IPMN Journals

Public Management and the Learning Organization 
G.B. Reschenthaler, Fred Thompson

This paper examines institutional arrangements that would allow public sector organizations to learn more effectively. According to management strategists and organizational theorists any organization that can learn is inherently equipped to develop a sustainable competitive advantage. The NPM could help build learning organizations that operate more efficiently and effectively and that also better serve citizens and the public interest.

New Public Management Reform in New Zealand: The Collective Strategy Phase
June Pallot

This Paper examines the New Public Management movement in New Zealand. Specially the focus is on the financial management of central government departments and shifts of emphasis from management in the public sector to management of the public sector, that is, from defining management in terms of where it takes place to defining it in terms of the nature and the outcome of the task.

Lessons from the New Public Management in Commonwealth Nations
Sandford Borins

The New Public Management (NPM) is unlike any other public sector reform for the simple fact that it is practitioner-driven as well as a global movement. However, what works in one public sector circumstance may not work in another political, social, or economic set­ting. By surveying the Commonwealth countries I find that NPM reforms are taking place in all Commonwealth countries regardless of their various stages of economic and political development. This evi­dence confirms that the administrative reform of NPM measures is truly a global public sector reform movement.

Integrating the New Public Management and the New Political Economy
Howard Frant

Although New Political Economy ideas have sometimes accompanied New Public Management ideas in programs of bureaucratic reform (especially outside the United States), the two schools of thought have remained separate. I argue that the problems of bureaucracy are largely political problems. Therefore, bureaucratic reform must be viewed in tandem with political reform. New Public Management can learn from New Political Economy’s emphasis on the incentives of self-interested politicians, and New Political Economy can learn from New Public Management’s normative approach and focus on citizens. I use an “exit and voice” framework to discuss and evaluate alternative approaches to reform.

The New Public Management Paradigm and the Search for Democratic Accountability
Robert D. Behn

Can we permit empowered. responsive civil servants to make decisions and be innovative and still have democratic accountability? This important question haunts those who would advocate a “new public management.” The proponents of a new public management paradigm emphasize performance the ability of their strategy to produce results. But they cannot ignore the troubling question of political accountability. They must develop a process that not only permits public managers to produce better results but also provides accountability to a democratic electorate.

Relationships Between Government Size and Economic Growth: Japan’s Government Reforms and Evidence f
Katsuaki L. Terasawa, William R. Gates

This paper examines the relationship between government size and economic growth of 21 industrialized countries. Government size is measured by government final consumption expenditures and transfer payments. The relationship between government consumption is expected to increase GDP growth for developing countries, and reduce it for industrialized countries. Government consumption can contribute to increased economic growth. However, government consumption is likely to expand beyond an efficient level in industrialized countries. In contrast, transfer payments, and social welfare programs are likely to reduce economic growth for most countries. These programs reduce work incentives and encourage tax avoidance activities. Work disincentives and tax avoidance reduce economic growth. These expected relationships are consistent with economic performance and government size for the countries considered here. Inefficiency and excessive government growth are checked by voter feedback as tax burdens exceed the associated benefits. Unfortunately, government pro­gram costs and benefits are asymmetrically distributed. The resulting tendency is to expand government programs, particularly programs that benefit a minority of voters at the expense of a minority. This tendency becomes even more acute as the tax system becomes more progressive (I.e., tax burdens become concentrated. Reductions in government size are more likely with stagnant or declining economic growth, and in government programs whose costs are widely shared, compared to pro­grams with widely shared benefits and narrowly shared costs.

Obstacles to the Administrative Modernization Process in Germany
Helmut Klages, EIke Löffler

According to two surveys of the German Association of Cities among its members in 1994/95 and 1996, the number of medium-sized and big cities pursuing administrative modernization is impressive and still rising. Yet, the data also point out implementation problems of the new steering model, which is the German variation of new public management. First, financial crisis is the most common reform motive. This implies that most reformers rather focus on ‘hard’ management areas like financial management and neglect human resource management. Secondly, the data give evidence that the new steering model still has a critical mass of scepticism in local government councils. As a consequence, the re-engineering of the relationship between the administrative staff and local council members is very much deficitary. Also decentralized resource management usually boils down to the reduction of household titles and lump-sum budget cuts. This raises many questions on the democratic accountability of local government reforms in Germany.

Education and Training for New Public Management
Christoph Reichard

This article argues for a new approach to educate and train public managers. Several functional requirements regarding knowl­edge, skills and attitudes are discussed. The status and trends of public management education and training in several countries are reviewed. Situation and recent developments of public management education in Germany are subject of an exemplary case study. Elements of an effective curriculum with an international perspective and steps towards a common understanding of public management education are suggested.

A Contractual Framework for New Public Management Theory
James M. Ferris, Elizabeth A. Graddy

This paper evaluates the potential for institutional economics to help us frame choices for the design of institutional arrangements aimed at improving public sector performance, and the lessons it offers for the development of a new public management theory. It defines the key elements of transaction cost and principal agency theory and their application to the public sector. Local government contracting, fiscal decentralization, and performance budgeting, applications that share problems resulting from divergent objectives, information costs associated with policy making and implementation, and risks to public sector accountability, are analyzed. This analysis demonstrates that institutional economics can illuminate how public management can effectively utilize private sector solutions by providing the theoretical underpinnings for government reform initiatives.

The Strategic Management Challenge: Modernizing Local Government. Part Two
Frieder Naschold, Glenn Daley

As local government undergoes internal moderniza­tion, it faces the challenge of strategic management. This challenge
includes the need to coordinate the newly decentralized elements of government; the need for organizational development
and cultural change, so that values and behavior within the organization keep pace with structural developments; and the
need to manage uncertainty, as local governments face an increasingly competitive and rapidly chang­ing environment.
Empirical studies show that strategic management capabilities have not developed evenly across a broad international
sample of reform cities. However, the successful program in Christchurch, New Zealand, offers suggestions for other
cities.

The New Public Mangement and it’s Critics
David G. Mathiasen

It is possible to view the New Public Management as nothing more than the public management equivalent of a cake recipe,
a set of practices that can be readily transferred from one culture and one political system to another. If such is the
case, then discussions of principles and paradigms are academic; it is necessary only to identify best practices. It
will then be up to politicians to realize that they have only to open the book, follow the instructions, and reap the
rewards. However, even within the OECD countries such a possibility is not plausible. Within Europe, there are
substantial differences in the political and cultural traditions of OECD countries. And diversity within the OECD goes
beyond to include Mexico, Japan and Korea but also the former communist countries of Hungary, the Czech Republic and
Poland. Since the applicability and effectiveness of New Public Management concepts will vary considerably from one
country to another, we are left with a considerable challenge: How might we apply these concepts to new settings?

The Interface Management Frontier: Modernizing Local Government. Part Three.
Frieder Naschold, Glenn Daley

At the beginning of the 21st Century, local government faces the major challenge of restructuring and managing a new
interface with its social, economic, and political environment. The devolution of public tasks to society requires a
redefinition of the role of local govern­ment. The shift from producing to guaranteeing the remaining services requires
at least the adoption of best practices from private-sector strategic marketing, production, and purchasing management.
The restructuring of local government for customer satisfaction and decentralized deci­sion-making requires careful
attention to the demands of democratic political control, as well as to legitimate public interests that may not be
included in the customer-satisfaction model. Thus, public management of local government cannot be content with internal
modernization, but must redefine its relationships with its environment.

Reinventing Government: The Israeli Exception
Iris Geva-May

In recent years, the institutionalization of norms of policy accountability and planning in the Israeli public
administration has preoccupied a series of committees on public service reform and government reorganization. This paper
discusses the background of the Israeli policy-making culture and its effect on recommendations for systematic policy
planning, analysis, evaluation, and accountability. This account is interesting, partly, because it traces a reaction to
institutional arrangements that are in many ways similar to those promoted by advocates of the New Public Management.
Ironically, however, it explains the efforts to replace them with something more like traditional bureaucratic
arrangements.

Once More into Surplus: Reforming Expenditure Management in Australia and Canada
Joanne Kelly, John Wanna

Canadian and Australian federal government budgets have returned to surplus. Over the past two decades both countries
have undertaken financial management and budgetary reforms in an effort to control expenditure growth and public debt.
They exchanged ideas, borrowed techniques, and shared reform experiences. Yet during the mid-1980s and early 1990s they
displayed markedly different levels of success in expenditure control. This article explains why relatively similar
instruments of expenditure control and financial management produced different outcomes in Australia and Canada. The
analysis suggests that budgetary techniques will have marginal impact unless they are congruent with broader policy
management systems and administrative cultures. The comparative analysis provides important lessons for budget reformers
in all jurisdictions.

Learning from the Pioneers: Modernizing Local Government. Part One
Frieder Naschold, Glenn Daley

At the end of the century, we are in a position to look back over a decade of restructuring local governments. Our
evaluation of the reform movement underway throughout the world indicates a “dialectic of modernization”: considerable
progress in some areas, stagnation or erosion in others, and challenges that demand attention. Based on comparative case
studies of local governments, this article identifies and discusses several major trends-positive and negative-observed
in the experience of reform governments in various countries. It also identifies conditions for lasting success of local
government reform. Two companion articles set out the central challenges that now face local governments: making the
transition to strategic management, and redefining the interfaces between local administration and its political,
social, and economic environment.

Inefficiency in Public Organizations
Aidan R. Vining, David L. Weimer

Theories of market and government failure provide resources for diagnosing infra-organizational inefficiency in public
organizations and for identifying possible solutions. Public goods, externalities, information asymmetries, monopolies,
uncertainty, inap­propriate reward systems, and interest group behavior create inefficien­cies within organizations just
as they do in the larger economy. Associated with many of these problems are generic solutions that can usefully inform
leaders in their efforts to improve efficiency within their public organizations.

