Additions to PhD-Training-School

• Presentation of Prof. Sabine Kuhlmann [pdf]

 About the training school:

 Local governments all over Europe are in a period of intense reform activity, not least of all because in some  countries they have been the level of government most seriously affected by the still expanding global financial and economic crisis. They are simultaneously faced by a variety of – partly contradictory – reform  pressures, often aimed at conflicting reform objectives (e.g. efficiency vs. participation).  Against  this  background,  the  PhD-Training  School  is  meant  to discuss  reforms, experiments and changes in local democracy and local public sector institutions.

The course is intended to provide training in theories and methods to be applied in the study of local public sector reforms and democracy, especially in comparative perspectives. The training school will focus on  democratic reforms and new instruments of citizen participation (e.g. referenda, direct election of mayors). In addition, it concentrates on New Public Management (NPM) reforms that were targeted towards marketization, privatization and ‘corporatization’ as well as the more recent ‘Post-NPM’  reforms,  which  were  often  aimed  at  correcting  the  shortcomings  of  earlier  NPM measures.  Finally it  will  include  the  more  nationally  driven  territorial  and  functional  reforms (municipal  amalgamations, decentralization) that have been fuelled, in part, by recent austerity measures and the hopes of national policy makers that such reforms will facilitate economies of scale.