A new direction or the same old road? Assessing refugee housing and integration policy governance in Berlin post-2016

Abstract

Does failure lead to change in governance structure? Market-based and decentred new public management (NPM) structures came into being off the back of perceived failures of direct state provision, and this paper explores whether the 2016 failure in refugee policy by the Berlin municipality under NPM-like structures led to the introduction of governance change. While existing scholarship tends to highlight innovation and flexibility within NPM networks, this paper shows that institutional inertia served to impede the introduction of governance change. Despite the initial ambitions from political actors to regain direct control over policy delivery, a combination of path dependence, electoral policy mediation and institutional socialisation contributed to the retention of the market-based and regulatory approach to delivery. While some policy change and institutional movement was achieved after the crisis, governance process remained characterised by NPM features.