The Unanticipated Consequences of Decentralization and Reinvention: The Case of the Province of South Holland

Abstract

Two developments flowing from the institutional reforms in The Netherlands of the 1980s currently form ‘the usual suspects’ in a series of scandals or instances of public arousal within the public sector. The first factor is the large-scale decentralization of tasks from central government to provincial and municipal authorities. Initiated under the name of democratization and efficiency this decentralization programme was part of a large package of operations, including deconcentration, deregulation, privatization, and reconsideration, that were to to slim down central government in terms of personnel, tasks and organization. Second, managerialism, i.e. the adoption of business management ideas and concepts by public administrators, entered Dutch public service vocabulary during the second half of the 1980s. Managerialism did not limit itself only to central government agencies but also — and perhaps more succinctly — found openings in provincial and municipal authorities, mainly as a fierce reaction against the ‘bureaucratism’ of daily administrative practice to counter the relative deprivation perceived by civil servants in relation to their private sector counterparts. This article shows that the decentralization of financial management and the emergence of ‘reinvention’ ideas have had autonomous but drastic effects. While the former blinded central government and provincial controllers, the latter legitimized practices that even under a private sector regime would have been deemed improbable.