Abstract
This article highlights an interesting and often unduly neglected aspect of comparative public policy and administration: local government training. The argument advanced is that local government training based on the centrally focused model may tend to be: (i) skill-oriented and competence-framed; (ii) comprehensive; and (iii) quality-controlled in a relatively rigorous manner. By contrast, local government training based on the locally focused model may tend to be: (i) skill-oriented and competence-framed alongside a focus on 'people' and organizational issues, conventional policy issues and broad local government issues; (ii) non-comprehensive, and (iii) weakly controlled for quality. The integrative model, which is the most innovative form of the three models presented here, may tend to manifest a varied mix of the aforementioned features. Based on an institutional analysis combined with interviews with senior training officials at national and local levels, this argument is illustrated in England and Wales, Denmark and Israel in the hope that it could be a starting point for developing hypotheses and propositions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 365-385 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Israel Affairs |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2010 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This project has received generous funding through a grant from the Ministry of Interior and the Association for the Development and Advancement of Manpower in the Social Services in Israel – ELKA–JDC (Israel). The author highly appreciates the valuable comments and suggestions from Michal Goldstein, Yaira Paz, Hadas Ovdat, Yakov Grinvald and Yonit Smolash. He expresses his gratitude to Joelle Shabat for her assistance. The views presented here are of the author and do not represent those of the funding organizations.
Keywords
- Competences
- Comprehensiveness
- Context
- Local government
- Models
- Quality control
- Skills
- Training