The managerial revolution in local government: municipal management and the city manager in the USA and the Netherlands 1900–1940

Abstract

This article probes into the impact of management thought on municipal administration in Amsterdam in the period 1900–1940. To understand the discursive and practical impact of management thought – and the city manager as one of its most feasible expressions – on municipal administration in its historical context, this article places this European case study against the background of the American hotbed and source of management reform in local government. Key to the comparison between the USA and the Netherlands are issues concerning the discursive and legal constructions of the legitimacy of management institutions and practices, the nature of reformist discourse and the scholarly and judicial frameworks of reference that underpinned burgeoning practices of modern management in local government.