One of a state’s fundamental missions is the provision of services deemed of general interest to its citizens (Voss 2022). As the primary interface between citizens and the state, particularly local governments are entrusted with the critical task of delivering essential services and implementing crisis response measures, thereby playing a pivotal role in safeguarding the welfare of the populace. This applies even more to crises and during challenging circumstances – not only the regular services have to be performed, but also additional tasks are being posed on the bureaucracy, e.g., the provision of registration service and housing for refugees, the tracking of contacts in a health emergency, or rescue and aid services in the case of natural disasters (Schomaker and Bauer 2020).

Thus, the ability to draw valuable insights from past experiences empowers public administrators to make well-informed decisions and supports them in providing essential services for citizens. Central to this process is the practice of knowledge management, enabling a structured collection, analysis, and dissemination of essential information to public administrators. The primary objective of this research paper is a comparative analysis of crisis management practices within public administrations during different types of crises (caused by migration movement, the global COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters) to gain insights into how these periods of extraordinary difficulty are handled and to discover possible potential for improvement.

Thus, the discussion on future-relevant competencies for public administrators increasingly includes the handling of crises (Tillack and Hornbostel 2023; Kairies-Lamp and Zander 2020; Radelli 2021). Public administrations are confronted with the need to react flexibly and to develop new, innovative methods and approaches (Vries et al. 2018), to cope with the complex requirements of „transboundary crises” (Ansell et al. 2010). Thus, the determinants of such competencies increasingly are put center stage. The initial results of a study of German districts dealing with the refugee crisis beginning in 2015, for example, show how this flexibility can be explained. Politically unconstrained leadership, access to sufficient financial resources, and previous experience with crises are identified as factors that positively influence flexibility (Lenz and Eckhard 2022). Other research emphasizes the importance of building crisis management skills and ensuring flexible governance structures, too (Fekete et al. 2023; Ibert and Harmsen 2022). In addition, networking with stakeholders proved to be of utmost importance to keep performance during crises high (Schomaker and Bauer 2020).

The proposed paper at hand provides some significant contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of responses to various recent crises across local administrations in Austria and Germany, it offers unique insights into the dynamics of crisis management in different types of crises. The comparative and local-centered perspective at least partly fills a gap in the crisis management literature that predominantly applies qualitative approaches focusing on either the national administrative level or disaster relief forces. In addition, we differentiate between a short-term and a long-term perspective. Therewith, the paper contributes to the comprehension of the dynamics of the relationship between preparedness, knowledge management, learning, and administrative performance and integrates it with the perspective of local public administrations, aligning it to former studies on learning in and between crises. Through examining this link, lastly, practical implications are revealed.

The empirical data for this study originates from several online surveys (conducted in Austria and Germany) between summer 2019 and summer 2023 by the author, using the software Unipark. All questionnaires tap into local administrators’ work environment, intraorganizational structural change in the context of the respective “crisis,” networking activities, knowledge storage and management, as well as the sociodemographic details of the municipality. The surveys were complemented by in-depth interviews with bureaucrats whose daily work was affected by the respective crisis, the interviews were conducted from 2019 to 2023.

Decentralization is a process that allows local governments to play a more active role in decision-making and the management of public policies. This process includes the transfer of resources, authority, and responsibilities from the central government to local entities, facilitating a quicker and more efficient response to the specific needs of each region. In Portugal, this process is governed by legislations such as Law No. 75/2013 and Law No. 50/2018, which structure the transfer of competencies from the central government to municipalities and intermunicipal entities, especially in the areas of health, education, and social action.

Territorial cohesion and equal access suggest that decentralization should be aimed at reducing disparities between territories, ensuring a balanced provision of public services to populations in various regions. It is important to note that the decentralization process, which occurs in different dimensions, namely political, financial, and administrative axes (Pires & Gomide, 2016; Pires et al., 2018; Faletti, 2010, 2013) is subject to ongoing monitoring and must be guided by responsible and transparent practices.

