The ''new public management'' (NPM) wave in public sector organizational change was founded on themes of disaggregation, competition, and incentivization. Although its effects are still working through in countries new to NPM, this wave has now largely stalled or been reversed in some key ''leading-edge'' countries. This ebbing chiefly reflects the cumulation of adverse indirect effects on citizens' capacities for solving social problems because NPM has radically increased institutional and policy complexity. The character of the post-NPM regime is currently being formed. We set out the case that a range of connected and information technology-centered changes will be critical for the current and next wave of change, and we focus on themes of reintegration, needs-based holism, and digitization changes. The overall movement incorporating these new shifts is toward ''digital-era governance'' (DEG), which involves reintegrating functions into the governmental sphere, adopting holistic and needs-oriented structures, and progressing digitalization of administrative processes. DEG offers a perhaps unique opportunity to create self-sustaining change, in a broad range of closely connected technological, organizational, cultural, and social effects. But there are alternative scenarios as to how far DEG will be recognized as a coherent phenomenon and implemented successfully.

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Widespread use of the Internet and the Web has transformed the public management 'quasiparadigm' in advanced industrial countries. The toolkit for public management reform has shifted away from a 'new public management' (NPM) approach stressing fragmentation, competition and incentivization and towards a 'digital-era governance' (DEG) one, focusing on reintegrating services, providing holistic services for citizens and implementing thoroughgoing digital changes in administration. We review the current status of NPM and DEG approaches, showing how the development of the social Web has already helped trigger a 'second wave' of DEG 2 changes. Web science and organizational studies are converging swiftly in public management and public services, opening up an extensive agenda for future redesign of state organization and interventions. So far, DEG changes have survived austerity pressures well, whereas key NPM elements have been rolled back. IntroductionThings take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could. Larry SummersDigital changes made feasible by Internet-and Webbased technologies and applications have moved to centre stage in many academic disciplines. They are increasingly vital to executive government operations in all advanced industrial states, albeit with a 'culture lag' compared with business and many civil society adaptations. Public administration and public management scholars remain divided about these developments, however.c 2013 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. The erstwhile dominant academic 'quasi-paradigm' 1 of 'new public management' (NPM) marginalized technological changes in favour of a managerialist emphasis on organizational arrangements and strong corporate leadership. NPM stressed a trinity of macro-themesdisaggregation (chunking-up government hierarchies into smaller organizations); competition (especially with private-sector contractors but also in internal quasi-markets within government); and incentivization (built on pecuniary motivations instead of professionalism). From 1980 to around 2005, the NPM wave was moving strongly forward across many countries (with distinct emphases in different countries) [4]. However, NPM always prioritized managerialist elements and assigned little intellectual significance to digital developments.We have argued elsewhere that a change of quasi-paradigms in public management reform has now occurred, partly because the NPM wave ground to a halt in most advanced industrial countries, amid growing signs of crises and contradictions. This argument does not deny that NPM arrangements are still being implemented, and indeed occasionally being revived in some new contexts. Of course, even in the Kuhnian theory of shifts in scientific paradigms, the legacy view normally remains in being and is extensively used for many years. Its remaining exponents often fight lengthy rearguard actions against the ideas that intellectually supplant it. In fields such as public management, w...

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Discussions of core executive operations in Britain have focused on a limited controversy about whether monocratic control is exercised by the premier or whether more collegial decision making persists in Cabinet. An extended typology of institutionalist views is examined, including the prime ministerial clique interpretation, models of ministerial government, segmented decision making, and bureaucratic coordination. This restricted debate reflects normative anxieties about Britain's unbalanced constitution, partystructured legislature and an inadequate rational policy process inside the executive. New directions for core executive research are examined, including the analysis of decisional studies, more disaggregated and differentiated accounts of the core executive, coalition politics in the core executive, and the analysis of leadership influences. DEFINING CORE EXECUTIVE STUDIESThe innermost centre of British central government consists of a complex web of institutions, networks and practices surrounding the PM, Cabinet, cabinet committees and their official counterparts, less formalized ministerial 'clubs' or meetings, bilateral negotiations, and interdepartmental committees. It also includes some major coordinating departments -chiefly, the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, the Foreign Office, the law officers, and the security and intelligence services. The old overarching term for (some of) these institutions and practices is 'cabinet govemment', but this usage has become inadequate and confusing in two key respects. First, according to many recent commentators the phrase mis-states the currently effective mechanisms for achieving coordination. At best it is contentious, and at worst seriously misleading to assert the primacy of the Cabinet in the amalgam of organizations and mechanisms set out above. Second, the label 'cabinet govemment' describes not just a particular pattern of coordination but also a normative ideal, a constitutional theory of how the very centre of the UK state should operate Uennings 1931). With these two established meanings 'cabinet government' cannot also describe a whole field of study, its controversies and debates.A number of attempts have been made to provide modernized conceptualizations