Switzerland
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
1998-05-25
Author(s)
Research Team
Smart Government Lab
Abstract
As far as reforms in the public sector in general and in government enterprises in particular are concerned, Switzerland is hardly in the vanguard of the OECD's most active countries. The reasons for this can be summarised as follows: 1. The political awareness of the necessity of reforms only gained ground relatively late, owing to increasing financial pressure and international developments. 2. The system of political concordance, which makes for stability rather than dynamism, results in a relatively low speed of reforms since often, every single step requires democratic legitimisation. 3. It is a consequence of Switzerland's distinctive federalism that reform strategies are strongly shaped by decentralised developments: in an international comparison, the bottom-up approach is more widespread than the top-down approach. This, however, means that individual, sometimes very small bodies decide what reforms are carried out at what time, which has a delaying rather than an accelerating effect. 4. The liberal view of the state which prevails even today, with only a few nationalised enterprises, means that the potential for reforms - and particularly for privatisations - is relatively small. The study shows that serious reforming efforts are nonetheless going on in various places which can be compared with developments at an international level. In this respect, the 1990s are experiencing an increasing proliferation of reforms to an extent that had been regarded as unlikely for Switzerland. A closer look will reveal that the reasons for this development lie chiefly in the following points: 1. With the idea of a new government concept (the state acting as an enabling authority) within the framework of new public management or new public administration, the application of the business-administrative instruments in the public sector is becoming a matter of course. This enhances many people's readiness to engage in reform, and it facilitates change. 2. With the increasing internationalisation of organisation and cooperation concepts (for instance, in the EU) Switzerland, too, is called upon to execute the same developments. Thus reforms are being imposed on Switzerland, as it were - as so often in the history of this country. 3. The increasing dynamism of the environment of government enterprises is increasingly widening the gap between bureaucratic input-oriented steering and business-administrative steering models. If a government enterprise wants to survive in a modern environment, it will have to transform itself from a regulation-oriented into a results-oriented organisation. Thus reforms in government enterprises are often also called escapes from the budget or escapes from excessive regulation. This paper is structured as follows: The first part will deal with the components of the political system which are relevant to government enterprises. A survey of criteria for the description of government enterprises is then followed by overview of the major government enterprises arranged according to policy areas. The subsequent chapter - the main part, as it were - illustrates the reforms in government enterprises with the help of a few examples. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the problems surrounding government enterprises and reforms, summarised under the heading of "Lessons Learned".
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Book title
Reforming public enterprises : case studies
Publisher
OECD
Publisher place
Paris
Start page
135
End page
170
Pages
36
Event Title
19th annual meeting of Senior Budget Officials
Event Location
Paris
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
13352
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Name
98_Public_Enterprises.pdf
Size
129.01 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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