Search Results

The essay discusses some key features of the wawe of public sector reforms that has swept through the OECD area during the last three decades under the heading of New Public Management. I review what economic theory and the empirical evidence can say about the effects of introducing pay for performance, performance measurement and various forms of competition in the public sector. I also review some evidence on the growing bureaucratization of the public sector and discuss the drivers behind this trend. The final part of the essay draws some implications for the design of public sector reforms.

Chapter 5 discusses some of the main elements of Irish public administration, exploring the origins of contemporary administration and the main pillars around which it is built. This discussion provides a platform for analysis of how social justice has been dealt with at different levels in the Irish administrative system. It questions whether the largely undisturbed transfer of administrative capacity from pre independence Ireland to the newly independent state served to cultivate and embed a culture of conservatism within the public administration system that inhibits a willingness to tackle the complexity of social justice. The chapter goes on to explore the evolution of state agencies and the closely related topics of public sector reform and capacity building, focusing on the role of agencies in creating both activist and relational capacity for the state. However, the chapter concludes that the potential to exploit this capacity may well be undermined by the largely technical and instrumental nature of current public sector reform dispositions.

The introductory chapter outlines the ongoing programme of planning reform being pursued by central and devolved government in Great Britain. The reforms implemented by New Labour (1997-2010) are explored and provide the context for policy intervention by the current UK Coalition Government (2010- ). It is argued that, whilst planning reform intersects with a wider agenda to modernise local government and the public services, there is a lack of rigorous empirical data on the reaction of planners to these broad reforms. This leads to a tendency to focus on structures rather than peopled practices, ignoring the fact that reforms require implementation by frontline planners.

Contributions to the topic of consultants and public policy in France are often unbalanced and consultants are typically analysed as a secondary subject of wider studies. Drawing on the sociology of elites, this chapter argues that their circulation between the private and the public spheres invites us to reconsider the so-called French resistance to private consultants, allegedly led by senior civil service, which artificially opposes two groups that are, in fact, in a sociological position of homology. It helps understanding how an hybrid elite of general government works hand in hand in the development and diffusion of NPM ideas within the French state. The chapter summarizes the main steps which contributed to consultants’ increasing deployment in French public policies and seeks to describe the type of services they aim to deliver, as well as what decision makers may consider as their “added-value”. It argues that a critical part of their growth relies on their legitimizing effects over change. By doing so, it highlights public policies’ specific temporality and logic, as well as the national variations at stake in terms of private consultants’ involvement and the extent to which they impact French public sector.