TWO MYTHS OF CONVERGENCE IN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM

The literature on public management reform exhibits two intertwined convergence myths. First, a world‐wide consensus on a new public management (NPM) reform agenda is seen to exist amongst policy reformers and practitioners. If this agenda is not fully implemented in all cases, this is generally explained by political and reform setbacks rather than disagreement on policy aims. Second, this NPM agenda is now seen as challenged and even abandoned and replaced by an emergent post‐NPM or ‘public value leadership’ agenda and/or policy paradigm. We show the NPM convergence is overstated, with a remarkable resilience of existing institutions, and a diversity of public management systems. On the other hand, even within NPM exemplars that have putatively now adopted a post‐NPM agenda, there is debate to what degree NPM has been abandoned, and over the novelty, coherence and resilience of the post‐NPM agenda. Divergence and contextual variation prevail. The role of myth in policy reform is further examined.     

THE FUTURE OF PORTUGUESE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND A NEW AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SCIENCES IN THE 21st CENTURY

This paper addresses the changing role of the Portuguese state, the present priority assigned to the process of reform and the new challenges to be overcome by public administration. Such processes are demanding a new agenda for education and research in public administration sciences, shifting from the public law paradigm to an interdisciplinary problem‐solving approach and giving special attention to 10 key areas of study, which we describe in the final section of the paper. It should be noted here that the opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the position of their institutions.     

Civil Service Reform in Ethiopia: Issues,Lessons, and Future Directions

This article provides an in-depth review of the successes and challenges of public sector reform efforts in Ethiopia with a view to help other developing countries, particularly African countries, learn from Ethiopia's experiences in this regard so that they can improve the content of and approach to their public sector reforms. It also identifies the gaps in the existing literature and puts forward implications for further research in the area. The public sector reform program of Ethiopia has shown successes particularly in the areas of service delivery to citizens. However, the reform program is entangled with challenges such as lack of accountability and transparency on the part of implementing institutions, inadequate material and moral incentive to employees thus crippling the capacity to manage the implementation process, and participation from the side of different stakeholders.     

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN AN AFRICAN STATE: AN EXTENSION OF KINGDON'S MULTIPLE‐STREAMS APPROACH

Kingdon's multiple‐streams framework, which emerged in the mid‐1980s, today forms one of the indispensable analytical frameworks for understanding public policy agenda‐setting. However, it is only in the context of wealthy countries that this approach has been validated for setting the agenda of national and international policies. This article reports the results of empirical research in an African state studying the transferability of a threefold theoretical innovation. The question under consideration is whether the multiple‐streams framework is useful for examining public policy implementation at the local level and in the context of a low income country. The research findings confirm the premise that the multiple‐streams framework can be extended and can lead to the formulation of several theoretical propositions.     

HYBRIDS AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES: COMPARING UK REFORMS IN HEALTHCARE,BROADCASTING AND POSTAL SERVICES

Many countries use state‐owned, for‐profit, and third sector organizations to provide public services, generating ‘hybrid’ organizational forms. This article examines how the hybridization of organizations in the public sector is influenced by interaction between regulatory change and professional communities. It presents qualitative data on three areas of the UK public sector that have undergone marketization: healthcare, broadcasting, and postal services. Implementation of market‐based reform in public sector organizations is shaped by sector‐specific differences in professional communities, as these groups interact with reform processes. Sectoral differences in communities include their power to influence reform, their persistence despite reform, and their alignment with the direction of change or innovation. Equally, the dynamics of professional communities can be affected by reform. Policymakers need to take account of the ways that implementation of hybrid forms interacts with professional communities, including risk of disrupting existing relationships based on communities that contribute to learning.     

