Reforming the public administration: The role of crisis and the power of bureaucracy

Zareh Asatryan, Friedrich Heinemann and Hans Pitlik

No 15-049, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: The need to balance austerity with growth policies has put government efficiency high on the economic policy agenda in Europe. Administrative reforms which boost the efficiency of the administration can alleviate the trade-off between consolidation and public service provision. Against such backdrop, this study explores the determinants of efficiency enhancing public administration reforms for a panel of EU countries using a novel reform indicator. The findings support the political-economic reasoning: An economic and fiscal crisis is a potent catalyst for reforms, but a powerful bureaucracy effectively constrains the opportunities of a crisis to promote this particular type of reform. Furthermore, there is evidence for horizontal learning from other EU countries, and for vertical learning associated with a particular type of EU transfers.

Keywords: Euro-crisis; public sector efficiency; cohesion policy; theory of bureaucracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 H11 H83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/112753/1/832562491.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Reforming the public administration: The role of crisis and the power of bureaucracy (2017)
Working Paper: Reforming the Public Administration. The Role of Crisis and the Power of Bureaucracy (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:15049

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().