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The purpose of this paper is to discuss different approaches of performance measurement and benchmarking as “reflexive institutions” for local governments in England, Germany and Sweden from a comparative perspective.

These three countries have been selected because they represent typical (most different) cases of European local government systems and reforms. The existing theories on “institutional reflexivity” point to the potential contribution of benchmarking to public sector innovation and organizational learning. Based on survey findings, in-depth case studies, interviews and document analyses in these three countries, the paper addresses the major research question as to what extent and why benchmarking regimes vary across countries. It derives hypotheses about the impacts of benchmarking on institutional learning and innovation.

The outcomes suggest that the combination of three key features of benchmarking, namely – “obligation”, “sanctions” and “benchmarking authority” – in conjunction with country-specific administrative context conditions and local actor constellations – influences the impact of benchmarking as a reflexive institution.

It is shown in the paper that compulsory benchmarking on its own does not lead to reflexivity and learning, but that there is a need for autonomy and leeway for local actors to cope with benchmarking results. These findings are relevant because policy makers must decide upon the specific “governance mix” of benchmarking exercises taking their national and local contexts into account if they want them to promote institutional learning and innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate public partners’ motives for seeking and/or accepting partnerships with third sector organisations.

The approach is to seek to identify and explain motives from different perspectives; as responses to government failure or voluntary failure, as related to governance structures, and/or as driven by resource dependencies. The empirical material was gathered through semi-structured interviews with public employees in Swedish municipalities. The aim of the interviews was to grasp the public partners’ motives for partnerships with third sector organisations. Each interview started with questions on the presence and forms of partnerships, thus creating a backdrop for the motives, both during the interview and as a map of the partnership landscape.

The most prominent motives for public engagement in partnerships with third sector organisations are related to democratic values, the need to solve concrete problems, and economic rationality. The motives vary with the type of partnership of which there is considerable variation in scale, content and contribution; the types of partnership vary with different policy fields and services. Different perspectives highlight different motives but none of them excludes other perspectives.

The main contribution of the paper is the empirically based findings of a multi-layered public–third sector partnership landscape where policy fields, forms and complex motives are intertwined.