997, Habermas 1998: 67 ff. or Scharpf 1998: 81 ff.).
5. Civic Community from the Perspective of Political and Economic Logics
The civic community concept aims to harness the community logic of solidarity for the performance of societal functions more effectively than at present. In so far as it is concerned with activating the citizen as co-producer in service delivery in the interests of budget consolidation, this reform approach can be interpreted as an effort to place the civic sense of community at the service of economic goals. Where, in contrast, it is a matter of creating scope for formative political action to be filled by citizen participation, the genuinely political aspects of the civic community become apparent. Their importance is underlined by the fact that (at least in the initial phase) any projects in this field depend on a vital political will and a high measure of political competence on the part of democratically legitimated decision-makers and top administration. The civic community is therefore most likely to flourish in a social milieu in which political logic operates as a maxim of action and where any predominance of economic logic is excluded.
Political will as a condition for establishing a civic community should not be underestimated, not least of all because, as a rule, citizen participation generates initial costs which are directly quantifiable and measurable, and shows positive effects only in the longer term, which are often not easily to be quantified and measured. Costs accrue already in setting up the necessary collaborative and co-decisional structures. For example, networks have to be developed between different institutions and actors for city marketing or Local Agenda 21 initiatives (cf. Nährlich 2001: 168 ff.). Discursive participation processes like mediation and the preparation of citizens' reports in planning cells involve particularly high costs (cf. especially Dienel 1997, as well as Holtkamp 2000: 97 ff.). Citizen participation makes an unquantifiable and only in the medium or long term visible impact, for example, in all projects where citizens not only provide labour for the performance of local government tasks but also contribute knowledge and experience in optimising local government decisions. All the advantages that participation in decision-making generate in enhancing public acceptance of the outcomes of politico-administrative action are naturally also beyond evaluation in monetary terms.
6. New Public Management from the Perspective of Political and Economic Logics
The model of bureaucratic, centralized control preceding NPM reforms neglected economic cost-benefit thinking in favour of elaborate mechanisms to secure lawful administrative action. This neglect has had a deleterious effect in many public authorities, producing, for example, "dysfunctionality" (Budäus 1998: 24) in the form of "organised irresponsibility" (Banner 1993: 350) and a "culture of wastefulness" (ibid.). The "bushfire spread" (Röber 1998: 49) of NCM in German local government can be seen as a reaction to these deficiencies, motivated by both political and economic considerations. From a political point of view, the bureaucratic ossification, intransparency, inflexibility, and haphazardness of traditional administration appear dubious, and from an economic point of view, inefficient and ineffective structures have often meant a failure to delivery satisfactory services even when financial resources were growing. Perhaps the most important trigger of reform was the "fiscal deficit" exacerbated by the "cost of German unity" (Bogumil 1998: 83), which continues to cause concern from both an economic and political point of view.
Unlike the model of bureaucratic centralism, NPM assigns a key place to economic rationality. NPM seeks to apply business management thinking and business management tools productively in public managment and to optimise politico-administrative action. Slogans like the "citizen as customer," "service enterprise administration," and the "corporate city" (cf., for example, Grunow 1991: 371 f., Schedler/Proeller 2000: 58 f., Struwe 1995: 23, and especially the critical reflections in Bogumil 1998b) give overly clear expression to this orientation. However, economic logic plays a different role in task outsourcing - which for reasons of analytical clarity is equated with total privatisation - than in PPP and in reform of internal administrative structures.
6.1 Task Outsourcing and PPP
Task outsourcing, transferring performance usually to the private sector, is adopted primarily because it directly disburdens government budgets and enhances the political and administrative capacity to react to newly emerging societal problems. As far as the logic of social organisation is concerned, a thorough reorientation takes place in the outsourced areas. By transferring a task to a private company, which strives for the highest possible return at the lowest possible cost, political logic is replaced by a shorter term profit orientation.
PPP projects can also contribute to relieving government budgets and thus to keeping politico-administrative options for action open. At the same time, the aim is to draw on private resources - especially financial - for the attainment of public goals. Because such projects are largely borne on the private side by profit-oriented companies, the logic of social organisation that prevails in the newly emerging areas of action can be seen as a combination of political logic and private-enterprise profit-seeking.
