Nico Randeraad, Erk Volkmar Heyen:
Editorial, VII-XII
(Volltext: http://www.uni-greifswald.de/%7Elo1/ed15.htm)

I. Themenschwerpunkt

Wolfgang E.J. Weber:
Herrschafts- und Verwaltungswissen in oberdeutschen Reichsstädten der Frühen Neuzeit, 1-28

Approximately 30 large, medium and small imperial cities came into being from the 12th and 13th centuries as a result of the central position of Upper Germany, the emergence of an economically engaged bourgeois elite, and the determination of ecclesiastical and secular rulers to encourage this development for their own ends. The importation of socio-economic and political know-how, especially from the more advanced centers of Upper Italy, enabled this urban elite as early as the 14th and 15th centuries to create effective city governments, enter into mutual understandings, create occasional alliances, and, with the help of the Emperor, achieve a degree of autonomy. The political and administrative techniques that they gained in this way made it possible for them to maintain their ruling position within the cities and beyond even after 1600, when the central position of Upper Germany and its direct connection to an emergent world economy had been lost.
The most important forms for the acquisition and creation of political and administrative knowledge were: transfer of commercial and financial knowledge from private enterprises; official visitations; oral and written reports of city officials; testimony of residents; readings of petitions; statistical surveys; collection and preparation of historical knowledge (especially in the form of chronicles); and study. The establishment and preservation of this knowledge occurred via texts (protocols, acts, opinions, etc.), images (panoramas, maps, etc.), objects (models, etc.), and procedures (especially the founding of archives and libraries, and the keeping of collections). The preparation, mobilization, and dissemination took place as a result of the creation and use of lists (repertoires, indices, catalogues) as well as appropriate procedural writings (notes, remarks, tracts, testaments), but it remained in the first place a result of oral transmission.
A complete formalization and bureaucratization of these forms contradicted the interests of the very elites that created them. Until the dissolution of the imperial cities around 1600, they depended more on informal, private procedures that preserved the necessary freedom and flexibility to preserve their wealth and power.

James Moore, Richard Rodger:
Municipal Knowledge and Policy Networks in British Local Government, 1832-1914, 29-58

In this article the rise of municipal authority in Britain after 1835 is presented as a fundamental shift in power relations between city and state. By developing policy and information networks in committee structures within local government, and by relying on the specialist knowledge of experts, administrators and long-serving local politicians, considerable scope for divergence in municipal standards of service provision were perpetuated. This local autonomy was ultimately constrained by the emergence of professional standards in administration, the development of inspectorates, and by central government financial payments to municipalities. With its increasingly important contributions to local finance from the last quarter of the 19th century, central government encouraged an "audit culture" and with it a degree of accountability that hastened convergence in municipal government, though even in the 20th century town halls continued to resist Whitehall's intervention in local affairs. Where it did develop, convergence in municipal government was less a result of central government actions and more often a product of outside influences. Local statistical information, technical and commercial knowledge, and expertise acquired at conferences and exhibitions, each contributed to deep reservoirs of municipal knowledge and sustained local autonomy well into the 20th century, and for far longer than is commonly recognised.

Wilfried Rudloff:
Das Wissen der kommunalen Sozialverwaltung in Deutschland: Diffusion, Formen und Konflikte 1900-1933, 59-88

In the sphere of local welfare administration the circulation of expert knowledge accelerated considerably since the beginning of the 20th century. The opportunities for the exchange of information, such as conferences, publications or professional associations, steadily increased in number. The article outlines the different communication channels and various modes of transfer through which specialized knowledge was disseminated. More and more local welfare authorities were forced to make a choice between the available options of information in order to provide the knowledge they needed without succumbing to the abundance of information.
Furthermore, the article deals with several categories of expert knowledge. Firstly, in the field of organisational knowledge the neo-institutionalistic approach of "institutional isomorphism" is discussed. It is argued that, beneath a general trend to organisational homogenization and in spite of a strong tendency among welfare administrations to copy models borrowed from other cities, there still existed a large variety of institutional arrangements depending on the local framework of politics. Secondly, a highly controversial problem arising in nearly all welfare administrations was the conflict between civil servants and the new welfare profession. This inner-administrative conflict appears to be not only a conflict between male and female personnel or a conflict between generalists and specialists, but also a conflict between two different horizons of knowledge and vocational preparation. Thirdly, local welfare benefits are taken as an example in order to demonstrate that knowledge, however, was not always welcome. Most local welfare authorities shrank back from scrutinizing more deeply the subsistence requirements of the needy population, fearing that in doing so they would be forced to raise their benefits to a level regarded beyond their means. Finally, as a last category individual case-knowledge is treated: the procedures by which individual case-files were constructed, the techniques of inquiry and the opposing interests of administrators and clients regarding the information gathered in the files. The conflicts which resulted from the selective reading of this information by the welfare authorities highlight the fact that case-knowledge was a highly contested item.

