 Reforming the Swiss Municipalities: Efficiency or Democracy?Andreas Ladner and Reto Steiner Chapter 10 in Contemporary Switzerland, 2005, pp 239-255 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract Swiss local level reforms fit quite well into the international pattern. As in many other countries, municipalities introduced New Public Management, increased intermunicipal cooperation, amalgamated with other municipalities and tried to improve the functioning of the authorities and the decision-making process. Whereas intermunicipal cooperation and the merging of municipalities aimed at making service provision at local level more efficient and at increasing the quality of the services provided, New Public Management reforms tried to improve the municipalities’ capacity to act and aimed at moving closer to citizens by increasing customer orientation. Altogether, the reforms cannot be regarded as an attempt trying to downsize the state sector. However, strengthening the input-side of democracy by moving decisional power to the citizens was of lesser importance in Swiss municipalities than in other countries. This is mainly due to the far-reaching direct democratic rights of Swiss citizens. Keywords: Public Management; Direct Democracy; Small Municipality; Reform Activity; Reform Project (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-52358-6_11 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.