Book review: The Management and Reform of Japanese Government, 2nd edition (Institute of Administrat
Steven M. Maser

The Management and Reform of Japanese Government (MRJG), 2nd Edition, edited by Masujima and O’uchi (Institute of
Administrative Management, 1995), and Public Sector Transformation (PST), by Freider Naschold and Casten von Otter (John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 1996), focus on Japan, Germany, and Sweden. The book on Japan, written by people who have
traveled in administrative circles as players, students of the subject, or a combination of the two, is a treasure trove
of details about administrative reform. ..

Book review: Regulatory Realities: The Implementation and Impact of Industrial Environmental Regulat
Shelley H. Metzenbaum

Over the past quarter century, the economies of many developed countries have grown dramatically at the same time that
their environmental regulatory structures have become increasingly elaborate and protective. Yet despite this evidence
that economic development and environmental protection can rise together, the two policy objectives are widely perceived
as mutually antagonistic….

Book review: Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Unive
Ashley Symes

In Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government, Mark Moore argues that public managers are explorers who
seek to discover, define, and produce public value. As innovators rather than mere implementers, public managers must
dispense with the presumption that politics and administration are separate spheres. Instead, like their private-sector
counterparts who create economic value, public managers must orient their role within an integrated strategic framework,
the particular elements of which are political, policy, and administrative management (pp. 17-23)…

Book review: Class, Tax, & Power: Municipal Budgeting in the United States (Chatham, NJ: Chatham Hou
James L. Chan

American federalism permits, perhaps even encourages, diverse local practices in public budgeting. The states are
sometimes said to be the laboratories of American democracy. So are the tens of thousands of municipalities, which have
tried different forms of organization, and budgetary processes and methods. Their history of budget experimentation
since the 1860s is the subject of Irene Rubin’s Class, Tax, & Power…

Using Organization Theory to Understand International Organizations: Four Models of Multilateral Dec
Anna Fosdick

This article addresses an enduring public management question: “Is organizational functioning a product of politics,
manage­ment, or both?” It speaks to this issue by analyzing the decisional dynamics of the world’s most inclusive, and
prominent international organization: the United Nations. To assess the ability of international organizations to
develop and implement international public policy, this study draws upon an extensive literature in organization theory
to develop four models of multilateral decision making:

· A Cognitive Ambiguity Model;

· A Bounded Pragmatism Model;

· An Organizational Expansion Model; and

· A Political Interests Model.

In considering the obstacles to effective policy, this study asks whether policy is produced by intellectual confusion,
routine-based decision making, bureaucratic ego, or base political motives. This project closes by arguing for broad
approaches to the politics/management continuum, and an integration of the four models.

Useful to Whom? Public Management Research, Social Science, and the Standpoint Problem
Howart Frant

Answering “Big Questions” in public management will require close connections to social science, in particular political
science. Yet connections are impeded by the difference in standpoint from which these questions are regarded by public
management researchers and political scientists. Changing to a citizen standpoint changes the Big Questions. and pushes
political science and PM research toward unification. It also makes research more useful-at least to citizens.

Trends in Training Public Managers: A Report on a Commonwealth Seminar
Sandford Borins

This article reports on a conference on issues and trends in training practicing public managers. Some trends identified
include: greater competition between civil service colleges and outside providers of training; university programs that
compete in this market being based in business schools or autonomous units, rather than in traditional political science
departments; a convergence among training providers on the use of adult education methodology; elite training programs
now playing a larger role in training the entire public service; and some civil service training institutes
simultaneously identifying more closely with strategic government priorities and developing a research role comparable
to the university.

Privatization and Corruption: Patronage vs. Spoils
Masako N. Darrough

We examine the issue of privatization of those public goods that can be provided in-house or contracted out. Such
privatization appears straightforward, yet history shows otherwise. For example, the private contracting system for
street cleaning in 19`h-century New York City was a failure, despite the safeguards instituted to ensure competition.
The contract system was criticized for corruption, while in-house provision suffered from patronage abuses. We present
two variations of the “rotten apple” theory to capture the salient features of the New York experience. The public
officials and contractors were both operating under high-powered incentives, which invited opportunism. When players act
strategically, the adverse effect of opportunism increases. Since the amounts of spoils can be larger than political
contributions, contracting-out ends up being more costly, even though competition promotes productive efficiency.
Another advantage of in-house provision is that incentives can be made low-powered by depoliticizing of the system.

International Public Management Network Symposium on Administratives Philosophies and Management Pra
L. R. Jones

Do administrative philosophies, however defined, lead or trail change in public sector organizations? How may we define
administrative philosophy and is useful to distinguish between philosophy, doctrine and justification? To what extent
does academic research and theory influence administrative practice? Do academics learn most of what they theorize about
from practitioners? These and other questions are addressed in this first IPMN electronic symposium.

How To Argue About The New Public Management
Michael Barzelay

Hood and Jackson’s (1991) distinction between ad­ministrative argument and administrative philosophy has been largely
overlooked in writings on NPM. This seemingly subtle distinction flows from the more obvious one between “practical
argument” and “social scientific explanation.” These terms refer to different scholarly prac­tices. Practical reasoning
is a highly-developed form of scholarship in law, public policy, and political theory. Explanation is a highly-developed
scholarly activity in political science and related disciplines. The fact that practical argument and explanation are,
in principle, complementary scholarly activities in practically-oriented fields such as public management is not a
reason to overlook the distinction between them. If scholars writing on NPM made more of this distinction, it might
prove easier for their readers to see precisely how social science explanations and practical arguments are
interrelated. Discussion of how well claims have been supported would then be facilitated. Also, it would be easier for
writers to decide how to engage the NPM literature. Not only would the issues be clearer, but it would also be easier to
discuss the merits of alternative approaches to tackling them. If more weight is given to the distinction between
practical argumentation and social scientific research by scholars of NPM, an urgent question is: how should the
scholarly practice of practical argumentation be characterized?

From Managerial Reform to Democratic Reformation: Towards a Deliberative Public Administration
Spencer Zifcak

In the State of Victoria, Australia the Kennett govern­ment implemented a radical public sector reforms matched perhaps
only in Britain and New Zealand. Responding to fiscal crisis, the Government balanced the budget, attracted new
investment and capital projects, and instilled new economic confidence. However, the revolution had its costs. This
article examines the effects of managerial reform on accountability and democracy. The structures, systems and
methodologies of the Gov­ernment eliminated real deliberation over options, benefits and costs. The quality of public
discourse between government and constituents about the democratic process was stifled. An economic and fiscal
perspective replaced a political and legal understanding of public bureaucracy. The article provides a case study of
Victorian reforms, and a theoretical examination of the case, suggesting that public administration should be
reconceptualized in more pluralistic and democratic terms.

Don’t Try This at Home? A New Zealand Approach to Public Management Reform in Mongolia
Rob Laking

This article reports on proposals to implement a form of New Zealand’s radical public management reforms in Mongolia, a
state in transition from a Russian public administration model. The transferability of New Zealand style financial
management reforms in particular is discussed in the context of a comparison of the precondi­tions and risks of
centralized and decentralized financial management. Some observations are also made on the change process in developing
or transitional economies contemplating major public management reform.

Book review: Unmasking Administrative Evil (by Guy D. Adams, Danny L. Balfour)
Alasair Roberts

Unmasking Administrative Evil attempts to warn us about the capacity of public institutions to cause pain and suffering.
It acknowledges, but does not focus on, the fact that technological advances have given contemporary governments an
unprecedented capacity to do harm. Instead, the authors emphasize the increasing propensity of governments to use
available technologies for harmful purposes. They believe that this trend is attributable to the inability of public
institutions to recognize or account for the ethical considerations associated with the use of harmful technologies.
Because of these defects in our public institutions, it is argued, we live in an era in which a “new and frightening
form of evil”-what the authors call “administrative evil”-has become ubiquitous (pages xx and xxix)…

Book review: The Art of the State: Culture, Rhetoric, and Public Management (by Christopher Hood)
Eugene Bardach

Christopher Hood, Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at LSE, looks at “public management,” and
particularly its expression in “the New Public Management” (NPM), through the backward end of a telescope, locating it
in a field of history measured in millennia and crossing a global range of cultures. The telescope lens is constructed
of anthropologist Mary Douglas’s “gridlgroup” theory of cultures. Douglas classifies all cultures into four types
depending on whether they are group- or individual-centered and on whether they are governed by strong (“high-grid”) or
weak (“low-grid”) bundles of norms, rules, and conventions. Hood judges NPM advocates to be deluded by their own version
of the Whig theory of history. NPM is not, in Hood’s view, inevitably going to sweep away all older doctrines of public
administration with its superior rationality or its more realistic (and economistic) theory of how the world works. We
have seen it all before, in many places, argues Hood; moreover, what passes for a theory based on universal truths about
human nature and institutional design is just so much culture-bound parochialism….

Book review: An Operational Approach to Policy Analysis: The Craft: Prescriptions for Better Analysis
John Dixon

Geva-May and Aaron Wildavsky set out in the early 1990s to write a different type of book on policy analysis; they
succeeded, despite Wildavsky’s untimely death in 1993, mainly because of Geva-May’s dedication to the joint cause. They
sought to “cut through the ambiguity and contradictions inherent in policy analysis by means of an operational-
prescriptive approach” (p. xviii). Together they plotted a “how to do it” book, in the tradition set by a myriad of
books on good management practices, nevertheless one that is full of useful maxims…

The challenge of evaluating systemic change: the case of public management reform
Jonathan Boston

At what stage of reform in the public sector does it become possible to conduct a thorough appraisal of results and how
does one know when this stage has been reached? How should such an assessment be undertaken? By what methods can
comprehensive and far-reaching systemic reforms be evaluated in the arena of public management during recent decades,
particularly in countries like Australia, Britain and New Zealand? Most assessments have focused upon specific changes
in management practice including the introduction of performance pay, the move to accrual accounting, the growth of
contracting-out, the separation of policy and operations or the devolution of human resource man- agement
responsibilities. Alternatively, they have dealt with management changes in particular policy domains –such as health
care, education, community services or criminal justice – or within a particular organization (department, agency or
private provider). By contrast, there have been rela- tively few macro evaluations – comprehensive assessments of the
impact of root-and-branch changes to the system. The problems of evaluation in the arena of public management are
inherently complex and the way ahead is by no means clear. This article offers some broad reflections on the limitations
to policy evaluation in the field of public management, and more particularly explores the obstacles confronted when
assessing the consequences of systemic management reforms. It focuses on recent changes in the New Zealand public sector
to illustrate the general themes because these reforms constitute one of best examples of systemic change anywhere in
the world.

