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The Path to the Budget Reform in Austria. Traces of Discourses of the Federal Budget Law and its Amendments. Johann Seiwald, Tobias Polzer, Renate E. Meyer, Markus Hoellerer. Background and Conceptual Framework.
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The Path to the Budget Reform in Austria. Traces of Discourses of the Federal Budget Law and its Amendments. Johann Seiwald, Tobias Polzer, Renate E. Meyer, Markus Hoellerer
Background and Conceptual Framework • homogeneity and convergence of public-sector budgeting and accounting but reforms are carried out and interpreted differently in different contexts • reforms are not isolated events, but embedded in and shaped by more general debates of modernization • at each point in time: reforms are linked to a predominant reform paradigm • legitimacy as preliminary condition for the translation of reforms • global reform trends are “translated” to fit the local circumstances • specific context conditions • in translation processes, new practices are implemented into a network of already established practices • translation is ongoing “sense-making” about embedding context and templates
Research Questions • How do initiatives to reform the budgeting and accounting system resonate with and reflect the broader reform paradigm that is predominant at a certain point of time? • Which paths do budgeting and accounting reforms follow and how they are legitimized?
Data and Method • focus on four main reforms that substantially changed the FBL • document genres: • text of the law in the Federal Law Gazette • comments to the bill • parliamentary debate • reports of the committees
The Austrian Context
Operationalization • reform paradigm idea element key word(s) • operationalization of the paradigms in the coding scheme: • deductive approach/literature research for idea elements • inductive approach IRSPP 4: Economic Recovery Measures in Austria
Preliminary Results (3a) –Overall Distribution • “rules/norms” and “cash” dominance • “bureaucracy”, “objectivity”, and “neutrality” play no big role
Preliminary Results (3b) –Overall Distribution • mainly reference to instruments and performance management issues • “evaluation/controlling” seems to have fallen on a quite fruitful ground in Austria • “markets”, “competition”, “private-sector involvement” or “downsizing” play no role at all
Preliminary Results (3c) –Overall Distribution • characterized by the idea elements of “transparency” and “equity” • paradigm seems to have gained ground meanwhile (in contrast to Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006)
Implications and Outlook • idea elements of the three dominant international paradigms were found • laws under investigation reflect the general paradigms of the public management reform debate • a few idea elements stand emblematic for the paradigm • new idea elements to be included in the existing framework are essentially contested (manifested in the debate; can lead to an incorporation) • some idea elements do not fall on fruitful ground and are rejected • need for a more systematic look how the idea elements are interlinked, and side discourses (national and international)
Thankyou! • Q&A Department of Strategic Management and Innovation Institute for Public Management Augasse 2-6, 1090 Vienna, Austria JOHANN SEIWALD, TOBIAS POLZER, RENATE E. MEYER, MARKUS HOELLERER T +43-1-313 36-4062 F +43-1-313 36-737 tobias.polzer@wu.ac.at www.wu.ac.at/pubmgt