6.2 Internal Modernisation
The reform of internal administrative structures (including reorganisation of the interface between politics and administration, which is to supersede overly detailed controls through strategic steering) is the focus of the New Control Model (2) that predominates in Germany . The social policy motives for such activities are to achieve more intelligent organisation and resource use in local government, permitting social standards and politico-administrative capacities for action to be maintained even in the age of locational competition heralded by globalisation. Or, as Manfred Röber puts it: "If we wish to avoid payments and services absolutely necessary for citizens having to be cut without compensation for financial reasons, we will have to consider how public services can be delivered more effectively and more efficiently" (Röber 1996: 522).
Martin Brüggemeier rightly stresses that, under the changed conditions of internal administrative modernisation, actors in "administrative reform and administrative control" are exposed to "contradictory expectations" and to the "dilemma of a dual legitimation," because, on the one hand, local authorities as "political organisations" owe their allegiance to the sovereign citizen, the "master of the organisation," while as "work organisations" they have to maintain their level of performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness" (Brüggemeier 1998: 307 f.). However, it should not be overlooked that the two aspects are not intended to be given equal weighting. Leaving aside certain specific competitive elements, reform of internal administrative structures seeks to instrumentalize economic logic for the purposes of political logic. Although the model gives high priority to improving efficiency and effectiveness, this objective still ranks below that of transparency enhancement and the resulting increase in political controllability. Werner Jann states: "Not economization but transparency is the implicit general theme of the New Control Model. Without a doubt, transparency is also a central category of democracy, the rule of law, and politics. Democratic controls, responsibility, and control, as well as learning capacity and innovation are inconceivable without transparency. Cost accounting, controlling, intermunicipal comparisons, competition, product orientation, contract management, benchmarking, etc. can all be interpreted as tools whose main task is to enhance the transparency and accountability of administrative action." (Jann 1998: 80)
7. Dangers of the Dominance of Economic Logic in New Public Management
Since the spread of NPM / NCM has given greater and lasting weight to economic logic in German local self-government, there are well-founded fears that economic cost-benefit thinking in administrative authorities and in the social and political environment they influence could gain problematic ascendancy. The various elements in modernisation need to be carefully examined if greater clarity is to be obtained and ways found to allay this danger. As we have seen, economic logic takes effect in the different components of NPM in different ways. Where modernisation elements function as intended, the task outsourcing component (in the form of genuine privatization) has the strongest effect, PPP has a medium range impact, and administrative internal modernisation is weakest. This points the way to meaningful strategies for action.
7.1 Problems with Task Outsourcing and PPP
In the circumstances described, it is advisable to handle task outsourcing with caution. Because this process can entail the irreversible displacement of the political logic by private-enterprise considerations in the outsourced areas, task outsourcing should be well thought through and adopted systematically on the basis of an on-going task review (cf. Fiedler 1998: 93 ff., Mäding 1990 and Schedler/Proeller 2000: 172 f.).
Where a choice can be made between task outsourcing and PPP, the latter should be preferred in the interest of preserving the greatest possible scope for formative political action, thus favouring a combination of political logic and private enterprise cost-benefit thinking. Such an approach is also recommended by the "guarantor administration" model, according to which public management, although it should transfer the performance and financing of public functions as far as possible, should also warrant high-quality task performance (cf. Fiedler 1998: 98 f., Schedler/Proeller 2000: 31 f.). Only if public management retains influence can it satisfy this demand. At the same time, the greater resources that private sector participation provides can be seen as compensation for the loss of political influence. And, finally, too strong a role for economic considerations can be prevented by involving not only profit-oriented companies but also civil-society organisations like associations and civic action groups.
7.2 Problems with Internal Modernisation
At first glance, the reform of internal administrative structures does not appear to involve the sort of problems PPP or task outsourcing, in particular, may cause. Because economic logic does not come directly to bear but is put to the service of political logic, internal modernisation appears unproblematic in this regard. In practice, however, problems are unlikely to occur only as long as the instruments function as intended and economic logic is restricted to a subservient role. Like implementation of the civic community model, the reorganisation of internal administrative structures requires a balance to be maintained between political and economic logics.
