Explaining Public Management Policy Change: Germany in Comparative Perspective

Public management policies have changed significantly in numerous countries in recent times. Policy entrepreneurs remain active in this policy domain, which encompasses government-wide rules and routines in the areas of expenditure planning and financial management, civil service and labor relations, procurement, organization and methods, and audit and evaluation. Case-oriented comparative research provides policy entrepreneurs with historically and theoretically informed knowledge useful in designing or improvising change strategies in this domain. This article focuses on the case of public management policymaking in the German federal government during the 1980s and 1990s. A coherent explanation of the careers of the “overbureaucratization” issue in the 1980s and the “lean state” issue in the 1990s is provided, along with an explanation for marked changes in selected public management policies in the 1990s. Analysis of this case is also harmonized with findings about public management policy change in the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. Limited generalizations about the process of public management policy change are proposed. Policy entrepreneurs can factor these generalizations, plus analysis of the Germany case, into their prospective, situational analysis of the process of public management policy change.