Symposium on public management reform in New Zealand: Reflections on the international public manage
Rob Laking

The genesis of the workshop on public management reform in New Zealand, held in Wellington on March 10, 2000, was an
invitation from the International Public Management Network to the Graduate School of Business and Government Management
at Victoria University to organize and co-host a one-day event in Wellington following the Network’s Sydney 2000
Conference. Approxi- mately sixty people attended the workshop. The majority of attendees were senior public servants in
the New Zealand government. In addition, there was a representation of academics from New Zealand and Network members
who came on from the IPMN conference in Sydney at Macquarie Graduate School of Management March 4 – 6. The mix of
speakers was strongly weighted towards practitioners, as is reflected in the articles in this symposium. The three
central agency contributions are all from officials who have a reputation for thinking creatively and critically about
the future of New Zealand public management, Derek Gill, Andrew Kibblewhite and Anne Neale. Graham Scott kindly agreed
to provide the keynote address. Robert Gregory, a well-known critic of the New Zealand reforms, was the sole academic
voice in this small chorus of practitioners. Gregory would be the last to claim that he is “representative” of anyone’s
opinion other than his own.

Quality in public management: the customer perspective
Kuno Schedler, Jürg Felix

This article presents reflections on the transposition of the private-sector concept of Total Quality Management (TQM)
to the public sector. We search for answers to the following questions:

– At what levels of the public sector is the concept of TQM operative?

– How must the concept of TQM be interpreted for its transposition to the public sector?

– What are the connections between the conventional quality-assurance control principles of public management and TQM?

TQM intends to exercise influence on organizational action. Action by the state and, in this specific case, by public
management requires legitimization. For this reason, the notion of legitimization must be analyzed more closely, and the
operative levels of TQM must be placed in their respective contexts. Legitimization may be considered to have three
layers: basic legitimization is a product of the social contract and refers to the state and its structures in general
terms; institutional legitimization relates to public management as an institution, and to its outward manifestations;
and individual legitimiza- tion is the product of specific contacts between management and its customers. It is on this
individual level that most changes are sought by New Public Management.

Public management reform and lessons from experience in New Zealand
Graham Scott

This article is edited from a speech delivered to the University of Victoria, Wellington—IPMN Workshop on the theme
lessons from experience in New Zealand. The author articulates a number of lessons that have been learned, and
identifies some lessons that should have been learned. Scott writes from the perspective of having been directly and
centrally involved in the development and implementation of what has been characterized as “the New Zealand model” of
public management for more than twenty years, a record of service that continues to date. The views expressed also
benefit from extensive consulting by the author for governments around the world. Among the lessons learned are (a) the
need for clarity of roles, responsibilities and accountability in the implementation of management reform, (b) the
importance of matching decision capacity to responsibility, (c) the significance of ministerial commitment and clarity
on expectations, (d) the advantages gained from structural innovations within the New Zealand cabinet, (e) the need to
analyze disasters carefully for what they teach, (f) approaches to embrace and foibles to avoid in implementing
performance specification, (g) problems caused by confusion over ownership and im- proper assessment of organizational
capability, (h) the fact that actually doing strategic management in the public sector is hugely complicated, (i) that
it is time to put an end to the notion that there is an “extreme model” of public management in application in New
Zealand, and (j) that public management, government and governance innovations in New Zealand are no longer novel
compared to those advanced in other nations. With respect to lessons not learned satisfactorily, many are simply the
dark shadow of positive lessons, i.e., having not understood or implemented the successes achieved in some parts of New
Zealand government into others. The author concludes with an admonition to avoid jumping too quickly, in response to
post-electoral rhetoric, to the conclusion that past reforms in have to be modified quickly and radically, and that the
New Zealand Model has failed.

Performance reporting for accountability purposes: lessons, issues, future
Ann Neale, Bruce Anderson

This article addresses the status and directions for performance reporting in the New Zealand public sector from the
perspective of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). It outlines the role of the Audit Office, provides definitions
of accountability, and projects the dimensions of a new account- ability. The authors assess challenges to performance
reporting and accountability, the history of reporting performance accountability in New Zealand, an Audit Office
perspective on accountability to Parliament, lessons learned from reform, some issues outstanding, and future
development in terms of how the public sector in New Zealand should improve reporting on non-financial performance.

Paradoxes of public-sector managerialism, old public management and public service bargains
Christopher Hood

This chapter considers three paradoxes or apparent contradictions in contemporary public man- agement reform–paradoxes
of globalization or internationalization, malade imaginaire (or successful failure) paradoxes, and paradoxes of half-
hearted managerialism. It suggests that these three paradoxes can be explained by a comparative historical
institutionalism linked to a motive-and-opportunity analysis of what makes some public service systems more susceptible
to reform than others. It further argues that such explanations can be usefully linked together by exploring public
service reform from the perspective of ‘public service bargains’ or PSBs (that is, explicit or implicit bargains between
public servants and other actors in the society). Accordingly, it seeks to account for the three paradoxes of public
management reform by looking at the effect of different PSB starting-points on reform experience, and at the way
politician calculations over institutional arrangements could account for PSB shifts in some circumstances but not
others.

New Zealand experience with public management reform — or why the grass is always greener on the other side
Derek Gill

This article provides an analysis of how New Zealand has achieved the successes made to date, issues and problems yet to
be resolved, and directions on how to address current shortcomings in public managment reform of the New Zealand model.
Four issue pillars provide the framework for the analysis: Political—problems that are inherent to the political arena
under a range of public manage- ment regimes; Incompleteness—problems that reflect that the system is incomplete in some
areas, but that do not suggest inherent difficulties; Implementation—problems to do with the way the system has been
implemented; Inherent—problems inherent in the New Zealand regime, but not necessarily in other systems. The overall
conclusion drawn is that relatively few of the problems are inherent in the New Zealand model and that most problems
fall under the first of the four issue pillars: politics. The author concludes that there is much to be done— but that
it can be done within the framework of the Public Finance Act and the State Sector Act by changing how the system is
operated.

Getting better but feeling worse? Public sector reform in New Zealand
Robert Gregory

In the author’s view, a price has been paid for the overly narrow theoretical framework used to design the state sector
reforms in New Zealand. According to Gregory, the way ahead must be informed both by more eclectic theoretical input,
and also by closer dialogue between theory and practice. He argues elsewhere that the state sector reforms in New
Zealand, especially in their application to the public service, have been too ‘mechanistic’, and too blind to the
important ‘organic’ dimensions of public organizations. They have focused too much on physical restructuring, attempting
to reduce the complex, vital, and dynamic reality of governmental processes to essentially artificial dualities, such as
‘outputs’ and ‘outcomes’, ‘owner’ and ‘purchaser’, ‘funder’ and ‘provider’. They have tended to ignore the less
quantifiable and more holistic elements that in New Zealand under- pinned a strong culture of public service
trusteeship. He concludes that it is difficult to be persuaded that reform has all been for the good.

Effectiveness: the next frontier in New Zealand
Andrew Kibblewhite

Central agencies face a critical test on how to approach the resolution of issues and problems related to improving the
New Zealand public sector management systems from the author’s perspec- tive. A decade has passed since the legislative
changes were approved that initiated major financial management reform, and much of the initial reform energy has faded.
It is time to assess what has and has not been achieved, and to search for ways to continue to move forward. There is a
sense of anticipation, as well as some apprehension, across the New Zealand public sector, particularly in light of the
election of a new Government. As New Zealand moves into a new phase of reform, one of the key challenges is to take
advantage of what has already been achieved. New Zealand has one of the world’s leading public sector management
systems, and should take advantage of that foundation. The key issue focused on in this article is effectiveness. A
critical part of raising effectiveness is enhancing information. Better information is needed on outcomes, and it should
be packaged in more accessible and relevant ways. More disciplined evaluation of the effectiveness of what is done is
necessary. Systems that encourage public servants to raise their horizons should be improved or put in place. Managers
who understand what they are doing and why are critical to reform success. Purchase agreements— or output agreements—
will play a pivotal role, but they need to be improved. A fresh approach to output specification to better accommodate
the range of output relationships that exist is required. Central agencies can facilitate customization of output
specifications by being clearer about the basic output framework, and more flexible about how that framework is applied.
Outcome measures should be refined and used along with outputs where feasible. Better ways must be found for managing
problems of inter-agency coordination. Technology offers a new set of tools, but IT facilitates rather than creates
effective relationships. Other coordination mechanisms that help agencies to communicate and to make trade-offs must
evolve. New Zealand can move into a new phase of building a “world’s best” public sector. The public sector has an
appetite for action at the moment, and a willingness to debate the issues. How this potential will be used is, to a
great extent, the critical issue faced by the new Government.

Book Review: Governing in the Round: Strategies for Holistic Government (Perri 6, Diana Leat, Kimber
Hal G. Rainey

Obviously, we need international publications in public management for communication about what happens in different
nations. Accordingly, a good reason to review Governing in the Round for this journal is to inform readers of this
valuable source of information about efforts in the UK to coordinate government programs. The aim of integrating
fragmented activities by people who should be working at common purposes is, in a sense, an old one in many nations. In
the 1970’s, the US Congress passed the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) to provide for local
coordination of a diffuse array of employment and training programs in government. ..

