Abstract

Governments at all levels--national, regional and local--are faced with growing demands to organize their work more efficiently and effectively. Moreover, a fundamental reassessment of their agendas has started world wide, which in many cases reduces the role which governments play in serving their societies. Government is considered as a cost factor in the first place, and it has to explicitly legitimize both its standing agenda and the take-up of new tasks. At the same time, it is recognized that public governance structures continue to be necessary to tackle many problems of an ever-changing world. Since newly emerging tasks will demand more and more attention, the existing governmental units are urged to accomplish their core business with only a part of the costs incurred at present.