Ulf ZimmermannKennesaw State University

Politics/Administration Harmony in the City of Bach?

Ulf Zimmermann is a professor of

public administration at Kennesaw Slate

University. He has published anicles and

book chapters on sprawt in Atlanta and

politics in pre- and post-Wall Berlin. Most

recently, he coedited Business Improve-

ment Districts Research. Theories.

and Controversies with GoktugMorcol,

lortene Hoyt. and lacfc Meek (CRC Press,

2008).

E-mail: uzimmerm@kennesaw.edu

Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamor, The Leipzig Model: Mythor Reality? A Study of City Management in theFormer East Germany (Lanham, MD: UniversityPress of America, 2008). 300pp. $39-95 (paper),ISBN: 9780761838906.

I n his introduction, Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamoroffers a brief definition of his subject: "TheLeipzig Model that is (he topic of the book is a

managerial tool that advances the concepts of coop-eration, consensus-building, and tolerance of otherpeople's opinions" (1). Those concepts did operate inLeipzig city governance after the fall of the Berlin Wallexposed the hollow shell of the former East Germany.But the model is a managerial tool only to the extentthat one can create and manipulate a political culture,as we learn from the people whom Garcia-Zamorinterviewed.

Teaching summers at Leipzig University since 1999enabled Garcia-Zamor to interview many of the lead-ing officials in the city administration at the time. The''Leipzig Model," as it was dubbed in the press, hadgotten national attention for achievements exceedingeven those of West German cities. Most significantamong those was the acquisition of the new BMWplant, for which 250 cities all over Europe had compet-ed, a success that Garcia-Zamor credits to the "efficiencyand professionalism" of the "Leipzig bureaucracy" (4).

Before addressing that bureaucracy, he describes, inchapter 1, how East German bureaucrats were hiredprimarily on the basis of loyalty to the Soviet-steeredSocialist Unity Party. Because the part}' needed toclaim zero unemployment, the bureaucracy wassubstantially overstaffed: 12 percent of the EastGerman workforce was employed in the bureauctacy,compared to 7 percent in the West. While the Westsbureaucracy was highly professional, the East's wasabout 55 percent working class or farmers, whichmade it quite representative of a "State of Workersand Farmers," as the German Democratic Republic(GDR) described itself, but hardly professional.

To compensate for such a lack of bureaucratic profes-sionalism after unification, when local self-govern-ment was reinstated, many experienced West Ger-man administrators came to help their East German"brothers." (For such tours of duty, they received whatthey called "bush money," bonuses for working in the"Wild East bush.") East Germany was better off forgetting all this help (not to mention huge financialsupport), and, as Garcia-Zamor reminds us, the EastGermans had never wanted a "revolution," merelymore or less radical reform, and therefore had no onein place to take up leadetship.

In chapter 2, "Politics and Human Rights," Garcia-Zamor explains that cleaning up the former andinstituting the latter required the temoval of all ofthe Socialist Unity Party judges and prosecutors aswell as, of course, the Stasi (Secret Police), which,it turned out, had infested even the church, whosebasements had housed the dissidents' meetings.Garcia-Zamor is right that the West German take-over of so many leading bureaucratic positions left noopportunity- for East Germans to develop their ownnew bureaucratic self-confidence and identity. But thechaotic circumstances aftet the fall of the Betlin Walland the serious lack of professionalism really left notime fot that.

In chapter 3, "Ethics in a Society in Transformation,"Garcia-Zamor elaborates on the hiring practices inthe GDR bureaucracy. These were based on party andpersonal loyalty, which he rightly tetms an "ethicalfailure"—the higher-ups skimmed whatever they couldand hired folks to cover for them at the lower levels."The BMW case," which he introduces here, demon-strates to him that a newly ethical administration alsomeans a more efficient bureaucracy. Probably so, butapart from a sizable Western subsidy for infrastructuteimprovements in the area, BMW went to Leipzig forseveral other reasons: a highly skilled workforce thatwas willing to work around the clock and for lowerwages than in any of the other contending cities; nolanguage problem; BMWs made here could continue

514 Public Administration Review • May [June 2010

to be marketed as "Made in Germany"; proximity toBMW's Munich home; abundant housing and culturalamenities; and, of course, an eminently accommodat-ing city administration. To attract BMW, city officialsestablished a public—private partnership with a firmthat would train employees for work at BMW andsimilar plants to return Saxony to its former automanufacturing glory.

In chapter 4, "The City of Leipzig/' Garcia-Zamorturns to this glorious past, which he portrays asintegral to the civic culture that is the driving forcefor such model city administration. Since the 1400s,Leipzig had been a royal and then an imperial mar-ketplace, with the biggest German trade fairs. It wascentral in modern development, too, as Europe's firstrail lines linked Leipzig and Dresden in 1834. It hasa resonant music history (Bach among others) andGermany's second-oldest university (Goethe wentthere). It played a central role in the Reformationfollowing Luther's nearby protests and, most recently,of course, it played the pivotal role in protests againstthe GDR government. And, in post-Wall times,Leipzig has made the strongest comeback of any EastGerman city-.