The success of decentralization, however, crucially depends on the implementation of robust indicators that allow for measuring the outcomes and impacts of implemented policies. These indicators are essential for monitoring progress, assessing effectiveness, and adjusting policies as necessary. Constructing indicators involves significant challenges, including defining appropriate metrics and collecting and analyzing relevant data, requiring collaboration among various governmental and non-governmental entities.

The decentralization of competencies in Portugal represents a structured effort to bring decision-making power closer to local communities, fostering more effective, responsive governance aligned with regional needs and specificities. Each axis of decentralization — administrative, fiscal, and political — plays a critical role in shaping an effective decentralization framework in Portugal, creating conditions for power and responsibility to be exercised more efficiently, closer to the citizens, and with a greater impact on the country's sustainable development.

Public policy literature has discussed various indicators for measuring, analyzing, and monitoring public policies (Amado, 2020; Neto & Gehlen, 2018; IPDET, 2007; Kusek & Rist, 2004). These indicators are essential tools for assessing the extent, effectiveness, and impacts and creating a monitoring system (Neto & Gehlen, 2018) of decentralization in governance, service delivery, and integrated local social development, covering a set of dimensions in the main administrative, fiscal, and political axes of decentralization.

A theoretically grounded discussion is proposed around the dimensions, capacities to measure, concrete measurement objects, as well as the actors to consider in the different domains of competency transfer. From this analysis, it is intended to provide a significant contribution to the way decentralization is understood and implemented. Decentralization, by distributing decision-making power from central authorities to local ones, has the potential to profoundly transform local governance. This not only optimizes administration by allowing quicker decisions tailored to local realities but also enhances citizen participation, which is a fundamental pillar for strengthening democracy. By adopting a more structured and evidence-based approach, we hope that decentralization policies will be more effective and promote balanced and inclusive development

Keywords: decentralization; measurement; indicators; Portugal

Decentralization represents a process that, at first glance, involves the transfer of authority from a central government to subnational levels and takes place in different dimensions, commonly divided into political, financial, and administrative (Boko, 2002; Falleti, 2013; Schneider, 2003). Such a process presupposes guaranteeing autonomy and resources for local governments, which depends on the creation and strengthening of their state capacities as a condition for the expected better articulation, definition of priorities, and design and delivery of public policies for territories’ reality (see Bellofatto and Besfamille (2018), Fiszbein (1997), and Rumbach (2016)).

Decentralization is a relevant topic in debates on public policy and state reform, but in Portugal, it has acquired a secular dimension since its counter-concept (centralization) was at the core of the formation of the National State (Caeiro, 2015, 2018). This centripetal perspective became centrifugal over time, and since the promulgation of the 1976 Constitution, this process has been unfolding with periods of greater attention and speed and others of forgetfulness and slowdown.

Currently, Portuguese decentralization has been based on three pillars. The first is a range of principles, including universality and suitability, territory cohesion and equality of access, subnational autonomy, and others. The second is the decentralization arrangement comprising the central administration, a central monitoring Committee, regional coordination commissions, local autarchies, and inter-municipal entities divided into inter-municipal communities and metropolitan areas. The third one corresponds to the division of the transfer process of competencies according to the policy domains, such as education, social action, health, etc.

Here, we assume that decentralization represents a systematization strategy of principles, arrangements, and transfers of competencies to build state capacity at subnational-level governments. This implies relocating the national government’s authority on decision-making and public policies and corresponding administrative and financial resources. In this way, we propose an analytical framework on Portuguese decentralization that allows us to explore how such a complex systematization strategy, in its political (authority and autonomy), financial (economy and fiscal resources), and administrative (HR, skills, information, and patrimonial) dimensions, has built political and technical-administrative state capacity components in subnational jurisdictions that became responsible for decentralized public policies, as a critical condition for better policy delivery to needs faced by the population in the territories.

