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The first section of the chapter discusses the factors that give rise to a need for administrative reform in the public sector: the size and stability of public administrations means that they change less quickly than the political, economic and social framework within which they operate; and frictions periodically emerge between their two components – the political overseers and the administration proper. The second section identifies administrative reform as a peculiarly twentieth century phenomenon in Europe. The remaining sections of the chapter go on to look at various aspects of this administrative reform: reform motivations and objectives; administrative reform in West Europe; and comparative contrasts in administrative reform.

The title of this chapter reflects an important question about the contemporary development of public administration and its role within the contemporary state. It is clear that the public sectors in most contemporary European countries have been through some process of administrative reform, and that the traditional public bureaucratic (Weberian) sector has been, to a great extent, dismantled. The character of the emergent system for governing is not always clear, but the question posed by the reforms that have taken place is whether that earlier version of government can, or should, in any way be recaptured. The implicit and explicit argument is that a good deal of value has been lost through these changes in the style of governing, but that it may well be impossible (and undesirable) to rebuild anything approximating the older version of the state and the public bureaucracy. The different sections of the chapter look at the Weberian state (and other forms of bureaucratic government), critiques of the Weberian model, the dismantling administrative reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, and the issue of putting back together the Weberian state.

The fiscal crisis experienced in Japan from the mid-1970s gave rise to a broadly based campaign of administrative reform associated with the work of the Second Provisional Commission for Administrative Reform, launched in 1981. This chapter assesses the extent to which the administrative reform movement in the 1980s changed the administrative context within which the central budgetary system was operated in Japan. It also examines the re-emergence in the 1990s of administrative reform as a political issue on the agenda of successive coalition governments, together with the broadening of the reform agenda in Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's six ‘visions’. The chapter argues that the conditions of persistent fiscal crisis in the 1980s did not act as a catalyst for a radical re-conceptualization of the role and purpose of the public sector in Japan comparable to that which occurred elsewhere in other G7 countries at that time, and explains why its structure and organization remained relatively unchanged throughout the last quarter of the 20th century.

Chapter abstract: Chapter 6 covers the period between 1895 and the year 1914, which was marked by parliamentary crises, political stalemates, and the start of the First World War. The important role of the bureaucracy in the political system of the empire meant that the administration could exert a calming influence in politics and keep political parties involved in governance behind closed doors. In the meantime, high-ranking officials searched for structural solutions to the monarchy's political problems. The search for solutions actually dominated the last twenty years of peace in the monarchy, culminating in an Imperial Commission for Administrative Reform. The work of the commission was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War, but not before it indicated a snapshot of what imperial Austria might have looked like had it continued to evolve under bureaucratic and parliamentary leadership.

This chapter compares industrial policy and economic regulation in Britain and France in order to consider national capacities to alter institutions and policy norms. Analyses of the period between 1945 and 1980 have claimed that French policy-makers enjoyed much greater innovatory capacities than their British counterparts, using industrial policy as an example to support their views. Yet the reverse held true in the 1980s and 1990s: Britain was able to introduce more comprehensive reforms, and did so with less difficulty and earlier than did France. It moved decisively towards a ‘regulatory state’, whereas France followed the same direction of change but at a slower, more hesitant pace, without adopting a new rationale for state action. The chapter analyses how and why this was so from a historical institutionalist perspective, before drawing some more general conclusions about institutional change.

This chapter shows how an elite cadre of public sector officials played a key role in the success of administrative reforms in Brazil’s state tax administration bureaus in the 1990s. The success of the reforms strengthened public sector bureaucracies and institutions at all government levels, predominantly in the tax departments. At the state level, the tax administrative reforms comprised complex changes in organizational structure, technology, and institutional arrangements. These reforms resulted in increased tax revenues, tax compliance, and successful restructuring. For the public officials who took part in the process, the reforms meant finding a new identity, and a new mission. As such, this chapter explores an alternative mode of getting public sector officials to commit and own public sector changes.

Following the resignation of the Santer Commission, the Prodi College enacted a comprehensive administrative reform programme between 2000 and 2005. Although earlier studies have examined the origins, design and implementation of the reform, neither the attitudes of officials nor the impact on the organization have been extensively investigated. This chapter explores attitudes to this attempt to modernize the organization and to bring it more closely in line with other administrations. It finds that officials are divided on the merits of most of the measures introduced, and that a plurality of officials are negatively disposed. Analysis shows that level of seniority and, to a lesser extent, nationality are significant predictors of attitudes within the organization. Despite the mixed reception for the reform, the experience of has removed an important taboo, with the result that administrative change is now a permanent feature of the working life of the Commission.

This chapter deals with Organization which is the existence (or absence) of adequate internal and external structures and procedures that enable an actor to pursue their interests and values during the different policy production stages (program formulation, implementation). It consists of real world interaction processes between specific actors (resource Personnel), which are regulated by rules that vary in terms of precision (general and policy-specific rules). In relation to public actors this resource corresponds to what we call a political-administrative arrangement (PAA), which shapes implementation processes in accordance with administrative procedural acts. Such arrangements can be made visible by retracing the dossier circulation process (including among decision-makers and other actors invited or obliged to provide advance notices), which are specific for the production of various categories of policy outputs. The chapter provides examples from water protection policy, institutional administrative reform policy, environmental policy, and agricultural and health policy. Its main focus concerns all kinds of administrative reforms aimed at improving the coordination between different public policies.