Any bias against political logic can lead to obstruction of reforms oriented on the civic community model. It is obvious that projects will not get off the ground if the political will or scope for political action is lacking. And success is unlikely if budget consolidation prevents establishment of the needed infrastructural conditions or leads to self-confident and critical citizens being invited to participate in service delivery without being given any say in decisions. In internal modernisation, by contrast, such disequilibrium is likely to not so much to block reform as produce malfunctions.
The type of malfunction possible if economic logic is superimposed on political logic because business management components develop a momentum contrary to the model can be illustrated by a fictive local authority under pressure to economise. If we imagine that there are two products on offer in the local adult education system, one of which has to be cut for budgetary reasons: a pottery course frequented largely by old people and an Internet introductory course for business people. The model works if the business management oriented NCM information system renders all aspects of this situation transparent, and a political decision on which course to cut is made on this basis. A malfunction or deleterious superimposition of economic logic on political logic occurs if the system more or less automatically leads to the course showing the worse cost-return ratio being withdrawn from the programme.
Because it focuses on reforming internal administrative structures, the risk of the "micro-economisation of administrative action" (Lenk 1997: 145 ff.) is a major problem in the practical implementation of NCM. And for some time now there have been growing signs in German local self-government both that the hopes placed in modernisation have been "completely inordinate" (Trube 2001: 237) and that an unintended superimposition of economic logic on political logic has indeed occurred in many places. Prime examples are the now frequent cases in which NPM or NCM has been introduced as a reform tool only to mutate "under the dictates of empty purses into a budget consolidation strategy" (Holtkamp 2000: 12, see also Kleinfeld 1996: 237, KGSt 1995, Röber 1998, 50 f. and Trube 2001: 235 ff.). The victims of such a development are not least of all the employees who, under such conditions, face both an increasing workload and growing job cuts.
Apart from the obvious indications of the type mentioned above, there are other signs - more subtle but no less significant- that political logic is often threatened with displacement by economic logic. One is that, in many local authorities that have introduced reforms, operative (and often one-sidedly cost-related) controlling is not matched by strategic controlling (cf., for example Heinz 2000: 6 ff. and Richter 1998: 347 ff.). Although in such cases it is possible to see whether "things are being done right" it cannot be judged whether "the right things are being done," which encourages "operative action for its own sake" (Brüggemeier 1998: 305) and can justifiably be interpreted as a biased quantitative assessment to the neglect of quality aspects and political quality requirements. More than ten years after the development of NCM by the KGSt, it must still be assumed that the democratically legitimated decision-makers on the ground in local self-government mostly practice "overdrive when it comes to detail" through "constant intervention in day-to-day operations" (Jann 1998: 72, see also Reichard 1995: 18) while failing to set "longer term strategic goals" (Naschold/Oppen/Wegener 1998: 13, see also Kleinfeld 1996: 246 ff. and Reichard 1995: 18). And where top administration is successfully working towards the systematic dovetailing of political programmes and administrative action, difficulties often arise because there is no consistent and acceptable model because political leaders shy away from the "conflicts and problems" involved in developing and propagating such a model (Wewer 1998: 148, see also Heinz 2000: 26 ff., KGSt 1996a: 67 ff. and Röber 1998: 52). In such cases there is no lack of interface enabling qualitative control stimuli to be transformed into quantitatively defined stimuli for action. What is lacking is a superordinate quality standard that can be broken down step by step and concretised.
8. The Civic Community Model and New PublicManagement - Conclusions and Recommendations
When the introduction of NPM elements meets with resistance or failure, the temptation is certainly great "to resort to the specific problem-solving competence citizens can offer through innovative activation and to integrate this competence in public decision-making and service production" (Spitzer 1998: 132 f.) in order to give new impetus to local government reforms. But the evidence suggests that the scope for such projects is mostly limited. Such course corrections in local authorities which, after introducing management control instruments, have experienced malfunctions instead of enhanced transparency and controllability, are threatened with failure to the extent that economic logic gains the upper hand over political logic. This is true not only because citizen participation initially generates costs and can bring a quantifiable return at best in the medium or long term. It is also because administrative staff, without whose cooperation any reform is stillborn, cannot be won for a new project if the heritage of past abortive modernisation has still not been dealt with. It can be assumed that employees' openness to innovation will be in proportion to their experience of internal modernisation as a bout of rationalization with negative effects.