THE DIFFICULT TRANSFORMATION OF STATE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN PORTUGAL. EUROPEANIZATION AND THE PERSISTENCE OF NEO‐PATRIMONIALISM

Portugal has been characterized by a late discontinuous democratization process. This contribution discusses the case of state and public administration reform in Portugal by using approaches from democratization, modernization and Europeanization theories. In order to understand the Portuguese case, the concept of ‘neo‐patrimonialism’ is used. We characterize Portuguese public administration as still having ‘neo‐patrimonial’ features, and therefore is still in transition from old closed‐minded practices such as particularistic decision making or clientelistic relationships to new open‐minded ones. The ‘new’ governance agenda combines new public management instruments and a growing flexibilization of public administration towards networks with non‐statal actors and has certainly led to some improvement in the quality of the services associated with public administration. Although is still too early to assess, top‐down and horizontal Europeanization processes, particularly since the late 1990s, may have contributed to a more reflexive approach in moving towards a more endogenous strategic vision based on the needs of the Portuguese state and public administration.     

Legal reform need not come first: Merit‐based civil service management in law and practice

Introducing merit recruitment of public servants is a central good governance reform. To move towards merit in practice, legislation which mandates merit recruitment is considered a necessary but insufficient first step by many scholars and practitioners. Merit‐based civil service legislation should thus be sought before reform in practice. This article challenges this reasoning. It argues that merit laws are neither sufficient nor necessary: they leave the incumbent's possibility frontier for patronage and meritocracy in practice unaffected. Large‐ and small‐n evidence supports this assertion. Analyses of an original dataset of coded civil service legislation in 117 countries from 1975 to 2015 suggest that countries can attain meritocratic recruitment with and without legal merit requirements. Subsequently, a comparison of Paraguay and the Dominican Republic provides micro‐evidence for the underlying mechanism. Conventional wisdom about the sequencing of governance reforms in developing countries may thus be misleading: legal reform need not come first.     

Generalists and specialists in executive politics: Why ambitious meta‐policies so often fail

This article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.     

Multilevel reinforcing dynamics: Global climate governance and European renewable energy policy

This article breaks new ground by revisiting the Multiple Streams Framework as central public policy theory and modifying it to take into account multilevel reinforcing dynamics. This is important as it allows policy change to be explained more accurately given the empirical interdependencies between policy‐making on the national, regional (e.g., European) and international levels, which so far have not been sufficiently taken into account by traditional public policy theories. It process‐traces how EU‐level policies motivated by energy security considerations and global climate leadership ambitions influenced international‐level agenda‐setting. Global climate change commitments in turn influenced European renewable energy and climate policy. Such multilevel reinforcing dynamics were central for the 2009 European Renewable Energy Directive, the 2030 Climate and Energy Framework and the 2050 European Green Deal proposal to emerge and subsequently facilitated the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which in turn motivated developed and developing countries to legislate and implement climate and renewable energy policies.     

THE REFORM OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT IN THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION: A PUBLIC MANAGEMENT POLICY CYCLE CASE STUDY

Since the mid‐1990s during the Santer, Prodi, and Barroso presidencies, the European Commission has experienced several public management policy cycles. Included on the Barroso Commission's (2004–2008) policy agenda was the reform of internal financial control, prompted by significant irregularities in budget execution signalled repeatedly by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in its annual Declaration of Assurance (DAS) and Annual Reports. This led to a declared Barroso Commission strategic objective of achieving a ‘positive DAS' by 2009. The proposed solution was ‘integrated internal control’ based on an international reference point within the accounting and auditing professions. The result was a centrally co‐ordinated Commission project aiming to reform management and audit practices within both the Commission and EU member states. This article reports on the ‘positive DAS' and ‘integrated internal control’ policy cycle and explains its agenda‐setting, alternative‐specification, and decisional processes.     

WHAT IS GOVERNANCE IN THE ‘PUBLIC INTEREST’? THE CASE OF THE 1995 PROPERTY FORUM IN POST‐CONFLICT NICARAGUA

‘Public interest' (synonymous here with ‘common good’ and ‘public good’) is a central concept in public administration. In an important, basic sense, we evaluate the effectiveness of governments in terms of whether their policies are detrimental to, or benefit, public interest. However there are problems operationalizing public interest: it seems a concept that is simultaneously indispensable yet vague. While difficulties operationalizing public interest are widely understood, a further problem is insufficiently acknowledged. This is that many features underpinning public interest (a tradition of citizenship, stable government, a rule of law, basic infrastructures) are taken for granted in established democracies. However, in other contexts we cannot assume these. Examining what public interest means in developing countries can be useful to identify these taken for granted assumptions, and to re‐examine this ubiquitous and enduring concept. We do this through a case study of land rights reform in post conflict Nicaragua.     