Thus, our framework is inspired by the state capacity theory based on its political and technical-administrative components (Pires & Gomide, 2016; Pires et al., 2018) combined with the model proposed by Faletti (2010, 2013), focusing on her proposal of the three types of decentralized competencies (political, administrative, and fiscal). State capacities allow due formulation and delivering policies that meet the needs and expectations of society, representing critical conditions for effective governance, public policy processes, and socioeconomic development, making it a necessary factor for the success of decentralization processes (Silva et al., 2018; Williams, 2020).

This proposal must address the complexity of Portuguese decentralization, demanding a ‘multi-level’ and ‘multi-domain’ scheme for analyzing a ‘multi-dimensional’ strategy. In this sense, our model considers that (1) the authority of coordination and monitoring continues at the national level, (2) policy delivery should vary among territories, (3) challenges in the implementation have resulted in unbalance between the transfer of authority and responsibilities and fiscal and administrative resources. Moreover, the framework also considers the decentralization process varies between policy domains (education, health, etc.), impacting in terms of (4) institutional arrangements, (5) the pace of implementation, (6) the sectorial regulation, and (7) even the level of shared authority and resources.

We intend to test and refine the proposed framework through future studies. Furthermore, it is expected to bring a valuable scientific contribution to the literature on decentralization processes and the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of decentralization policies in Portugal, which can take advantage of the framework for practical application in the context of the multi-level jurisdictional arrangement.

Local governments around the world have increasingly engaged the private sector in service delivery across various policy domains. This work examines the role of technological advancements, collaborative governance arrangements, and state capabilities in shaping governments' decisions to privatize service provision. Previous research has identified several factors influencing these decisions, including ideology, fiscal pressures, revenue shortages, and population size. Other crucial factors include transaction costs associated with service characteristics, public preferences for in-house versus outsourced services, the effectiveness of public management, and political competition. However, there needs to be more literature regarding the integration of state capabilities and collaborative governance approaches in this context, underscoring the significance of this study for panel data.

Theoretically, we introduce a conceptual model grounded in the literature on the state capabilities of local governments. Our model encompasses administrative, fiscal, and technical aspects and the impact of collaborative governance involving stakeholder participation. We distinguish between 'scale-free' capabilities, such as fiscal and administrative resources transferable across different contexts, and 'non-scale' capabilities, such as technical skills and stakeholder engagement, which are more specific and less flexible.

Our research not only presents a theoretical and analytical model but also demonstrates its practical application in diverse national contexts. By uncovering how collaborative governance arrangements and state capabilities influence local governments' outsourcing decisions, this work provides a practical framework also useful for policymakers and practitioners. These insights form the foundation of our two research questions and offer a robust framework for further investigation and application in various settings, empowering the audience with actionable knowledge. To what extent do collaborative governance arrangements affect local governments' choices to outsource service provision? How do the state capabilities of local governments explain the adoption of service delivery through private providers? To address these questions, we analyze government outsourcing in Brazilian municipalities' health and cultural sectors during the years 2014, 2018, and 2021. Brazil has 5,570 municipalities, and each one can outsource health and culture services as they possess a high degree of political and administrative autonomy.

We utilize a logit model for panel data to assess the impact of state capabilities variables on municipal outsourcing decisions. Our definition of state capacity includes a range of independent variables such as per capita civil servants, municipal bureaucracy's educational level, fiscal capacity, planning, ICT’s instruments, and collaborative governance. We also control for factors like municipal population, the mayor's political ideology, GDP per capita (proxy for local wealth), and the percentage of illiterates (proxy for human development).

Our findings suggest that municipalities with stronger scale-free capabilities are less likely to outsource in the health and cultural sectors. The decision to outsource service delivery is less common in municipalities with more effective governance arrangements and active stakeholder participation. Changing old structures of service provision and proposing new ways such as outsourcing is not an issue solely dependent on political decision but also a result of the interplay between scale-free and non-scale-free capabilities. The high diversity of our dataset also allows us to draw important lessons applicable to various countries worldwide.