Renaud Payre:
La Préfecture de la Seine comme "clearing house" municipal 1919-1947, 89-108

The article deals with a level of the French national administration that is usually considered as a mere tool of centralisation and control: the préfecture. In the Seine Département, that included Paris and its suburbs, the first half of the 20th century proposed new challenges to the préfecture, while municipal governments adopted more active policies and new types of administrative practices, and developed new services. The article attempts to consider the préfecture and its staff as a core for the elaboration and circulation of new collective values for the municipal officials and office workers. Thus, at the very heart of a national government institution that was supposed to control them, the latter found and expanded a new lexicon of words, roles, values and practices which eventually underwrote the growth of the municipal government sphere. The article examines the Seine Préfecture as one of the main supports of the inter-war French municipal reform movement. Through its links with the regional, national and international associations of city officials and the journals or schools of municipal administration, the Seine Préfecture became, thanks to its administrators’ action, one of the places where a prescriptive knowledge about municipal life, i.e. a practical governing science (science de gouvernement) was elaborated and diffused.

Marjatta Hietala:
Transfer of German and Scandinavian Administrative Knowledge: Examples from Helsinki and the Association of Finnish Cities, 1870-1939, 109-130

During the autonomous period of Finland (1809-1917), one reason for the interest of the Helsinki municipal authorities in following the latest developments in administrative knowledge was to see Finland in the ranks of civilised countries and to keep Helsinki at the level of European capitals. Efforts were made to build cities' infrastructures in step with European cities. The emergence of trade journals, such as the "Finnish Municipal Journal" did not replace personal contacts and, after Finland became independent in 1917, international interaction increased and study tours abroad were favoured; part of the budget was reserved for the Helsinki officials, primarily for their Nordic cooperation and attendance at conferences.
The Association of Finnish Cities monitored municipal development in Finland and abroad. It gathered data needed for the examination of municipal questions, and provided information on municipal authorities and institutions as well as on conditions in other towns. The Association established international contacts, first with the Nordic countries and Germany, later increasingly with the Baltic countries. In this respect, the most active figures in the Association were Yrjö Harvia and Einar Böök, who also took part in the Helsinki City administration. At the national level, the cooperation between the Association and the Helsinki City administrators was favourable for many reforms, e.g. development of municipal housing construction, finding solutions for traffic problems and in area incorporations.

Federico Lucarini:
La professionnalisation de la culture administrative dans les grandes villes italiennes: expériences étrangères et discussions nationales 1894-1914, 131-154

The article investigates the impact of the second industrial revolution and the process of urbanisation as well as the rising influence of foreign administrative models on the government of great Italian cities (namely Turin, Milan, Florence and Rome). Firstly, it analyses the renewal of the local political classes – lawyers, engineers and entrepreneurs – in parallel connection with the need to professionalise the functions of mayor, alderman and city councillor. Secondly, it examines this professionalisation from a particular point of view: the relationship between the mayors and the aldermen on the one side and the city councils on the other, underlining the strengthening of the mayor and the specialization of his functions, even in comparison with international, especially German tendencies. But the problem of a training at the same time specialist and varied also concerned the bureaucracy, both the high level and the rank and file. Finally, the article shows the transfer of knowledge by the means of reviews, international exhibitions and educational travels, again paying particular attention to the considerable debate about the "German model" (above all for housing problems, water supply, gas and electric lighting, building of street railways and tramways) and its direct involvement in the new functions required for the efficiency of a modern public administration.

Oscar Gaspari:
Lo statistico Ugo Giusti (1873-1953): promotore della cultura amministrativa locale in Italia, 155-172

As head of the municipal statistics office in Florence, Giusti promoted, in 1907, the constitution of the Unione statistica delle città italiane (USCI – Statistical Union of the Italian Cities), a system for the processing and communication of data on Italy's cities, international contacts playing an important role. Like all the other organisations of local bodies, the USCI was abolished during the fascist period. Giusti went on to teach demography at the University of Rome, further developing contacts in the sphere of town planning and taking an interest in rural statistics. In the years following the Second World War administrative centralism was predominant in Italy. Giusti set to work on the reconstitution of the Associazione nazionale dei comuni italiani (National Association of Italian Communes), the major organisation for local administrative bodies, and made unsuccessful bids to relaunch the USCI and the Segretariato nazionale per la montagna (National Secretariat for the Mountain Areas).
In the first half of the 20th century Giusti promoted a brand of local administrative culture characterised by close connection with municipal realities in Italy and throughout Europe. Attention was focused on the concrete problems of the population, whether in the great communes of the plains or the small mountain communes. Projects and studies were approached in a pragmatic spirit, applying methods designed to override divisions between the sciences and the competences set for the communes by regulation.

