Restructuring Welfare Organizations in Europe: From Democracy to Good Management?
Language: English
Pages: 219
ISBN: 023021732X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Providing a new comparative analysis of the changes which have radically questioned the 'old' organizational arrangements of the delivery of welfare services since the early 1980s, this book argues that new managerial accountability regimes severely undermine the democratic foundations of the welfare state in Europe.
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autonomy and political accountability may be altered in different ways across European countries and different social policy sectors, despite converging pressures along the managerial line discussed in Chapter 1. This entails an analysis of the reorganization of the internal governance of welfare institutions, as a result of widespread government’ programmes to grant autonomy to hospitals and schools, and discretion to their managers in relation to politicians. Secondary public schools and public
approval (Mattei, 2007a). In some cases, the term of office can even coincide with the electoral process. The empirical investigation in the book analyses the mechanisms of appointment of the members of the leadership structures of schools and hospitals and to whom they are ultimately accountable. The composition of supervisory boards of stakeholders in hospitals and schools reflects the underlying institutional choice which has been taken by the government in relation to the representation and
growth of contractual or semicontractual arrangements; accountability for performance; flexibility of pay and conditions; the separation of the political process from the management process; the creation of internal markets or quasi-markets; an emphasis on the public as customer; the reconsideration of the regulatory role of the state; and a change in the general intellectual climate. 2. In his Administrative Behaviour, Herbert Simon (1945: 272) provides the following definition of efficiency:
political leaders operate under unique conditions that may facilitate or limit the extent to which they are able to pursue an active administrative policy. Thus, rather than using the comparative method to identify universal principles that transcend national cases, they employ the transformative approach to increase understanding of how shared administrative reform policies are transformed by case-specific contextual factors. The transformative approach perspective draws heavily on the broad
2003. 23. Schulgesetz für das Land Berlin , 26 January 2004, GVBl. S. 26. 24. Secondary schools are of three types in Germany, as outlined in the 1959 Rahmenplan (Outline Plan): Gymnasium (grammar school), Realschule (intermediate school) and Hauptschule (main secondary school). This system is based on serving respectively three psychological and mental categories of pupils: the academic and theoretical, the technical and the practical. In comparison to other European systems, the German system