Moving from Excellence Models of Local Service Delivery to Benchmarking ‘Good Local Governance’
| Date | 01 March 2002 |
| Published date | 01 March 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852302681001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Moving from excellence models of local service delivery
to benchmarking ‘good local governance’
Tony Bovaird and Elke Löffler
Introduction
The past decade has seen a major set of initiatives throughout the world to reform
and modernize local government. Although there are specific national patterns of
local government reforms, there has been a strong international trend towards
the improvement of local service delivery — both in terms of the performance
standards set and the mechanisms for planning and implementing service
improvements.
One important instrument of local government reforms has been bench-
marking. Compared to the realm of national public administration, benchmarking
at the local level is methodologically relatively easy and not as politically con-
tentious. Local services are usually benchmarked against some generic excel-
lence model or compared to the service provision of similar local authorities.
However, most of the benchmarking criteria, models and methods which are
currently available and which are being used to assess local service delivery no
longer suit the needs of localities. Good local management implies high per-
formance not only in managing local services so that they satisfy customers and
taxpayers but also in enabling local communities to solve their own problems
and to create better futures for their stakeholders. The article suggests that
local government reforms need to go beyond the improvement of local service
delivery. Calling upon the international experience of innovation in local govern-
ance, the article distils a series of benchmarking criteria which might be applied
to define and identify ‘good local governance’.
The article starts by giving an overview of the drivers for local government
reforms in OECD countries since the 1980s. It then explores recent trends in local
government and community reforms in the UK and Germany. In the following
section, the authors analyse whether the current benchmarking methods and
criteria set within conventional models of ‘excellence’ in local government still
meet the current needs of local communities. We argue that the conventional
Tony Bovaird is Professor of Strategy and Public Services Management, Bristol Business
School, University of the West of England, UK. Elke Löffler is Senior Research Associate,
Bristol Business School, University of The West of England, UK.
CDU: 352(100)
International Review of Administrative Sciences [0020–8523(200203)68:1]
Copyright © 2002 IIAS. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New
Delhi), Vol.68 (2002), 9–24; 022635
02_IRAS68/1 articles 8/3/02 10:52 am Page 9
local management models need to be widened to include ‘local governance’
aspects. The article identifies criteria for a new ‘local governance’ model that
takes into account the needs of local communities in the 21st century. Finally, the
authors consider some possible uses of and limits to the proposed approach.
Research methodology
This article draws from recent experience of OECD countries in local govern-
ment reforms with particular reference to the UK and Germany. Two principal
research studies form the evidence base for this article: one was a study commis-
sioned by the Audit Commission on the lessons for UK local government
suggested by international ‘best practice’ and innovation in service planning
(Bovaird, 1998; Audit Commission, 1999). This research allowed us to distil
latest trends in reforms at local levels. The other study was an international com-
parative study on the criteria used to assess organizational performance in the
public sector in OECD countries which was carried out at the Research Institute
for Public Administration in Speyer (Löffler, 1996). This latter study was updated
in 2000, showing that most of the previously identified performance assessment
tools and models continued to be important (Löffler, 2001).
The analysis of the two studies yielded interesting insights. It became evident
that current benchmarking criteria do not reflect recent trends in local govern-
ment reforms and thus no longer give good guidance to practitioners on what con-
stitutes ‘good governance’. Furthermore, it is clear that any proposed benchmark-
ing criteria for local governance cannot yet based be on a fully fledged theory of
governance. Indeed, it is too early to speak of a ‘theory of governance’, even
though some bodies of theory relating to aspects of governance already exist
(Pierre and Peters, 2000: 28ff). Nevertheless, as empirical research shows, local
governance already exists in the real world and what practitioners need is not
so much a theory, based on the elaboration of purely abstract notions of local
governance, but rather some guidelines to assess whether they are going in the
right direction. This article tries to address this need by considering and structur-
ing relevant knowledge, grounded in practical experience, to provide a clear
operational framework for the benchmarking of local governance.
Challenges for local communities at the beginning of the 21st century
In the early 1980s, budget deficits were a major motive for local government
reforms — regardless of whether they were imposed by national government or
initiated by local authorities themselves. Municipalities often suffered from
severe financial pressures due to unstable tax incomes and rising demands for
municipal services. Sometimes higher levels of government attempted to export
fiscal stress to the local level, increasing the financial pressure on local govern-
ment to ‘do more for less’ (Bovaird et al., 1996). However, since that time, many
local authorities have achieved more favourable budget positions. While local
services still need to be managed in an economic and efficient way, the financial
driver for managerial reforms has become weaker.
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