Many local authorities will therefore be wise to adopt the civic community model to a greater extent only when NPM / NCM have made such progress that the management tools already introduced are functioning and interacting as intended, or at least not in contradiction to the model. Consideration of whether the civic community model can help overcome NCM-related reform blockade suggests a somewhat surprising conclusion in quite another direction. The measures that currently come in question for preparing the transition to a civic community are, in many cases, ones that are not so much directly concerned with this project than with the successful continuation of reforms that are already in the pipeline. There is a good deal of evidence that fundamental activities like the creation of new networks between politics, administration, and citizens can bring success only on such a basis.
The challenge of correcting a disequilibrium between political and economic logics in reforming local authorities should not be underestimated. It requires the introduction of on-going and systematic task reviewing as the basis for decisions on task outsourcing, prioritization of PPP over radical privatization in outsourcing practice, the targeted integration of civil society groups in PPP projects, the often overdue matching of operative controlling by strategic controlling, a willingness to rethink models, measures to overcome an administrative culture still steeped in bureaucratic thinking, and, finally, a policy whose declared aim is to maintain the financial scope necessary for reform despite a difficult budget situation. This last demand is, of course, easier to table than to satisfy. But there is no point in closing one's eyes to the fact that reforms that go beyond economies due to improved efficiency can be achieved only if sufficient funding is available.
Political contract management, a key element in NCM, has been increasingly criticised not least of all because of its "crude" distinction between politics and administration, which ignores an "abundance of empirical and theoretical findings on the interplay between the two components" and ultimately renders it impracticable (Jann 1998: 77). Little attention has so far been paid to the circumstance that this element endangers the compatibility of NPM and civic community. For public participation, so important in the context of the civic community, presupposes that "with the help of the new opportunities for participation, citizens will be able to turn more strongly to individual cases and the short-term dimension" and that "an active approach with constant feedback" among all administrators, citizens, and politicians involved is possible (Naßmacher/Naßmacher 1999: 331), which is hard to reconcile with the idea of control from a distance. The overdue rectification of the NCM with regard to interaction between politics and administration should take due account of this point.
Finally, a great deal would be gained if the various aspects and requirements of NPM and civic community meshed better in theory and practice with those of electronic government (e-government). As vehicles of communication and cooperation, the new information technologies make it possible not only to delivery administrative services in alternative ways (through transactional portals) (cf. Dieckmann 1999: 67 ff., Jansen/Priddat 2001: 13 ff. and Reinermann 2000: 17 ff.) but also to offer new opportunities for the discursive development of quality standards by politics, administration, and citizenry (detailed treatment in Buchstein 1996: 583 ff., Leggewie/Bieber 1999: 257 ff. and Winkel 2001: 140 ff.). At the same time, the new information technologies can be used as organisational tools (details in Reinermann 1999: 11 ff. Reinermann 2000: 41 ff. and Winkel 1999: 77 ff.) for better adapting administrative structures and procedures to NPM and civic community requirements. While from the NPM and civic community points of view, the combination of approaches could be valuable at the instrumental level, from the e-government perspective it could be important in concretizing objectives in tele-administration, tele-participation, and organisational re-engineering.
9. Postscript on the Legal Aspect
Focusing on the relationship between political and economic logics has provided insights gained only at the price of neglecting other relevant aspects. For example, the danger that one-sidedly economic thinking can lead to specific policy area requirements being ignored (3) cannot be dealt with adequately in such a context. The central legal aspects of the subject have also been disregarded. From a systems theoretical perspective, law can be considered a sub-system of the cultural system, while from the life-world perspective it can be seen as a precondition for and instrument of politics.