The New Public Management: a bibliographical essay for Latin American (and other) scholars
Michael Barzelay

The New Public Management is a field of professional and policy discussion – conducted internationally – about public
management policy, executive leadership, design of programmatic organizations, and government operations. Scholars
specializing in public administration/political science have contributed to this discussion for a decade; however, their
contribution has yet to be examined as a whole. The paper-a bibliographical essay, rather than a literature review-
attempts to fill this gap. Studies published in the 1990-96 period are examined in detail, while subsequent works are
briefly discussed. The paper aims to help scholars situated outside the original English-speaking precincts of the NPM
discussion to benefit from and contribute to this maturing literature. This aim is pursued here in three main ways:
first, by reviewing each study’s distinctive methodological and theoretical approach; second, by contrasting each item
with a common benchmark; and, third, by including two studies about Latin America within the review. The bibliographical
essay can be used for envisioning the public administration/political science contribution to the NPM discussion in its
second decade, as well. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved

Responsibility budgeting and accounting
L.R. Jones, Fred Thompson

Information/transaction costs make it necessary to decentralize some decision rights in organiza- tions and in the
economy. Decentralization in turn requires organizations to solve the control problem that results when self-interested
persons do not behave as perfect agents. Capitalist economies solve these control problems through the institution of
alienable decision rights. But because organizations suppress the alienability of decision rights, they must devise
substitute mechanisms that perform those functions. Three functions are critical: (1) allocating decision rights among
agents in the organization, (2) measuring and evaluating performance, and (3) rewarding and punishing individuals for
their performance. Responsibility budgeting and accounting systems are the most widespread mechanisms for performing
these functions in business today.

New Public Management in Swiss municipalities
Reto Steiner

Swiss municipalities are being stretched to their limits. In the years from 1995 to 1997, 32% of all Swiss
municipalities closed with a deficit. In response to this situation, numerous reforms have been introduced since the
start of the 1990s in order to improve the performance capability of the municipalities. Aside from intermunicipal
cooperation, New Public Management (NPM) is the reform project that is currently being discussed most in the Swiss
municipalities. Recent data shows that every fourth municipality has already taken first steps with NPM. Many kinds of
activities are understood as being encompassed by NPM, even when not all aspects of NPM are implemented. Only one fifth
of the municipalities that have introduced NPM are already working with key elements such as product definitions,
performance agreements, and global budgets, which are necessary for an orien- tation toward output and outcome. In
municipalities of less than 1,000 inhabitants NPM is still hardly an issue, while a number of towns with over 10,000
inhabitants are looking into NPM quite intensively. NPM programs are being developed primarily in municipalities that
are part of German- speaking Switzerland. Municipalities that offer a wide range of services consider new steering
models, such as NPM, far more frequently than those with a narrower range. The financial situation has little influence
on whether NPM is introduced.

Managing for inclusion: balancing control and participation
Martha S. Feldmana, Anne M. Khademian

Participation and control are both necessary in a democracy. In the two main models of public management, control trumps
participation. The traditional model, Managing for Process, relies on centralized authority over process and emphasizes
rules and regulations. The newer model, Managing for Results, permits decentralized control over process but relies on
centralized control of results. We propose a third model, Managing for Inclusion, which has the potential to balance
participation and control. Our model permits decentralized control over both process and results and requires central-
ized control over the implementation of participation. The tools of empowerment, teamwork, and continuous improvement
take on new meanings in this model. We show how management tools such as training and rewarding can implement
participation and control the process of inclusion.

Book review: Defending Government: Why Big Government Works (Max Neiman, Prentice-Hall, 2000, 260 pa
Sandford Borins

Recently, at the cinema in Toronto, I was watching advertisements flashing on the screen before a movie began. One ad,
just as jazzy and upbeat as those for Coke or Nike, told us about the Government of Canada’s initiatives to connect
various groups of Canadians— students and schools, libraries, voluntary organizations, distant communities, and small
business—to the Internet. When the ad finished with the Government of Canada wordmark (“Canada” with the maple leaf flag
over the final “a”) a member of the audience shouted, “Lies!” The rest of the audience sat in embarrassed silence,
resenting this breach of Canadian decorum.

Book review: Decentralising Public Sector Management (Pollitt, Christopher, Johnston Birchall, and K
David Arenallo-Gault

The New Public Management (NPM) is not only academic papers and debates, but also a set of influential policies being
implemented around the world. Diverse recipes—privat­izing, devolving, decentralizing, and managing by performance—are
nowadays clearly identified with so-called “managerial reform”.

In developing countries, quite a few people in public offices and even in academia defend these ideas as though their
effectiveness and appropriateness were beyond doubt. Governing elites, supported by influential international
organizations including the World Bank and OECD, frequently insist on moving ahead on these reforms with all deliberate
speed. Those who dare to urge caution are often dismissed as unprogressive—or worse. Nevertheless, developing countries
should know about the dangers of premature adoption of NPM strategies (i.e. prescribing more autonomy for bureaucracies
in countries where accountability systems are weak or absent).

Best-practice cases reconsidered from an international
Elke Löffler

The purpose of this article is to shed some light on the transfer of knowledge of international public sector reforms.
Given the available stock of knowledge on public sector reforms in various countries the key issue is how organizational
learning from international best-practice cases can be facilitated. The question under consideration is how to improve
the methodology of best-practice research in such a way that decision-makers may make well-informed selections among
best-practice case studies and know how to implement foreign best practice in their domestic political and
administrative context.

The diffusion of managerial innovations: a comparison of
Ian Palmer, Richard Dunford

Innovative approaches to organization and management are advocated for both public and private sector organizations, yet
few attempts have been made to compare the relative take-up rates of these innovations in the two sectors. In this paper
we report the results of an Australian study of the use of nine new organizational practices and observe that managers
in government-owned commercial enterprises and private sector organizations have a similar view of the nature of their
external environment, a similar level of use of these new practices, and a similar level of formalization and
centralization. We then discuss the relevance of economic/rational and neo-institutional theories to these findings.

Public management in Russia: changes and inertia
Lev Jakobson

Public sector reforms in Russia are typically half-hearted attempts at privatization. At the same time, there are
attempts to bring about bureaucratization in a Weberian sense by increasing the role of formal rules. Given the Russian
tradition of disloyalty to rules, however, all attempts to establish some sort of Rechtsstaat (law and order) are likely
to fail in the short run. It is essential for the government to build social capital through more public consultation
and improved accountability to the public. But the development of civil society in Russia will take time. In the short
term, creating new kinds of management teams could be the next best approach to solving the resource and management
problems in the public sector.

Origin and theoretical basis of New Public Management
Gernod Gruening

The article describes the characteristics of New Public Management (NPM) and gives a cursory overview of the development
of the behavioral-administrative sciences and their relation to NPM. A descriptive model of the behavioral-
administrative sciences is developed that pits three internally consistent scientific worldviews that are
incommensurable to each other. From this, the theoretical origins of NPM can be traced to a variety of theoretical
perspectives. Although the special mix of characteristics of NPM is new, it does not represent a paradigm change.
Indeed, it is improbable that there will ever be one paradigm for the behavioral–administrative sciences; and without an
accepted paradigm, a paradigm change is not really possible.

Managing airports: a test of the New Public Management
Asheesh Advania, Sandford Borins

New Public Management advocates privatization, competition, and managerial incentives as means to achieve the goal of
improving the quality of public services. This study draws from literature on market orientation to measure the customer
responsiveness of managers of both government and privately owned organizations. Using data from 201 airports, this
study examines how managerial market orientation is affected by ownership status, expected privatization, competition,
performance- related pay, managerial contracts for nonaeronautical activities, and a number of control variables. We
find that market orientation is significantly higher for privately owned airports than for government- owned airports,
and that expected privatization and competition increase market orientation. Perfor- mance-related pay and management
contracts are more frequently found in privately owned than publicly owned airports. We conclude with suggestions for
ways to enhance this study, if it were replicated, and consider how this approach could be applied to other public
services or industries under mixed ownership.

Letting and making managers manage: the effect of control systems on management action in New Zealand
Richard Norman

Business-like control systems that seek to let managers manage and hold them accountable for results have been a feature
of New Zealand’s public management model since the late 1980s. In the experience of a sample of 41 Capital City public
servants and consultants, these systems have clarified roles and responsibilities, created managerial freedoms and led
to more transparent information. They have also fostered organizational silos and a climate of fear that inhibits
innovation, as accountability and transparency have become synonymous with public and political criticism. Using a
four-sided levers of control model (Simons 1995) the paper concludes that the New Zealand system over- emphasizes
diagnostic controls based on formal plans and overlooks the paradox that effective control systems require a balance
between control and empowerment. More balance is needed between formal reporting and more motivating, but less easily
observed, controls related to organizational purpose and learning.

Book review: New Public Management (Jan-Erik Lane; London, Routledge, 2000, 256 pages paperback)
Alex Matheson

Jan-Erik Lane, a professor of political science in Switzerland, sets out in this book to articulate New Public
Management (NPM) as a single, coherent theory of public sector management, and also to reaffirm the continuing relevance
of the public sector.

Lane’s discussion of NPM makes specific reference to Australia and New Zealand, two of its most adventurous
practitioners. It is perhaps mainly to a Swiss audience that Lane intends to demonstrate that NPM is intellectually
respectable, and that adopting it does not mean public sector management is about to be displaced by commercial
management. In a distinct discussion meant to contribute to political and policy argument in Switzerland, Lane also
seeks to challenge what he sees as a misconception about the extent of the state in that country.

Book review: Innovating with Integrity. How Local Heroes are Transforming American Government (Sandf
Elke Löffer

Despite increasing production of case studies on innovation in public management, we still know very little about the
conditions that are conducive to public sector innovation. Sandford Borins’ study of public sector innovations is
especially noteworthy because it engages in “serious hypothesis-testing rather than just more hypothesis-generation,” as
Alan D. Altshuler puts it in his foreword.

The data used in Borins’ empirical study are drawn from applications submitted to the Ford Foundation-Kennedy School of
Government’s state and local government innovations awards program. The author limits his pool to the 217 innovative
public programs reaching the semifinal round (about the top five percent of applicants) between 1990 and 1994. Selection
criteria for the American semifinalists were the novelty of the innovation, its significance in addressing an important
problem of both local and national concern, the value it brings to its clients and other citizens, and its
transferability.

