A Historical-Theoretical Perspective on Public Sector Reforms in Germany

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - Germany, grade: 1,4, University of Potsdam (Chair for Political Science, Public Administration and Organization), course: Foundations of Public Management, language: English, abstract: In this short paper, I want to compare major reform waves in German bureaucratic history. I describe and explore if certain clusters of reform periods relate to the Big Theory schools of administrative science. The results suggest that most administrative reforms took place in an institutionalist mindset that can be related to models such as path dependency and institutional isomorphism. Attempts to reform the German administrative body are seen to have hardly reached their desired results, nevertheless, especially reforms in the early decades were attributed valuable success by administrative scholars.