Jørgen Grønnegård Christensen

The Political Benefits of Corporatization and Privatization

In recent years Denmark has seen a huge corporatization and privatization program. As it is an unlikely reformer, the policy shift makes the country an interesting test case for the analysis of public sector changes. The paper argues that the Danish corporatization and privatization program fits into a general pattern. The program has been successfully implemented because it has allowed the governing coalition to reap important short-term political benefits without compromising a long-term quest for political control. However, these radical changes that together constitute a virtual wave of reforms have been initiated because politicians belonging to the governing coalition have come to the knowledge of new theoretic and empirical insights that open their eyes to short-term political benefits formerly unacknowledged.

Growth by Exception: or The Vain Attempt to Impose Resource Scarcity on the Danish Public Sector

For more than a decade control of public sector growth has been one of the key issues in Danish politics. In an attempt to contain further uncontrolled growth, the whole budgetary system has been gradually reformed, and political cutting operations have been a recurrent event. Serious questions, however, remain. First, it is questionable whether procedural and institutional reforms of the budgetary system have made it any easier for political decision-makers to carry through their cutting plans. Second, it is doubtful whether the policy-makers are able to keep within the financial limits, set up by themselves, when confronted with demands for solution of unforeseen, but politically pressing, problems. In such situations there will always remain a strong political propensity to make an exception. As in all these battles of the cuts, the air is rent with the anguish of amputated billions; but yet again as the smoke clears, total government spending is found to be undiminished and even rising. The Economist, 23 May 198I.

Normer og incitamenter i offentlig virksomhed

For several years, salary reforms, management contracts, contract management, and value based management, reform and innovation with the private firm as the preferred model have formed the headlines for public sector reforms. These headlines have their parallels in social science theory. On the one hand, we have rational theories with their focus on managers and staff as self-interest seeking individuals, who react on changes that strengthen economic incentives. On the other hand, we see an organizational sociology which focuses on managers and staff as norm followers. The paper takes a closer look at these developments.