The new public management: context and practice in Africa
Kempe Ronald Hope, Sr.

Many governments have embraced the NPM as the framework or paradigm through which governments are modernized and the
public sector re-engineered. Indeed, the NPM offers important lessons and analyses for public management throughout the
world and African countries are no exception to the process of implementation of efforts aimed at achieving the outcomes
embodied in the said NPM. This article explores the relationship between the basic context of the NPM, as applied in
practice to public sector reform in Africa, and discusses the impact stemming therefrom.

The management reform agenda, 2001–2010: a report to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers endowment for the business of government
James R. Thompson, Fred Thompson

This study reports the answers given by leading scholars of public administration in the United
States to the following questions:
– Will restructuring of public services persist? Will this mean further use of market-like mech- anisms? Greater
organizational and spatial decentralization?
– Will public services continue to follow the lead of business in formulating their purposes, measuring efforts and
accomplishments, and conducting operations, especially the emphasis on service quality and customer satisfaction?
– Will the NPM reform agenda of the last decade be a transient phenomenon? Or, will it come to be regarded as something
ended in the late 1990s?

The expert panel was also asked to assess the degree to which the public sector reforms promoted by Al Gore’s National
Performance Review were embraced by the federal government and to forecast future trends. Finally, the panel was asked
to evaluate the individual components of Gore’s NPM reform agenda.

Star wars: voyaging into the unknown
Robert I. McLaren

The mainstream literature with respect to international organizations (IOs) generally concludes that the field suffers
from the lack of significant scholarship addressed to the operations, management, and decision making within IOs. I
contend that there is a great deal of scholarly work in the literature if one looks in the right places. I suggest that
the seeming lack of scholarly literature is a result of misperception on the part of mainstream scholars as to where
this literature can be found.

Public management of hybrid organizations: governance of quasi-autonomous executive agencies
Walter J. M. Kickert

This article presents the results of case analyses of eleven executive agencies from four Dutch ministerial departments:
Education and Sciences; Agriculture, Nature and Fisheries; Transport and Public Works; and, Justice. These agencies are
all so-called hybrid organizations; that is, they are somewhere between pure government agencies on one hand and
commercial firms on the other. Such organizations make up the bulk of the public sphere in many Western European
countries. Public management theorists must understand and explain the governance of this increasingly important class
of hybrid organizations.

Getting Agencies to Work Together: The Practice and Theory of Managerial Craftsmanship (Eugene Barda
Joan Subirats, Raquel Gallego

The theme of this book is interagency collaboration in the public sector, and the author succeeds in revealing its
interest both to public management researchers and to practitioners. Eugene Bardach defines interagency collaboration as
the creation of joint production capa­bilities in the delivery of services and in regulatory enforcement. He sees
interagency collaboration capacity (ICC)—namely, the potential to engage in collaborative activities—as a necessary
basis for innovation and for the creation of public value.1 The public sector needs to innovate in both its products and
its processes, so as to be effective and efficient in an ever more complex social and economic context. However, both
theorists and practitioners agree that, despite being increasingly necessary, ICC is still a rara avis. The existing
literature on public management in general, and on best practice research in particular, has reported a wealth of
experiences and cases in which collaboration was a management tool, but has shown how difficult it was to use it
effectively.

Book review: Missing Organizational Linkage: Tools for Cross-Level Research (Paul Goodman; Thousan
Martha S. Feldman

In his new book, Missing Organizational Linkage: Tools for Cross-Level Research, Paul Goodman introduces organizational
linkage analysis. The book asks an important question—how can we understand the effects that actions at one level of an
organization have on other (often higher) levels of the organization—and proposes a set of tools for answering the
question. Organizational linkage adopts ideas from a range of sources, including systems thinking, to create a set of
tools that enable the researcher to analyze the effects of action at one level of an organization on other levels of the
organization. Goodman shows how the analysis can help us understand the effects of organizational errors, organizational
change, and organizational learning.

The influence of neomanagerialsm on reform of the Chilean civil service
Rodrigo Mardones

This paper assesses the influence of the New Public Management paradigm on the reform process of the Chilean civil
service. I follow Peter Hall’s three approaches to study the role of public ideas in economic policymaking. I add a
fourth: the idea-centered approach, which seeks to explain neomanagerialism on its own merits as a cohesive and
significant public idea. The state-centered approach shows the constraints that civil service institutions pose for the
proposals of reform: the high number of political appointments is the most important obstacle remaining for the
development of a career civil service. The economist-centered approach clarifies the influence of Chilean technocrats in
framing the paradigm within the country’s context. Lastly, the coalition-centered approach explains the politics of
reform. I show that labor-management cooperation was essential for the advancement of a performance-based compensation
system, which is a key neomanagerial feature. The study concludes that, while maintaining the fundamental tenets of
neomanagerialism, the final national result confirms the existence of divergent reform strategies.

Research methodology for New Public Management
Nancy C. Roberts, Raymond Trevor Bradley

This article outlines recommendations for improving research methodology in New Public Management (NPM). It begins by
describing three characteristics related to NPM that make it such a research challenge: a change in perspective, a
willingness to experiment, and the high-stakes conse­quences of NPM research and its results. Recommendations for
improvements are grouped within the five stages of the research process: formulating the research question and
specifying the units and levels of analysis; choosing the research design; sampling and gathering the data, coding and
analyzing the data; and interpreting the results. Two ongoing large-scale programs of research (one on innovation and
the other on the dynamics of social organization) illustrate how the recommendations can be put into practice. Taken as
a whole, the recommendations call for a systems approach to NPM research that is supported by teams of interdisciplinary
researchers who complement one another’s knowledge and skills and collaborate on long-term, field-based studies.

Is innovation a question of will or opportunity? The case of three governments
Eleanor D. Glor

This paper contrasts two approaches to understanding innovation: voluntary, which is based on will, and determined,
which is based on factors, usually outside the immediate control of those in government. The two methods are applied to
examples of innovation in three Canadian governments, the Region of York, the Government of Saskatchewan, and the
Government of Canada. Both voluntary and determined approaches were found to reveal and to hide certain aspects of
innovation. Each approach is found to have merit and to teach lessons. Whether one is a better approach to understanding
the innovation process is assessed.

A comparative analysis of the development of performance-based management systems in Dutch and Norwe
G . Jan van Helden, Åge Johnsen

The purpose of this paper is to compare performance management in Dutch and Norwegian municipalities. The analysis of
performance budgets and annual reports from nine municipalities from each country shows that performance management
changed during the 1990s. Contingent factors such as fiscal stress, opportunity for change, organizational size
(uncertainty), and characteristics of the policy fields (ambiguity) were analyzed to explain this pattern. The results
indicated two important implications for public management and for contingency theory: the Nordic, incremental and con­
sensual model may give substantial opportunity for change; and the conventional wisdom in organi­zational control
requires further development regarding political control.

THE ROLE OF BUDGET REFORM IN THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF POLISH AND UKRAINIAN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
KURT THURMAIER

Are the millions of dollars and thousands of hours of technical assistance to states of the former Soviet Union
appropriately focused to deliver the best return on investment? This article examines two prominent concepts in vogue
among technical assistance agencies and applies them to the specific area of local government budget reforms in Poland
and Ukraine. Clear definitions lead to specific measures that can improve democratic accountability in former Soviet
Union states.

RETHINKING ACCOUNTABILITY IN EDUCATION: HOW SHOULD WHO HOLD WHOM ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHAT?
ROBERT D. BEHN

Everyone wants accountability in education. Presidents want to hold the states and school districts accountable. The
governors and state legislators want to hold the districts and schools accountable. School superintendents want to hold
principals and teachers accountable. Parents want to hold their children’s schools and teachers accountable. Whenever a
class or a school or a district fails to live-up to someone’s expectations, he or she wants to hold somebody else
accountable.

Everyone wants to be an accountability holder. Few want to be an accountability holdee. For the accountability holders
always get to punish the accountability holdees.

Our concept of educational accountability is a vestige of the industrial model of education: At age five, the raw
materials (a.k.a., the children) are delivered to the plant door by their parents; after thirteen years, they emerge, at
high-school graduation, as finished products. The teachers are the production workers, the principals are the shop
foremen, and the superintendents are the plant managers. And if their products aren’t up to our standards, someone in
the production process should be held accountable.
But why not hold parents accountable? Why not hold students accountable? Why not hold legislators, civic leaders,
citizens, and taxpayers accountable? Why not discard as obsolete our linear, unidirectional, hierarchical concept of
accountability and replace it with a web of mutual and collective responsibility, in which each of us accepts that we
all have a responsibility for improving education?

NEW ZEALAND’S RESPONSIBILITY BUDGETING AND ACCOUNTING SYSTEM AND ITS
SUSAN NEWBERRY

This comment on Jones and Thompson (2000) draws on extensive and largely invisible secondary regulation to suggest that
the strategy designed into New Zealand’s responsibility budgeting and accounting system seems to be privatization. It
also explains that government departments are quasi-investment centers, with chief executives held responsible for
assets but prevented from being able to replace assets by resource-eroding processes designed into the system. Because
New Zealand’s financial management system has evolved over time and much of that evolution has been through secondary
regulation, the need for careful attention to current sources of information is emphasized.

MANAGING UGANDA’S HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC: LINKING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION THEORY TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
PETER A. MAMELI

In January 2000 the United Nations Security Council made history by holding a meeting that equated a health issue to a
global security concern. The heath issue was the spread of HIV/AIDS across Africa. The security concern was the
destabilization of the African continent by the disease. Analyzing how countries such as Uganda have managed their
HIV/AIDS epidemics provides insight into how multi-actor networks that span local, national, and international levels of
response are deployed to offset such transnational crises. These types of studies also offer students of public
administration and international relations an opportunity to build theoretical bridges between their disciplines by
linking theories on state hollowing to those that focus on the contours of nation-state sovereignty.

