The following paper is aimed at analysing New Public Management (NPM) reforms at the local level in Germany, France, and Italy. Continental Europe is often regarded as a “maintainer” or “latecomer” in terms of NPM-inspired reforms, whereas the Anglo-Saxon countries are seen as “forerunners”, “marketizers” and “minimizers”. (see Pollitt/Bouckaert
2004). With the increasing budgetary and economic problems at the beginning of the 1990s, nthe NPM-debate could however gain a foothold in Continental Europe, although some of its elements have already been well-known and practiced at the local level for a long time. Local actors in Continental Europe often did not explicitly refer to the “NPM-agenda” or even – particularly in the French case – purposely avoided this term because of its un-popular connotations in the national context. However, many of the strategic NPM-elements were in
practice taken up by the local governments. Against this background, the purpose of this contribution is twofold. On the one hand, we wish to show to what extent and with what effects the NPM-agenda has been taken up at the local level in Continental Europe1. On the
other hand, the article tries to analyse whether the result of these reforms has been increasing convergence or divergence between the three countries in an over-time-comparative perspective