RESTRUCTURING WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY: COMPARING MANAGERIAL REFORMS IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

In much of the international public administration literature, New Public Management (NPM) already appears to be bogged down in a quagmire of critical revisions and assessments. Although some criticisms are well founded, there can be no doubt that NPM represents a trend which has considerably affected public‐sector decision‐making worldwide. This article takes the examples of the Southern European bureaucracies, where NPM‐inspired reforms were introduced later than in the English‐speaking world, but have nevertheless played a decisive role in the political agenda of both socialist and conservative governments. The paper presents the results of a comparative study of administrative reforms in five European countries as well as the USA during the 1980s and 1990s. The comparison is based on three specific dimensions (central bureaucracies’ formal structure; civil service organization; administrative processes), enabling us to systematically measure and compare the progress of the various countries subsequent to the cycle of managerial reforms.     

Exploring Contracts as Reinvented Institutions in the Danish Public Sector

Contracts have been on the agenda in public sector reform in most OECD countries. In Denmark, contracts have been considered as one of the most important tools in reorganizing the public sector. The article examines the implementation of contract agencies in central government in Denmark during the 1990s. First, a review of contractual theory distinguishes between 'hard' and 'soft' contracting. Second, recent developments in contracting in Denmark are examined, and three phases of contract agencies are identified. Contracts have been supported by other tools for reporting on performance like annual reports. Third, it is argued that Denmark has put co-operation and negotiation before more strict management and control. The Danish experience can be seen as an alternative to the principal-agent model. The article finishes by discussing the pros and cons of the Danish approach, and suggests that although the pragmatic approach has merits, it may lead to problems in the future concerning the credibility of the whole project.     

Neoliberal Law: unintended consequences of market-friendly law reforms

This paper offers a critical evaluation of the interrelation of law and economics in the context of development. The paper describes the current promotion of law reform by international institutions like the World Bank as the product of neoliberal economic theory. The analysis examines the role of law historically as an expression of economic orthodoxy, arguing that the Washington Consensus has determined the shape of law reforms, pointing them to the definition and protection of private property rights, aiming to separate politics from economics. The relative failure of these policies in their application to countries emerging from communism led to the expansion of the reform agenda to include market-supporting institutions, among them the rule of law. The paper assesses the extent to which this expansion means that the role of the law and the relationship of regulation to market have changed sufficiently to denote a Post-Washington Consensus. It concludes that the use of law reform to impose what neoliberalism considers ‘rational’ solutions undermines the legitimacy of democratic institutions in developing and transitional countries.     

COMPARING BUSH–CHENEY AND CLINTON–GORE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES: ARE THEY MORE ALIKE THAN DIFFERENT?

Successful performance management strategies are intrinsically linked to the political environment in which public policy‐making occurs. Since the mid‐1990s, many governments have re‐examined how to simultaneously reduce costs, increase performance and achieve results. Public agencies are experimenting with performance measurement and management systems designed to meet public policy goals and respond to citizen demands. Various reform models have been proposed and public administrators now expend considerable time, effort and resources exchanging ‘best practices’, finding ‘best value’, and ‘rethinking’ government operations. Although equally important, less effort has been devoted to performance management (PM) within increasingly complex, ideologically charged and politicized decision‐making environments. Despite significant increases in productivity, more theoretical and empirical research is needed to assist public managers in applying private market‐based alternatives to public service delivery structures. This article compares the PM initiatives of the Clinton–Gore Administration in the United States, known as the National Performance Review (NPR), with President Bush‘s Presidential Management Agenda (PMA). Following the comparison, a theory‐based research agenda is proposed to determine which of many approaches best ‘fits’ the varied and often contradictory systems for delivering public services in a decentralized governance system.     