BOOK Reviews: CORRUPT CITIES: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CURE AND PREVENTION by Robert Klitgaard, Ronald M
PHILIPPE LÉVY

BOOK REVIEW: PUBLIC SECTOR MANAGEMENT IN NEW ZEALAND: LESSONS AND CHALLENGES by Graham Scott
JOSE LUIS MENDEZ MARTINEZ

BOOK REVIEW: GUIDANCE FOR GOVERNANCE: COMPARING ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF PUBLIC POLICY ADVICE by R. Ke
G.W. JONES

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES: CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION
TEDDY LIAN KOK FEI, HAL G. RAINEY

A major total quality management initiative by the Malaysian government provided the opportunity to survey over 400
managers in twelve of the twenty-four government agencies about the implementation and impact of TQM, and to compare
agencies that have won quality awards to those that have not. Managers from award- winning agencies gave higher ratings
of their agency’s implementation of TQM, their agency head’s emphasis on quality-related objectives, and on leadership
behaviors such as clear vision, trust, communication, involvement, and encouragement. They also reported higher levels
of emphasis on communication and innovation in their organization’s culture. Regression analysis further shows that the
managers’ perceptions of effective implementation of TQM are related to these leadership behaviors and cultural
conditions. The results support many of the prescriptions of TQM proponents and change management experts about
conditions for successful change, and indicate that they have applicability across nations and cultures, and to the
public sector. The conceptual framework for the study and the survey scales should be of interest to researchers on TQM
and organizational change.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTRACTING IN THE CONTEXT OF INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT IN THE UK: THE CASE OF TH
JANE BROADBENT, JAS GILL, RICHARD LAUGHLIN

Ongoing change in the management of public services has led to development of many initiatives in the control of day-
to-day resources as New Public Management1 (Hood 1991, 1995) continues its reforms. In this context debates about
control of capital expenditure have taken a less-visible role despite some earlier and influential comment on the area
(Perrin 1978, for example). Perhaps as the flow of ideas for reform in the management of day-to-day activities has
waned, attention has turned more systematically to the efficient use of capital resources or infrastructure. This has
been accompanied by recognition of the poor state of some public sector infrastructure. This paper is concerned with the
implications of the changing approaches to the provision of infrastructure in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Its
particular focus is the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and the contractual implications this brings into
infrastructure development.

RISK, REFORM AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: THE CASE OF IRS TAX SYSTEMS MODERNIZATION
BARRY BOZEMAN

The public management reform literature admonishes public managers to take risks. As is so often the case with
prescriptions for public management reform, there is much more advice about risk-taking, its merits and demerits, than
there is research on the incidence, causes, and effects of public management risk-taking. In an attempt to understand
the role of risk culture in public management reform, the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) experience implementing the
largest information technology (IT) reform ever undertaken by a U.S. civilian agency is examined. IRS work in IT reform
has been ongoing at least since 1989, but we focus specifically on the period 1990-1996 under the phase known as Tax
Systems Modernization (TSM). This period is especially interesting inasmuch as it involved one of the greatest
investments in federal agency IT ever undertaken, because it was generally viewed as a signal failure, and because one
of the chief factors in this failed reform was the agency’s risk culture.

Perceived reputation and alliance building in the public and private sectors
Susanne Royer, Roland H. Simons, Robert W. Waldersee

This study investigated the relationship between the self/partner cooperation reputation, the starting condition of a
cooperation, payoff structure, and the willingness to cooperate of alliance partners in the context of real business
settings. An experimental study was conducted with 816 private-sector professionals and a comparison group of 169
public-sector managers. It was hypothesized that cooperation reputation would reduce the impact of payoff structure.
Results indicated that perceived reputation of the alliance partner had a significant impact on participants’
willingness to cooperate. These results challenge the perceived importance of payoff structure and further support
Parkhe’s (1993a) suggestions that perceived reputation is an important aspect of alliances, seldom included in empirical
studies. It was also demonstrated that, for both public and private sectors, maintaining a good cooperation image as
well as maintaining effective relations throughout the alliance were associated with participant willingness to
cooperate. Implications for both sectors are discussed.

IPMN SYMPOSIUM ON PERFORMANCE BUDGETING AND THE POLITICS OF REFORM
L. R. JONES

Various systems to integrate performance measurement into budgeting are applied in nations around the world. Governments
at all levels in a number of nations have embarked on a journey into an era of performance measurement and management.
Performance budgeting, or application of performance analysis in budgeting, is a topic of considerable discourse in the
public management community. This symposium provides dialogue and comment on efforts to integrate performance evaluation
into the executive budget process at the federal government level in the United States of America under the
administration of President George W. Bush.

BOOK REVIEW: HOLDING THE STATE TO ACCOUNT: CITIZEN MONITORING IN ACTION BY SAMUEL PAUL
DAVID L. WEIMER

BOOK REVIEW: GOVERNANCE IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD BY JOSEPH D. NYE AND JOHN D. DONAHUE, EDS.
ALBRECHT STOCKMAYER

ASSESSING INTERNATIONAL FISCAL AND MONETARY TRANSPARENCY: THE ROLE OF STANDARDS, KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
BRYANE MICHAEL, MICHAEL BATES

The IMF has been leading efforts to develop and implement codes of monetary and fiscal transparency. Such codes aim to
increase disclosure of public-sector information on the Internet representing a type of “e-transparency.” Do such codes
and increased Internet-based, public-sector information achieve their objectives? Much e-government theory sees
electronic presence and e-transparency as a first step toward transformationary e-government. Yet, e-transparency itself
represents a transformation in e-government. This article will first describe the results of a private-sector based
assessment of fiscal and monetary transparency and report cross-country ratings. Second, it will describe a new method
of assessment which emphasizes the role of knowledge management and the critical role played by assessment project
design. Lastly, this article will discuss the extent to which such e-government efforts aimed at greater transparency
achieve broader objectives such as increased trust, predictability, credibility, oversight, and political accountability
in the public sector. The lessons in this article are applicable to governments engaged in promoting and assessing
transparency as well as corporations.

Reform, routines and capacity building: Civil service policy change in Thailand 1991-1992
Surapong Malee

This article explores the process of public management policy 1 change in Thailand between 1991 and 1992.2 It deals
primarily with civil service policy¯conceived as a subcategory of public management policy¯under the interim government
of Anand Punyarachun. This period is historically significant because it was one of the most important civil service
reform efforts in the history of modern Thai administrative reform. Despite the short life of the government, civil
service policy during this period underwent considerable change. The outcome of Anand’s civil service reform was a
series of proposals related to civil service improvement¯the most important of which was an employment freeze. These
proposals entailed changes in rules, routines, and the practice of human resources management in particular.

Public management policymaking in Spain, 1982-1996:
Raquel Gallego

This article deals with the topic of stability and change in public management policy. Over the last two decades,
substantial change has occurred in public management policy in many countries, leading to the emergence of similarities
and differences in public management policy outcomes. The article aims to contribute to the comparative analysis of
public management policy change by studying the case of Spain, where no comprehensive public management policy change
occurred. Its task is to explain why few changes took place in public management policy in Spain’s central government
between 1982 and 1996, when several factors—such as active policy entrepreneurs in central agencies¯could have led to a
different outcome. By using historical evidence within a policymaking process analytical framework, the Spain case may
help identify the factors that affect administrative reform, not only in the Iberian family of nations, but also in a
European context.

Public management policy change in the United States during the Clinton era
Donald P. Moynihan

U.S. public management policy changes follow a similar pattern. Despite strong ideas and active proponents, change is
essentially incremental. This pattern continued under the presidency of Bill Clinton, 1993-2000. Clinton and Vice
President Al Gore increased the level of attention to public management policy. They created the National Performance
Review, a task force that identified problems with the management of the federal government and recommended a series of
policy solutions. The National Performance Review changed a number of policies via executive mandate, but had limited
success in convincing Congress to support its goals. Part of this failure was the result of the status and limited power
of the National Performance Review itself. To a large degree, however, the institutional design of the U.S. system of
government is not amenable to rapid or dramatic policy change, particularly when different parties control the branches
of power. This article asks if active, high-level political entrepreneurship can overcome the barriers to change,
focusing on Gore as an example. Evidence suggests that while Gore’s involvement was helpful in some respects, he failed
to overcome, and may have reinforced, legislative barriers. However, success in the area of procurement policy suggests
the potential of low-level policy entrepreneurship.

Public management policy change in Mexico, 1982-2000
Guillermo M. Cejudo

This article explains change in public management policy in the Mexican federal public administration during the 1980s
and 1990s. It aims at explaining the sources and limits of change in public management policy in Mexico and, at the
theoretical level, to provide insights about what accounts for change in public management policies. It contrasts two
policy cycles¯moral renovation and administrative modernization¯that took place under the presidencies of Miguel De la
Madrid (1982-1988) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000).

Public management policy change in Brazil: 1995-1998
Francisco Gaetani

This article focuses on public management policy change in Brazil during the first term of President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso. It explains the process of policy change, and is centered on the main events of the period 1995-1998. The
events refer to actions and activities relevant to the policy cycle. Analytical categories of the multiple streams
theoretical framework are used to dissect the policy change process. The selected events belong to the three streams of
Kingdon’s model: politics, problems and policy. The narrative gravitates around the issue career within the processes of
agenda setting, alternative specification, and decision making. Special attention is focused on the role played by a
policy entrepreneur: Minister of Administration and State Reform Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira. Institutional and
noninstitutional factors help us understand and explain the episode. Topics such as the relationship between the
executive and the legislature, organizations’ mandates, constitutional provisions, and governmental dynamics are
identified and linked to the central subject of the episode. Topics such as economic shock, political dynamics, and
personal idiosyncrasies are explored when they play a relevant role. The episode is narrated so as to allow comparisons
with other cases.

