The role of the state is changing under the impact of, for example, globalization. The changes have been variously understood as the new public management (NPM), the hollowing-out of the state and the new governance. This special issue of Public Administration explores the changing role of the state in advanced industrial democracies. It focuses on the puzzle of why states respond differently to common trends.This introductory article has three aims. First, we provide a brief review of the existing literature on public sector reform to show that our approach is distinctive. We argue that the existing literature does not explore the ways in which governmental traditions shape reform. Second, we outline an interpretive approach to the analysis of public sector reform built on the notions of beliefs, traditions, dilemmas and narratives. We provide brief illustrations of these ideas drawn from the individual country articles. Finally, we outline the ground covered by all the chapters but we do not summarize and compare their experiences of reform. That task is reserved for the concluding article.
THE REFORMSThe wave of public sector reform that began in the 1980s is commonly referred to as the new public management (NPM). The term refers to a focus on management, not policy, and on performance appraisal and efficiency; disaggregating public bureaucracies into agencies which deal with each other on a user pay basis; the use of quasi-markets and of contracting out to foster competition; cost-cutting; and a style of management
Machinery of government arrangements attract a diverse and detailed literature, but surprisingly little comparative research. This article provides a graphically presented indication of functional changes in the architecture of national government in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom between 1950 and 1997. An analysis finds interesting national differences, with sharp changes in practice in Australia and Canada, but more gradual incremental adjustment in the United Kingdom. The correlation between parties and machinery change is weak for Canada and the United Kingdom, but all countries demonstrate stronger links between elections, new prime ministers and machinery of government changes. Further, all tend to oscillate between many specialist departments and fewer, broader agencies
The explanation for such machinery change, we argue, is found in the political, policy and administrative calculations made by prime ministers in Westminster‐style parliamentary systems
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