Page 297 - POLITIEK OF MANAGEMENT?

high on the reform agenda so it is pertinent to focus on how inter-municipal organisations are handled from a process vantage point as well as highlighting substantive considerations, in particular norms for the arrangement of public administration that will lead to a certain scale.
Our study demonstrates that environmental pressure plays a major role in the continuing territorial upscaling, whether through mergers or inter-municipal cooperation. Under pressure, local politicians and administrators tend to follow the dominant trend even if it is not clear that therein lies the solution for the particular problems of their locality. We recommend that, even when under pressure, politicians and administrators should critically asses the various options and select the optimum configuration of public administration for the specific local circumstances.
This study found that, after reorganizational decisions had been taken, administrators resume their usual business without any form of systematic evaluation of the impact of change on the organisation of the public administration. We urge administrators to seize the opportunity to learn from the experience by systematic evaluation.
Once the new organisation is formed, a lack of steering and ownership of the new entity is evident within the constituent municipal councils. Therefore, we advocate that councils give due consideration to their ownership responsibilities and make better use of auxiliary resources at their disposal such as council registries and the municipal audit function in order to better fulfil their role in setting the framework for and controlling the joint arrangement.
Following these process-orientated remarks, considerations of a more substantive nature are addressed. Such considerations play or should play a role when considering whether a joint (inter-municipal) arrangement offers an appropriate solution to the problem at hand, and if so, in which form and on which scale a joint arrangement might be designed. The study draws attention to tensions between the different substantive criteria for the organisation of public administration and in particular between the managerial criteria and the political, legal and social criteria. We observe that questions of scale in public administration are predominantly approached as managerial questions. However, the advantages and disadvantages of scale are complicated to verify, requiring a multi-perspective approach rather than merely a managerial analysis. Even from a managerial approach, the appropriate scale will vary depending on the particular function or task. We advocate that the issue of scale be examined
SUMMARY
295