For Garcia-Zamor, this special civic culture trumpedpartisan politics among city council members, whothus came to agree to unusually entrepreneurial gov-erning. "This book," he claims, "will fill an importantgap in local administration scholarship. It is one of thefirst to consider in details [sic] the dynamics of cultureand commerce in local government" (80).

It is true that Leipzig has a long and illustrious cul-tural history, but that is a claim many other Germancities can make. And Garcia-Zamor is certainly rightto note that Germans prefer consensus over conflict,but then again, Leipzigers were the leaders in pro-democracy demonstrations. The "revolution" of 1989came out of protests centered around the St. NicholasChurch, and perhaps this is the "civic" energy thatshould be stressed.

It was during the competition for the BMW plantthat city leaders, tired of their East German "loser"image, conjured up this proud history. Primary amongthese leaders was the first post-Wall mayor, HinrichLehmann-Grube, a West German jurist and longtimemayor of Hanover, who saw coming to Leipzig as anentrepreneurial opportunity. His successor, WolfgangTiefensee, was a local who had been prominent in thereform movement there.

Much of the information about the mayors' perform-ance, and that of the Leipzig Model, comes fromGarcia-Zamor's interviews of 24 participants in thesepost-Wall governance efforts, including both mayors.These interviewees almost unequivocally credit the

mayors for the Leipzig Model, generally giving morecredit to Lehmann-Grube than to his hand-pickedsuccessor. To them, the Leipzig Model represents a"political" style or "decision-making' process thatstrove to overcome conflict and create consensus byputting the needs of the cirv above the interests of thepolitical parties. The general sentiment seems to bethat such an approach worked for the first few years,a time so near chaos that, as in similar crises, it simplyforced everyone to subordinate all other interests to aunited effort to overcome it.

Trying to come to terms with this crisis also involvedcreating new governance structures for East Germancities, which Garcia-Zamor turns to in chapter 5,"The Structure of Leipzig City Government." InGDR times, cities had been mere arms of the nationalparty government—rather stunted arms at that, withabout 500 employees. Now Leipzig adopted, first, amodel akin to the American weak-mayor form andthen a strong-mayor one. This "strong" positionallowed the second mayor to sustain a consensusthrough a "grand coalition" between the two larg-est parties, the Social Democrats and the ChristianDemocrats, but this harmony soon succumbed topartisan discord.

In chapter 6, "The Leipzig Model of Management,"Garcia-Zamor notes that the model emerged at a spe-cific moment when fundamental changes were underway that made it possible. But this time has passed, asthe interviews make clear. The model really lasted onlyas long as did the revolutionary enthusiasm engen-dered by the fall of the Wall, as the former city councilpresident observed. Today, as the interviews attest, it ispartisan politics as usual.

While Garcia-Zamor does not mention this, theLeipzig Model may be viewed as an urban reprisalof the much-touted "German Model," the long-suc-cessful social market economy that prided itself on aharmonious consensus between (the economic needsof) capita] and (the social needs of) labor. Perhapsthe very effort of the West to "harmonize" the East,economically and socially, has extended this GermanModel too near the breaking point.

We can similarly answer the titular question, "Is theLeipzig Model Myth or Reality?" The interviewssuggest that it was a reality as long as that enthusiasmlasted; today, it is pan of that myth of those first fewpostrevolutionary and foundational years, as Garcia-Zamor himself acknowledges.

And what does all this have to do with city manage-ment? The Leipzig Model is really more about politi-cal management as exercised by these two mayors. Or,as Tiefensee says, it was a model of "political culture"(2) tha t the first mayor created and Tiefensee sought

Book Reviews 515

to sustain. Garcia-Zamor stretches the model to applyto city management as well as politics, it appears,because these political leaders engaged their admin-istrations and councils in economic development, amarket function that in Germany, unlike the UnitedStates, is not generally a city government function.This is why the BMW case looms so large—these po-litical leaders were able to align both the city admin-istration and the city council cooperatively behind aneffort to attract this new plant.

But that has little to do with city management andmore to do with contingency leadership at the politi-cal level. Both of these mayors understood that, giventhe local history of and pride in civic autonomy, in-dustrial innovation, and "can-do attitude, economicentrepreneurialism (particularly in the auto industry)was the likeliest way to rebuild the city and stanch thewestward emigration. The lessons to be learned, there-fore, really pertain to leadership and (organizational)culture and remind us that these, too, are contingent.

Coming Up in the July/August Issue of PAR

Administrative Limits Revisited: A Senior-Junior Exchange

Big Issues within Contemporary Public Administration Theory

Advancing Cutback Management Research

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516 Public Administration Review • May|June 2010