Elena Cogato Lanza:
Urbanisme et action administrative en Suisse 1897-1946: nomadisme des experts et processus de spécialisation, 173-198

This article analyses the state of urban planning knowledge during the first half of the 20th century and shows the way the local administrative context conditioned the evolution of that knowledge. Its hypothesis is that the creation, diffusion and innovation of specialised knowledge in administration took place by exchange with other milieus (associative, professional, scientific, economical, etc.), by blurring the frontiers between the administration and these different actors.
In 1919-1920, the creation of the Expansion Plan Board and of the Commission for Monuments and Protection of Natural Sites in Geneva demonstrated that an administrative reform based on scientific innovations could be initiated outside the administration. In turn, such a reform modified the way this knowledge was put into practice towards a greater specialization. Swiss town planners tried to join the administration, as the best condition to accomplish their scientific and technical reflection. The central problem of forecasting was posed by Camille Martin, director of the Expansion Plan Board until the end of 1920s, but Public Works minister Maurice Braillard achieved an innovative technical solution in a totally different political and administrative context in 1935. The local authorities association, the Socialist Party and town planners cooperated in order to promote urban ideals against agricultural privileges, protectionism and national state authority. International Organisations, based in Geneva since 1920, give a particular tone to this phenomenon, which concerns all Switzerland.
The analysis of the exchanges between administration and other milieus shows that the development of town planning knowledge depended on a more general problem: the organisation of work, for which none of the different actors had a real competence. Swiss town planners gave their contribution to local authority and international networks to set up a society of workers. This task had been accomplished by industry managers in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it would pass on to nation states in the second half of the 20th century.

Dirk Jan Wolffram:
Town Planning in the Netherlands and its Administrative Framework, 1900-1950, 199-217

19th-century liberal social reformers paved the way for Dutch town planners. They passed the legislation (in particular the Housing Act of 1901) that would give the planners the opportunity for their planning activities. And they created the institutions that would offer the planners jobs and the official status they needed to effectuate their plans. Town planners occupied key positions within municipal, provincial, and national bureaucracy (from 1941 onwards). They combined an open mind regarding foreign examples with a drive to create a Dutch national planning doctrine. Under the special circumstances of German occupation, followed by the need to repair the extensive war damage and to design the landscape of the newly reclaimed polders, they were enabled to reshape the country. Within local administration the science of planning could develop freely, as a tool for local and national administration. In turn, Dutch planning seriously affected local administration, subordinating it to a national framework and the state. Specialised state, provincial and municipal services were authorised, with only a minimum of democratic control, to develop plans and policies, to expand cities, and to create the newly reclaimed land. In the process planning became a science, and as such one of the most important tools for local, regional and national administration.

Rosemary Kiss:
The Influence of British Municipal Ideas in Australia, 1890-1938, 219-242

Research for this article began as an exploration of the extent to which European municipal ideas have been influential in shaping the institutions of local government in Australia, a topic that had not previously received any scholarly attention. Australia is now a country proud of being multicultural, with a history of European and non-European, not just British immigration. Despite these initial intentions and possibilities, the product of the research carried out is a discussion of almost exclusively British influences. While local conditions in the Australian colonies – geographic, economic and social, as well as political – had formative effects on institutional development, the influence of Britain and British ideas was pervasive and fundamental.
The nature and processes of the British influence are clearly exposed in this article, which begins with the historical and institutional setting and proceeds to an examination of three case studies, which revolve around the issue of metropolitan government in the first half of the 20th century. In each case, British immigrants, British visitors and British sources of information, were the dominant architects or instruments working on the local scene to shape the institutional outcomes. The current institutional forms of local government in Australia, notwithstanding globalisation, continue to bear the characteristic features of this narrow historical and intellectual base, reinforced by distance and language.

Cristina Mehrtens:
Public and Private, National and International: Crossed Paths in São Paulo's Process of Urban Consolidation, 1900-1940, 243-266

The article starts from the historical process behind the establishment of a Brazilian architecture firm, a local public institution (the Municipal Works Department), and a private Anglo-Brazilian development company. It explores how the three urban organisations flourished and managed to influence, administer, and interact with the work of engineers, professionals, and intellectuals in São Paulo. Through a study case, the construction of the Pacaembu Stadium, it focuses on how these urban organisations negotiated their controlling position in managing the new urban market, a process that brought to the fore different social groups pressing their professional and personal interests, thereby molding a peculiar form of politics. This process also led to the further intertwining of entrepreneurs and the public technical sector in São Paulo's politics and architecture. It also provides a window into some abiding problems such as the importance of metropolitan agencies for modernization as creative political and bureaucratic institutions, where new means of controlling the social, economic, and cultural spheres were created, often before being carried to the national level. It analyses the effects on the Brazilian intellectual, technical, and professional community of the strong cultural and scientific foreign influence during these decades, which has been previously little-discussed, together with the way Brazilian professionals embodied different kinds of international connections and the way Anglo-Brazilian connections evolved. Foremost, this article highlights the complexities of the systems of cross-national social-political exchange in an age saturated with nationalism and will search for a more comprehensive account of the era's transnational traffic in social-political ideas.