Legal problems attracted a great deal of attention in the theory and practice of NCM at an early stage, particularly because legal arrangements and dogmatic legalistic thinking can prove serious hindrances to reform. One need only recall the budgetary law requirements which prevented the reorganisation of local government budgeting in the past (cf., for example Lüder 2001: 7 ff.), the bureaucratic cultures difficult to reconcile with operative controlling (cf., for example Brüggemeier 1998: 305), or the public service law requirements that still today make performance-related pay and promotion a hopeless undertaking in the public service (cf., for example Bonorden/Rieger 1998: 209 ff.). However, legal restrictions should not always be considered mere relicts from an age when the public sector had to conform to now obsolete organisational paradigms. In many cases these restrictions seem indispensable and justifiable only, for instance, because they embody key constitutional principles (especially the rule of law) or ensure that, even in times of change, the public service remains committed to the public interest and does not mutate into an organisation that is scarcely distinguishable from private enterprise (cf. also Dehnhard 2001: 45 ff.).
As far as the civic community model is concerned, it is likely that implementation will meet with legal resistance that is partly comprehensible and justified, but will also be considered a substantively and politically unacceptable obstruction of reforms. Essentially, German democracy is "overwhelmingly representative democracy" and this fundamental orientation still applies equally at the local level, despite the fact the "range of participatory opportunities at the federal, Land, and local levels has become greater" (Andersen 1998: 23, see also Arnim 1993: 371 ff. and Woyke 1996: 233 ff.) - and the resulting problems should not be underestimated. Reformatory re-orientation towards the civic community in Germany is therefore likely to be a difficult undertaking not only because modernisation along NPM lines at a time when saving is high on the agenda has often engendered a milieu hostile to innovation, but also because legal restrictions like high quorums for citizen initiatives and citizen referendums (for details see Paust 1997: 43 ff. and Roth 1997: 431), and the exclusion of dialogistic (discursive) decision-making procedures from local government constitutions (cf. Dienel 1997: 144 ff.) constitute an obstacle to expanding political participation (as an essential component of the concept). If one accepts the thesis that efforts to implement the civic community model have most chance of succeeding where preceding internal modernisation on NCM lines has not resulted in malfunctions contrary to the model but, in conformity with it, to more transparency, many of the legal requirements opposing the reform of internal structures can also be interpreted as obstacles to the civic community project.
10. Final Remarks
Meaningful reforms aim not only to improve the effectiveness and transparency of administrative action but also to ameliorate economic efficiency, service for citizens, civic participation, and staff-friendliness in the public sector. The civic community and NPM concepts fit in such a context, where they set differing accents and, for this very reason, can make an important contribution to renewing and improving local self-government. The key question that arises in specific cases and which - given the enormous breadth and heterogeneity of local self-government and the diversity of reform concepts - can be answered only with a knowledge of local conditions, is what steps have to be taken in tackling projects and what priorities have to be set in doing so.
As we have seen, the civic community concept cannot be drawn on without further ado to stabilize a modernization process suffering turbulence after NCM implementation. If the attempt is nevertheless made, it is to be applauded in view of the problems we have described, but there should be no illusions about the resistance and traps that will be encountered. What cannot be accepted is the practice of changing reform paradigms to conceal difficulties and deficiencies in traditional modernisation projects. This makes the unsolved problems of one project into stumbling blocks for the other. Just as unacceptable is abbreviating the concept of the civic community by suppressing its participative elements in an attempt to make it fit an economic cost-benefit bias. Such efforts can easily permanently undermine the readiness not only of administrative staff but also of the public to go along with innovation and to accept new responsibilities. Finally, the expert debate is sometimes marred by unhelpful attempts to cover up the problems of combining NPM and civic community through rhetoric reduced largely to postulates or by seeking to dispose of difficulties by means of definitional hair-splitting. What can be expected of experts today is not vague visions of a transition from a service community (which in most cases has not yet been realised) to a civic community. What is needed is a differentiated, analytical examination of the resistance and problems that face implementation and combination of the models. Only on such a basis can practical synthesis succeed.
Notes
(1) One can also speak of role systems or action systems. (back)
(2) In other countries reforms focus on aspects that often diverge widely from those concentrated on in Germany. This means that the problems faced are very different, making it difficult or even impossible to compare concepts and transfer solutions (cf. for example Löffler 1998, Naschold 1998 or Reichard 1995: 23 ff.). (back)
(3) For example, this would be the case in departments responsible for social and youth affairs if the success of youth welfare services were to measured in terms of the number of admission to homes (greater detail on the particular problems of this area in Bassarek 2001: 108 ff. and Pracher/Strehl 2002: 215 ff.). (back)
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