The Impact of the Fiscal Crisis on Governmental Decision-Making

Abstract

The main academic interest of the panel is to investigate 1) how governments respond to the fiscal crisis, and 2) what impact the crisis has had on governmental decision-making and public administration. Fiscal crisis will be treated as an independent variable providing explanation to the possible changes in systems of governance. The focus is not on explaining the crisis per se but providing insight on the effects that the crisis brought along. The panel employs both exploratory and explanatory approaches to investigate the reactions of national governments to fiscal crisis by addressing central government, first of all. The panel will concentrate on the analysis of the governmental decision-making process as well as on the shifts in governance and public administration that the crisis has brought about. To do so, the decision-making effects at the central governmental level will be analyzed as proposed by Peters, Pierre and Randma-Liiv (2011): Large and fundamental versus small and incremental decisions Swift and episodic versus slow and continuous decisions Centralized versus decentralized decision-making Coherent, coordinated and systematical versus loosely coupled and fragmented patchwork Long-term structural versus short-term quick fixes In addition to the specific characteristics of decision-making during the crisis itself, we are also interested in whether the crisis has given rise to changes in governance and public administration. For example, have NPM type management instruments been emphasized or rolled back during the crisis? How has crisis affected autonomy and control of public sector organizations? Have there been changes in modes of coordination? Has the crisis influenced the use of performance indicators? We invite both single country case studies as well as comparative studies.

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