BUREAUCRATIC RESPONSIVENESS: EFFECTS OF ELECTED GOVERNMENT,PUBLIC AGENDAS AND EUROPEAN ATTENTION ON THE UK BUREAUCRACY

What determines the bureaucratic agenda? This article combines insights from models of bureaucratic behaviour with agenda‐setting models of government attention to test the effects of elected government, public, and EU agendas on the bureaucratic agenda. Using time series cross‐sectional analyses of subject and ministry coded data on UK statutory instruments from 1987 to 2008, I find strong effects for both the elected government and EU legislative agendas on UK statutory instruments. Furthermore, by breaking the data into different sets based on their relationship with the EU, several logical differences in these effects are found. These results include the EU agenda having exclusive influence on instruments implementing EU directives, and the UK agenda being the sole driver of bureaucratic attention on those instruments that mention the EU but do not implement EU legislation. This article opens a new avenue for research on bureaucracy by approaching it as a unique policy‐making institution.     

ORGANIZING THE CORE EXECUTIVE FOR EUROPEAN UNION AFFAIRS: COMPARING FINLAND AND SWEDEN

Examining core executive organization for EU affairs in Finland and Sweden, this article uncovers how change agents used European integration deliberately to strengthen their role in the domestic settings through taking control of EU policy co‐ordination. In both countries, EU membership was an exogenous factor that enabled the offices of the PM to secure a more powerful position and advance their own institutional agendas. This strengthened their leadership role and weakened the respective foreign ministries, whose legitimacy in EU co‐ordination was undermined by the discourse that matters pertaining to this co‐ordination should be treated as domestic policy instead of foreign policy. This discourse proved instrumental in the organizational reforms and core executive restructuring. Both countries also provide evidence of intra‐Nordic organizational learning since the Finnish co‐ordination system was based on lessons drawn from Denmark whereas the subsequent Swedish reform was inspired and legitimized by changes in Finland.     

HRM Reform in Decentralised Local Government: Empirical Perspectives on Recruitment and Selection in the Philippines and Thailand

Over the recent decades decentralisation has been an influential process for public sector reform. Like many countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Thailand have experienced a transitional period of decentralisation since the 1990s, but its corresponding results are considered to be poor, allowing for an increase in corruption associated with local elites and other interested parties. This article addresses the problem by focusing on Human Resource Management (HRM), with an emphasis on recruitment and selection in decentralised local governments, as there exists limited research in this area. Despite similar outlook of decentralisation reforms in these countries, the comparative analysis will illustrate differences in HRM policy arrangements between the central and local government, which reflect on the roots and backgrounds of the reform initiatives in each country. Moreover, empirical case observations at the local level from four case cities will present positive HRM practices, as well as the negative ones. Such evidence cannot be explained by contemporary theories on decentralisation, most of which doubt feasibility of the reform in developing countries.     

FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION: AN EFFECTIVE TOOL FOR GOVERNMENT REFORM?

The theory of fiscal federalism asserts that fiscal decentralization increases government effectiveness, reduces government budgets, and reduces corruption when used as a means of government reform. However, counter‐arguments have been made that such an approach has diverging effects according to the level of national development. We have attempted herein to carry out an empirical analysis to examine these theories. Data from 17 developed and 17 developing states were obtained in order to conduct a regression analysis of various indicators. The results revealed that fiscal decentralization reduced government effectiveness in developed countries. Important determinants for government effectiveness were the quality of regulation and the rule of law. When responsibility for expenditure and revenue were devolved, budgets expanded in both developed and developing countries. Fiscal decentralization deterred corruption in advanced states, whereas greater autonomy in spending increased malfeasance in the developing world.     

The less developed countries and the international monetary system

The functioning of the international monetary system is analyzed from the perspective of the less developed countries. They are shown to be significant beneficiaries of the introduction of special drawing rights in the International Monetary Fund, despite the unfavourable distribution formula, but to be confronted with exceptional difficulties in reserve management and exchange rate decision‐making in the period of currency turmoil since 1971. The currency realignments of these countries are summarized in terms of their decisions as to which major currencies to follow both in 1971 and 1973. Their interests in international monetary reform, particularly in the alternative SDR‐aid link proposals, are assessed. It is concluded that if the first‐best reform ‐ an altered distribution formula for SDR's in an SDR‐based system in which low interest rates for borrowers are retained ‐ cannot be achieved, the present system may carry more advantages for the less developed countries than a second‐best ‘link’ scheme.