The financial crisis of 2008-9 and resulting recession in many western countries has in turn produced new fiscal crises in many, and subsequent radical cutbacks in public spending. This first session will discuss how public management is being affected by, and is coping with, this latest crisis.
Professor Christopher Pollitt (Leuven) will kick off this discussion with a paper entitled: “CUTBACKS AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM: LET’S NOT KID OURSELVES”
Professor Walter Kickert (Erasmus, NL) who contributes “Preliminary results of an international comparison – Managing the Fiscal Crisis in Britain, Germany and The Netherlands“.
Professor Larry Lynn (Texas and Manchester) will join the discussion later with further reflections and a comment on what has been said by contributors so far.
We’d like to especially encourage people to send in brief “country reports” summarising what has happened in particular places – usually 700 or so words is a good length. But please fell free to comment and contribute on any aspect of the discussion.
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The impact of public sector reform and spending cuts and in the UK is perhaps being flagged up more quickly in this recession due to the growth of internet based responses and developments like twitter . Websites like cutswatch can rapidly generate data almost in real time. Journalists and the news media have plenty of material to utilise despite the fact that the strength of unions is probably less than in earlier times of cutbacks.
Thus the recent fiasco over NHS reform suggests that the Coalition government in the UK is to some extent ‘following the path of the last bomb crater’ in the face of concerted media attack.
I look forward to this discussion as the reverberations of the massive tilt toward public expenditure are now being felt in major deficits and shortfalls at all levels of government in Canada. It would appear that the federal government, even with the largest deficit in its history, will climb out of it earlier than the provinces and municipalities. At the federal level, major cutbacks are expected but these will be driven by the probably re-election and strengthening of the conservative government. Hence, the theme of public sector reform will become in Canada the shrinkage of the federal government. For the provinces, the deficit is more structural and long lasting. Here services, health, education and social services, are definitely vulnerable. The one ray of hope in all this is that governments will be forced to find less traditional means of delivery, especially in health.
I would like to assume that most are familiar with the demise of the Irish Celtic tiger and arguably one of the worst recessions in the OECD. With a massive deficit that always exceeded 13% GDP (2008-2009) and currently lies at 32.4% GDP (2011), public expenditure was inevitably doomed for massive cuts. Although one could argue that the socialisation of the bank debts vis a vis the deep cuts in public expenditure through series of severe emergency budgets since 2008 may have had deleterious effects to the social fabric of life , I would dear suggest that the recession has paradoxically necessitated the badly needed public service reforms that previous governments have ‘long-fingered’ for the past decades. Although the newly elected government have prioritized public service reform, and even gone as far as appointing a minister to oversee the process, the real litmus test would be their approach to effecting needed changes to archaic practices in our public sector. Will they take a ‘slash and burn approach’ or would they wield their surgical knives with the much needed precision to cure this ailing patient?