Introduction: the process dynamics of public management policymaking
Michael Barzelay

Public management policy is a novel classification in the academic study of public administration and management.
Introduced in The New Public Management: Improving Research and Policy Dialogue (Barzelay 2001), the term refers to
government-wide institutional rules and organizational routines related to expenditure planning and financial
management, civil service and labor relations, procurement, organization and methods, and audit and evaluation. So
defined, public management policy draws its meaning from a matrix of ideas, institutional relationships, and patterns of
action that are highly familiar to public administration scholars and public officials alike. Seen from the center of
government, public management policies are techniques for governing the organizations comprising the core public sector;
equally, they are seen as tools for pursuing such policy aims as making governmental bureaucracies more efficient,
transparent, smaller, responsive, or innovative. Seen from the perspective of program managers, public management
policies are the rules of the game for acquiring and utilizing financial, human, material, and informational resources;
often, public management policies are viewed by program managers as sources of perverse incentives or unnecessary
constraints that diminish the efficiency and effectiveness of program operations (Chase and Reveal 1983; Wilson 1989;
Barzelay 1992).

VOLUNTARILY REPORTING PERFORMANCE MEASURES TO THE PUBLIC: A TEST OF ACCOUNTING REPORTS FROM U.S. CIT
KENNETH ALAN SMITH

This study examines performance reporting in the publicly available financial reports of U.S. cities and tests various
political and economic factors that are expected to be associated with the extent of this reporting. While performance
reporting is required in many jurisdictions throughout the world, U.S. cities engage in this process voluntarily. The
study addresses the question of whether publicly reporting nonfinancial performance measures appears to be a “quality”
reporting activity similar to following GAAP accounting or earning awards for financial reporting. The conclusion is
that nonfinancial performance reporting appears to be a quality reporting activity. However, unlike the quality
reporting of financial activities, two factors limit the growth of this practice: 1) variability in practice, and 2)
managerial resistance. The use of the comparable data method (CDM) is introduced as a possible solution to both
limitations.

TOWARD A POLITICAL ECONOMY APPROACH TO POLICY-BASED LENDING
GEORGE ABONYI

This article suggests that basic and recurring problems associated with policy-based lending (PBL) of international
financial institutions (IFI) such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank go beyond problems of
implementation. They arise because of characteristics of the policy environment: the political economy context within
which design and implementation of PBL takes place. As a consequence, political economy considerations should be
explicitly recognized from the outset, accommodated in PBL design, and monitored as implementation unfolds. This may
reduce the gap between expected and actual results in policy reform and PBL, and increase the development effectiveness
of IFIs. While problems traditionally encountered in PBL are unlikely to be eliminated in view of the nature of policy
issues and reform, their frequency and intensity may be reduced if the political economy context is reflected from the
outset in the PBL design process.

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT POLICY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN LATIN AMERICA: PERFORMANCE-ORIENTED BUDGETING IN COLO
DAVID ARELLANO-GAULT, JOSÉ RAMÓN GIL-GARCÍA

This article presents some of the theoretical and practical problems the design and implementation of public management
policies (following the definition that Barzelay [2001] proposes) face in some countries. We specifically emphasize
those factors that affect the expected results of performance-oriented budgeting (POB). There is an interesting polemic
going on between some scholars and practitioners who think performance and efficiency should be the main values of
government policies and others arguing for a greater role for accountability and democratic control. POB may be the
solution for this policy dilemma, but there are political, legal, and organizational factors that make it difficult to
achieve the benefits promised by these types of reform strategies. Moreover, the design and implementation of POB is
especially difficult in developing countries due to some specific organizational and political constraints. The most
important may be the difficulty of freeing public managers to make decisions in a context that urges more control and
strengthened accountability rather than granting more discretion. This article explores the implementation of POB in
three Latin American countries: Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

MODERNIZATION THE TEN COMMITMENTS OF NEW LABOUR’S APPROACH TO PUBLIC MANAGEMENT?
PERRI 6, EDWARD PECK

Since 1997, Britain’s New Labour government has developed a distinctive combination of strategies in public management
reform. Accounts of New Labour’s strategy that stress continuity with approaches developed under the previous
Conservative administration, constitutional innovations such as devolution, managerialism, or the handing of key
decisions such as the setting of interest rates to technocrats, are not adequate. In policy statements, ministers have
generally described their approach as modernization, a term which has been defined neither in the official literature
nor in ministerial speeches. The article identifies ten themes, comprising both strategies and instruments, which
together make up New Labour’s distinctive signature in public management reform. These are inspection, central standard
setting, area-based initiatives, horizontal coordination and integration under the slogan of joined-up government,
devolution but limited decentralization, earned autonomy, an extended role for private capital, modest increases in
citizens’ obligations, enhanced access to services, and electronic service delivery. The combination is historically and
internationally distinctive, even though none of the particular elements is. New Labour has experienced considerable
difficulties both in implementing its program and in gaining public acceptance, although there have been significant
achievements: these will provide important lessons for other countries interested in Britain’s modernization initiative.

DEVELOPMENT FINANCE, GOVERNANCE AND CONDITIONALITY: POLITICS MATTER
CARLOS SANTISO

A salient aspect of the reform of the international financial architecture concerns the uses and misuses of governance
conditionality in aid policy. However, the debates tend to focus on the quantitative dimensions of conditionality,
oscillating between concerns over how much is too much and how much is enough. Less attention is paid to the manner in
which conditionality is applied and the politics of governance reform. This article examines the difficult combination
of governance and conditionality in multilateral development finance. It argues that a fundamental paradox characterizes
the multilateral development institutions’ approach to governance. Furthering governance is conceived both as a
condition and an objective of development finance. The effectiveness of multilateral development finance institutions
will largely depend on how successfully they will resolve this tension. Ultimately, it is argued, these institutions of
global governance ought to explicitly address issues of power, politics, and democracy. This requires ending the
economic- political divide of international development assistance.

BOOK REVIEW: REENGINEERING HEALTH CARE THE COMPLEXITIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION By Terry Mc
QUIM BRUGUÉ

BOOK REVIEW: HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Edited by B. GUY PETERS AND JON PIERRE
OLIVER JAMES

THE MISSING LINK: CREATING MUTUAL DEPENDENCIES BETWEEN THE POOR AND THE STATE
JERRY MARK SILVERMAN

The absolute number of people living in poverty has increased since Robert McNamara established assistance to the
poorest of the poor as the central development objective of the World Bank in 1973. If that trend is to be reversed, a
new demand- driven/supply-responsive approach to poverty reduction is required. That new approach must include: (i) an
expanded view of poverty that includes both objective and subjective elements, (ii) recognition that the poor have
diverse interests among themselves, (iii) governments that are responsive to poor consumers’ demand, (iv) effective
intermediation between formal and nonformal governance systems, and (v) restructuring of formal-sector government
incentives to support the other required elements of the new approach. Implications for governments and donors are
specified.

REVIEW ESSAY: RE-FORMING THE STATE: GOVERNANCE INSTITUTIONS AND THE CREDIBILITY OF ECONOMIC POLICY
CARLOS SANTISO

Abstract Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy. Stephan Haggard and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds.; Cambridge, UK, Cambridge
University Press, 2001, xvi+360 pages, references, index ($70 hardcover, ISBN 0-52177-304-0; $25 paperback, ISBN 0-
52177-485-3)

Economic Policy Reform: The Second Stage. Anne O. Krueger, ed.; Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press,
2000, xiv+614 pages, author and subject indexes ($65 hardcover, ISBN 022645-447-9)

Reinventing Leviathan: The Politics of Administrative Reform in Developing Countries. Ben Ross Schneider and Blanca
Heredia, eds.; Miami, North-South Center Press at the University of Miami, 2003, 264 pages ($55 hardcover, ISBN 1-57454
-101-3; $22.50 paperback, ISBN 1-57454-102-1)

Reinventing the State: Economic Strategy and Institutional Change in Peru. By Carol Wise; Ann Arbor, University of
Michigan Press, 2003, 272 pages ($54.50 hardcover, ISBN 047211316X)

Sustainable Public Sector Finance in Latin America. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Georgia, ed.; Atlanta, Research
Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 2000, ix+175 pages (paperback, ISBN 0-9624159-2-8).

PREFACE TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON EMERGING PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT
DONALD KLINGNER

PERFORMANCE-BASED FOREIGN ASSISTANCE THROUGH THE MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE ACCOUNT: SUSTAINED ECONOMIC GR
SHEHERAZADE JAFARI, INDER K. SUD

The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) is the Bush administration’s initiative to target foreign assistance to countries
that have shown progress in the key areas of economic policy, social development, and governance. While this
performance-based allocation of aid is a welcome step, the indicators currently proposed to measure progress are derived
from generally subjective judgments and carry considerable margins of error. Using a country’s past record of economic
growth as the key qualifying criterion for the MCA is a more reliable measure of performance. This article proposes how
such a system of measurement can be utilized by the MCA.

MANAGING DEVELOPMENT: NGO PERSPECTIVES?
SUSAN H. HOLCOMBE, SAFIA ALI NAWAZ, ANDERSON KAMWENDO, KHADY BA

We welcomed the term ‘development management’ to our professional lexicon several decades ago in part because of its
focus on implementation and on achieving the objectives and values of the development enterprise. Over the years we have
struggled with meaning, and how management is somehow different because it is about or for development. We still
struggle with issues of power that are inherent in questions of who manages development, how, and for whom. Korten, in
1980, talked about participation and community control. In 2004, we still struggle with the limitations of top-down
approaches and with how to achieve participation. This article is built on three mini-case studies prepared by masters
degree students in the Sustainable International Development Program at Brandeis University. The cases use the
conceptual lenses of ownership, partnership, and capacity building to examine the work of NGOs in Senegal, Malawi and
Pakistan and to explore participation and power issues among their key stakeholders. It draws out lessons on managing
power differentials, building trust, ownership and capacity, sharing accountability for outcomes, and building
partnerships with local governments.