This chapter focuses on the impact of the resignation of the Santer Commission, which had profound significance for EU administration, and the controls to which it was subject. The resignation received front-page attention in the press, proof for those minded to believe it of the malaise which had long existed within that organization. Its downfall was prompted by the First Report of the Committee of Independent Experts. This was followed in quick succession by reforms instituted by Romano Prodi as the new President of the Commission, by the Committee of Independent Experts' Second Report, by the White Paper on Reform of the Commission and implementation of these reforms. An understanding of these developments is crucial in order to appreciate the current pattern of EU administration. The chapter charts these developments leading to administrative reform, including the Financial Regulation of 2002, which established a constitutional framework for Union administration of the kind that had not existed hitherto.

This chapter describes how political and administrative reforms have changed the basic accountability system of the European Commission over the last decade. It is shown how the vision and values, the organizational DNA, on which the EU Commission was built became incongruent with internal and external challenges. There was a strategic reorientation, after the Commission’s crisis in 1999. Ex ante constraints and ex post incentives combined to provide a system for more control in and accountability over the Commission. There was a strengthening of accountability mechanisms and a shift in the salience of different types of accountability. In addition to legal and professional accountability systems, an elaborate structure was created that stressed political and bureaucratic mechanisms and has created new expectations of accountability from commissioners and their senior officials.

This chapter explores the failure of the European Union (EU)'s plans to promote a professional civil service. Finance remained one of the weakest central ministries. The government showed an undiminished desire to regularly redesign new laws rather than attempt to implement them as they currently stood. It was difficult to retain competent people in light of the politicisation of the civil service and the lack of a fulfilling career structure. Local government should not be overlooked when assessing the fate of administrative reform. The EU failed to react when it was clear that a professional civil service able to assume the responsibilities of implementing legislation emanating from the EU in a transparent manner was not going to emerge without a titanic struggle in which it would need to play a decisive role. The Romanian authorities under Adrian Năstase and during the Tăriceanu Premiership rarely displayed much fear of the EU.

This chapter examines John Stuart Mill's views on utilitarianism and bureaucracy, with particular emphasis on those dilemmas about administration that we can see in his writings. It first offers some remarks about the case of nineteenth-century administrative reform, and more specifically the extent to which we explain the changes in the organization, recruitment, and functions of the English bureaucracy as a result of deliberate planning by ideologically sophisticated reformers. It then analyzes Mill's views on the civil service—its role, its mode of recruitment, and so on—in order to assemble a tolerably clear picture of the kinds of difficulty that confront the utilitarian theorist of politics. It suggests that Mill's arguments show us how utilitarian theories could be strengthened and weakened by influences from such unlikely sources as Samuel Taylor Coleridge's romantic conservatism and the continental liberalism of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Alexis de Tocqueville.

Senior officials play a pivotal role in the Commission, linking the political to the administrative system. The logic of the political–bureaucratic system forces them to pay attention, on the one hand, to their political ‘masters’ and, on the other hand, to the conservation of the distinctive values and competences of the Commission’s administration. In recent years, the Commission and its staff have been engaged in the task of overhauling administrative systems and procedures, to equip the institution with a modern and effective European civil service. This chapter discusses the repercussions of the reforms for the position and job of top officials in the Commission. It describes how the new appointment system has changed their career paths. It also examines how the demands of increasing performance measurement and accountability affected the role of senior officials.

This chapter examines the development of the Italian administrative and justice systems under Fascism. It explores the Fascist state’s expectations for nationalism and patriotism in the context of attempts to standardize the Italian legal system and centralize power to assert the primacy of Rome. Cultural aims and educational philosophies intersected with legal reforms, administrative restructuring, and nationalist policies that aimed to transform the state and to assimilate the borderland. The chapter sets the stage for Paulovich’s protest related to the method and process of application of the surname measure. It lays the foundation for the widow’s conflict with the prefect and local officials that magistrates in the Administrative Court were forced to mediate, a clash between officials’ interpretations of the rights of Italian citizens and their views of the responsibilities of members of Fascist society.

This chapter examines how governing strategies that have been observed and conceptualized in earlier chapters relate to ideas and decisions within the policy field that explicitly deals with these kinds of questions: administrative reform. Administrative reform in Sweden has since its formation very much concerned questions about how to govern. From the beginning, the reformers came to concentrate their efforts on one specific governing model: management by results. Other ways of thinking were gradually crowded out. However, governing in complex and ambiguous situations necessitates a broader configuration of governing strategies than those offered by management by results. Management by results seldom fostered learning and the reform activities could often be seen as rituals of rationality. As demonstrated in the previous chapters, other governing strategies than those connected with the reforms were in fact exercised by the government. These strategies were used not because of, but despite, administrative reforms.