Pierre-Yves Saunier:
Les voyages municipaux américains en Europe 1900-1940. Une piste d'histoire transnationale, 267-288

The circulation of experiments, people, and technical and administrative devices characterises the contemporary municipal scene. Those who organised and took part in this work of connections shared the conviction that municipal achievements could be imported, transferred and adapted despite radical differences in local contexts or national legislative realities. All along the 20th century, exhibitions, congresses, specialised periodicals and networks or associations of cities adopted this attitude. Perhaps this principle was most intensely developed through the work of American municipal reformers who scoured Europe for ideas and suggestions. This new sort of reforming Grand Tour developed from the years 1880-1890, when more and more Americans considered that the Old and the New Worlds had a common destiny. Those last decades of the 19th century welcomed a considerable growth of the North-Atlantic cultural and intellectual trade, that from the 1930s was completed by an hemispheric concern towards Latin and South America. This article makes use of existing scholarship to map the travelling interests of American municipal reformers between 1890 and 1914, before scrutinising the series of travels carried on by a cluster of professional societies of municipal administrators and technicians in the 1930s. This double endeavour helps to understand the possibilities, constraints and limits of European municipal travel. For its American visitors, municipal Europe was simultaneously a rhetorical tool, an inspiration and a beachhead to spread the gospel of reformed municipal government to the rest of the world.

Jefferey M. Sellers:
Transnational Urban Associations and the State: Contemporary Europe Compared with the Hanseatic League, 289-308

The recent growth of transnational urban associations in Europe and around the world may seem to herald the emergence of forms of political authority analogous to those of the Hanseatic League in medieval and early modern Europe. Close comparison of contemporary transnational urban associations with these earlier arrangements, however, demonstrates important differences from the Hanseatic League as well as limited resemblances. This article focuses in particular on the contrasts the rise of modern states have brought about in the objectives, main actors and forms of association among cities. On the one hand, modern states have taken over the tasks of securing and facilitating markets that dominated the agendas of the Hanseatic League. On the other hand, the development of local governments, political systems and policy within states has created new groups of political parties, administrative officials and policy makers with interests in international cooperation and exchange. Although these groups now work through transnational urban associations in ways that broadly resemble those of the Hanseatic League, contemporary associations supplement and elaborate rather than substitute for the work of states.

II. Forum

Peter Becker:
Überlegungen zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Verwaltung, 311-336

This article presents some reflection on the heuristic potential of a cultural-historical approach to public administration. Viewed from this perspective, public administration is understood as system of rules and practices for the generation, classification, and application of socially relevant knowledge within a legal-constitutional framework. This approach directs our attention to administrators, their socialisation and value systems, to organisational patterns and their theoretical, political, and technological underpinnings, and to the transfers of concepts and practices between public administration on the one hand and sciences and the business world on the other hand. The heuristic strength of this perspective is presented in three fields: bureaucratic language, production and processing of knowledge, and the subjectivity of administrators. The article argues that the cultural historical analysis of public administration allows a more differentiated explanation of change, which avoids the mere application of meta-narratives such as modernization and bureaucratization. Moreover, it provides us with the analytical tools to integrate more systematically the discourses on and the practices of administration. And it enables us, finally, to connect the changing practices of governance to social, economic, cultural, and political change.

Klaus-Gert Lutterbeck:
Methodologische Reflexionen über eine politische Ideengeschichte administrativer Praxis, 337-366

This article aims primarily to demonstrate that there is a gap in the way the history of political thought has been written up to the present in so far as the sphere of public administration has been neglected. To inquire into the administrative history sub specie political thought appears as only logical, bearing in mind that the Weberian model of the Anstaltsstaat with a clear dinstinction between the political area and that of a supposed apolitical administration is nowadays antiquated. In terms of systematical thinking as far as epistemological features are concerned, the cause of this deficit can be represented as an inversion of the well known problem of theory and practice. Furthermore, the article outlines some examples of the historiography of the ideas regarding the method in each case before and after the linguistic turn in the 20th century (Meinecke, Lovejoy and Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Cambridge School respectively). Finally, the article tests the method of a history of political ideas of administrative practice on the municipal administration of Strassburg in Alsace Lorraine during Reichsland times (1871-1918).

Anschriftenverzeichnis, 379-380