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.