Impacts of NPM-Driven Performance Management Reforms and Ideologies in Napoleonic Local Governments: A Comparative Analysis of France, Portugal, and Turkey

Abstract

This chapter examines the diffusion of performance measurement and management systems (PMMS) as outposts of NPM reforms in local governments of the Napoleonic administrative cluster (France, Turkey, and Portugal). We use in-depth analyses of three municipalities selected as “paradigmatic” cases for the national contexts, meant to provide an average feel of how local governments reacted to national reforms, contexts, and variations of the Napoleonic model. Case classifications reveal little in-sample variation of the PMMS, all appearing as slight adaptations of Bouckaert and Halligan’s, (2008) “performance administration” model despite distinct national patterns of local decentralization, reforms strategies, and state mechanisms of funding, steering, and control. This conservatism may confirm the infertile ground of Napoleonic LGs for NPM values and performance reforms. Yet the variety of mechanisms at work across countries calls for attention to pending evolutions of the Napoleonic model.