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Compared to other continental European countries, especially Germany and Switzerland, which have experimented with New Public Management (NPM) in local government, The Netherlands has been relatively quick in following trends stemming from Anglo‐Saxon management thinking, but also relatively quick in redressing its course. The rise of the New Public Management in Dutch local government has been relatively swift and strong but also relatively superficial and non‐committal. The dominant picture that emerges is one of an administrative system that, while responsive to the latest trends, is also surprisingly stable. Management reforms, forcefully advocated in the 1980s, were decisively revised and redressed in the 1990s, with the city of Tilburg, celebrated for its 'Tilburg Model', a case in point. The Werdegang of NPM (that is, how things developed) in Dutch local government, detailed in this article, can be understood only partially as a result of changing economic and budgetary constraints. The article shows that endogenous features of the Dutch politico‐administrative system – more specifically: the compact, dense and decentralized pattern of the intergovernmental network, the administrative tradition of pragmatism, dynamic conservatism and the comparatively technocratic character of local government – have also strongly influenced the reception, effect and correction of NPM in Dutch local government.

Why what was the prime focus of attention in the Netherlands in the 1980s is being emphasized in Germany in the 1990s, and vice versa.

In this article attention is drawn to a striking difference between recent attempts to reform local government in the Netherlands and in Germany. What has been the prime focus of attention in the Netherlands in the 1980s is being emphasized in Germany in the 1990s, and what is being emphasized in the Netherlands in the 1990s has been the prime focus of attention in Germany in the 1980s. Trends in local goverment reform in the Netherlands have been going from a focus on more efficiency to a focus on more democracy, while trends in local government reform in Germany have been going the other way around. Likely explanations for these intersecting reform trends are built on four pillars: financial crises, legitimacy crises, formal institutions and informal institutions