IS EMPOWERMENT POSSIBLE UNDER A NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENT? SOME LESSONS FROM INDIA
PATRICK KILBY

The article examines whether results-based management approaches to development program management are appropriate to
the strategic shift to a governance agenda to promote broader citizen participation and its emphasis on increased
empowerment. Empowerment is about people having expanded choices and a much greater level of involvement and control in
all parts of their family and community lives. This is recognized as important in development policy areas such as good
governance, promoting civil society, and decentralization. Using field research from fifteen NGOs working with poor
women in India, the author shows that downward accountability and time are significant factors in empowerment. Results-
based management approaches that have entered the field of project management over the past decade have the paradoxical
effect of disempowering those it is meant to empower.

GOOD GOVERNANCE, CLIENTELISM, AND PATRIMONIALISM: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON OLD PROBLEMS
DERICK W. BRINKERHOFF, ARTHUR A. GOLDSMITH

This article examines why patron-client systems of governance persist around the world despite efforts to fight them
through economic liberalization, democratization, decentralization, and civil service reform. Aid donors want developing
countries to abandon clientelism to encourage production of public goods. However, our reexamination of the case
literature finds that clientelism may have hidden positive externalities, such as the appeasement of elites and the
integration of people into the state, which can make it attractive. There also is a collective action problem:
individuals might prefer an alternative to clientelism, but they support the status quo as a safety-first strategy. We
propose an analytic framework for diagnosing patron-client systems and suggest programming options for donors. Despite
the obstacles, governance institutions have been improved selectively around the world, as a result of emerging
political parties competing based on generalized appeals to interest, through the activities of policy entrepreneurs, or
through advocacy by civil society organizations.

EMERGING TRENDS IN DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT: TENSION AND COMPLEXITY IN THE CONTINUING SEARCH FOR SOLUT EMERGING TRENDS IN
DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT: TENSION AND COMPLEXITY IN THE CONTINUING SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS
JENNIFER M. BRINKERHOFF

This article presents the collective findings and implications of the International Public Management Journal symposium
on emerging trends in development management. Each of the five articles emphasizes a particular type of change in
international development: changing definitions of development; new tools, processes, and actors; new agendas; and new
donor assistance modalities. In doing so, they address the values, process, tools, and institutional agenda dimensions
of development management. The five articles are introduced and collectively analyzed. This overview article introduces
the symposium papers, highlights what they contribute to our understanding of the four dimensions of development
management and their inherent tensions, and discusses their findings with respect to definitions of development and the
consequent role the development industry might play. The article concludes with some thoughts on new and continuing
challenges and opportunities.

RISK COMMUNICATION AND MANAGEMENT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
RAGNAR E. LÖFSTEDT

Risk management and risk communication in Europe have undergone profound changes over the past twenty years or so. This
article briefly outlines the changes that have occurred over time and discusses some of the resulting teething problems
that have taken place and which now need to be addressed.

POLITICAL LIFE AND INTERVENTION LOGIC: RELEARNING OLD LESSONS?
ROBERT GREGORY

Intervention logic (IVL) is an analytical technique being developed and used in New Zealand and elsewhere in an attempt
to improve government’s ability to produce desired policy outcomes. This article raises questions about the political
viability of this latest tool of mainstream policy analysis, and argues that improved public policymaking depends less
on the use of techniques drawn from a long linear- rational tradition, which are taught because they can be taught, and
more on the development of individual capacities and institutional processes that are in keeping with democratic norms
and values.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: ADAPTING THE BALANCED SCORECARD IN LARVIK MU
JOSTEIN ASKIM

This article presents a study of how a balanced scorecard was implemented over a period of five years in four very
different functional departments within Larvik municipality in Norway. The article narrates and compares the adaptation
processes of the four departments, focusing on changes in their management control practices and changes in learning
behavior. A surprising finding is that while management control practices of the departments varied, their learning
behavior was similar. The study shows that governmental organizations from a wide range of areas of service delivery can
become more active learners from adapting a performance management reform like the balanced scorecard. The article
provides theoretically founded explanations of both differences and similarities in the departments’ adaptation
processes, and theory of organizational learning is used to inform identification of factors that can lead governmental
entities into a more active learning mode.

BOOK REVIEW: THE EXECUTIVE AGENCY REVOLUTION IN WHITEHALL: PUBLIC INTEREST VERSUS BUREAU-SHAPING PER
ALLEN W. CLINE

BOOK REVIEW: GOVERNING AS GOVERNANCE by Jan Kooiman
GERRY STOKER

BOOK REVIEW: FOR THE PEOPLE: CAN WE FIX PUBLIC SERVICE? BY John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., e
LES METCALFE

ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR REFORM OF
IRA LEWIS

A considerable amount of New Public Management-oriented research investigates alternative institutional arrangements for
provision of services to the public. Some of this work argues in support of service delivery through an increase in
outsourcing or by privatization of existing government functions. Air traffic control is provided to aircraft operators
using airports and airspace all over the world. This article studies institutional arrangements of provision of air
traffic control employing a comparative analysis of six nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom, and the United States. The objective of the study is to determine whether a modification of the governance of
the U.S. air traffic control system is appropriate and, if so, what alternatives seem most appropriate to replace the
current system. Conclusions based upon the analysis suggest that air traffic control is most effectively provided on a
not-for-profit basis, with indirect participation by stakeholders including airlines and airport operators in the
governance of the air traffic control provider. For reasons related to safety, national security, and international
obligations, governments remain ultimately responsible for providing this essential service. However, a strong argument
may be made that the U.S. system should be reformed.

ADMINISTRATIVE STYLES AND REGULATORY REFORM: INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON ADMINIS
MICHAEL HOWLETT

The institutional structure of an organization creates a distinct pattern of constraints and incentives for state and
societal actors which define and structure actors’ interests and channel their behavior. The interaction of these actors
generates a particular administrative logic and process, or culture. However, since institutional structures vary, a
neo-institutional perspective suggests that (1) there will be many different kinds of relatively long-lasting patterns
of administrative behavior, each pattern being defined by the particular set of formal and informal institutions, rules,
norms, traditions, and values of which it is comprised and (2) many different factors will affect the construction and
deconstruction of each pattern. Following this logic, this article develops a multi-level, nested model of
administrative styles and applies it to observed patterns of regulatory reform in many jurisdictions over the past
several decades.

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN BANGLADESH: THREE DECADES OF FAILURE
ABU ELIAS SARKER

All countries strive to reform their administrative systems in response to the challenges posed by socioeconomic,
political, and technological environments. Bangladesh is no exception. Since its emergence as a nation-state, Bangladesh
has been trying hard to reshape its administrative system. However, despite their perceived importance, administrative
reforms in Bangladesh have encountered serious hurdles over the last thirty years. This article argues that lack of
political commitment, the incapacity of the state, the cliente list nature of Bangladesh politics, bureaucratic
resistance, factional strife in the public service, lack of fundamentals in administration, politicization, and
corruption remain as serious stumbling blocks in the implementation of administrative reform programs.

ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGE IN THE ASIA PACIFIC: APPLYING THE POLITICAL NEXUS TRIAD
RICHARD COMMON

In their 1998 Governance article, Moon and Ingraham offered the political nexus triad (PNT) as a framework for the
comparative analysis of public administration reform in Asia. Moon and Ingraham posited a strong relationship between
the balance of the PNT (the relationship between politicians, bureaucracy, and civil society) and the scope and nature
of administrative reform. Their analysis of China, Japan and South Korea yielded some interesting results in terms of
the changing power relationships in those three countries as a result of administrative reforms. This article utilizes
Moon and Ingraham’s comparative framework to investigate administrative change in three more Asian governments: Hong
Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. However, the key difference with Moon and Ingraham’s study is that in these three cases,
it appeared that administrative reform was mainly used as an instrument to sustain existing PNTs in the face of
political pressures, both internal and external. The article also exposes a weakness in Moon and Ingraham’s framework:
that civil society provides a source of politicization that drives administrative change. Asian administrative
traditions have yet to evolve to the extent that inputs from a wider civil society are sufficiently institutionalized to
make an impact on the reform process.

THE CONTENDING PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: A PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATION
JOHN DIXON, RHYS DOGAN

This article draws upon the philosophy of the social sciences to develop a framework that permits a critical analysis of public management. It uses this framework to construct a taxonomy that enables the identification of the competing philosophical paradigms that underpin contending perspectives on what constitutes good public management, so enabling the articulation of their salient risks and thus their fundamental flaws. It finally proposes the philosophical requirements for a coherent approach to public management reform.

THE CITY OF LEIPZIG AS A EUROPEAN SUCCESS STORY IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
JEAN-CLAUDE GARCIA-ZAMOR

The article defines the role for public administration in a society still in transition. It describes how civil servants in the city of Leipzig cope with the challenges stemming from the uneven economic conditions that continue to exist between the Länder even after the reunification of Germany. It also reviews a series of recent successes achieved by the managerial leaders of Leipzig. The city of Leipzig, and in particular its mayor, has been successful in boosting economic competitiveness. The article also investigates the local civic culture. It develops a concept of local political culture and defines its key elements. In addition to looking at the professional strength of the city civil servants, the article also analyzes the new organizational theories and models being used by the mayor and the city managers of Leipzig to achieve these successes and discusses the so-called Leipzig model.

SHOULD MANAGERS WALK AROUND OR WALK AWAY? PERCEPTIONS ABOUT AND EXPECTATIONS TOWARDS MANAGEMENT IN P
HELGE HERNES

This article reports the findings from an empirical study at Norwegian schools and hospitals aimed at examining professional employees’ perceptions about and expectations towards their managers. A framework based on four organization theory approaches was used: the professional and street-level bureaucracy approach, the management-leadership approach, the relationship between employers and employees, and the ideas of organizations as loosely coupled or decoupled systems. The results indicate that professional employees want their managers to motivate and encourage them and to give them feedback, rather than wanting autonomy and perceiving the managers to have other interests than they do. Thus, rather than wanting their managers to walk away, they want them to walk around. The challenge of being a manager in such organizations is not that of autonomy ideals among the employees or the handling of opposing interests; rather, it is because the demand for leadership exceeds what the managers are able to supply.

REVIEW ESSAY: THE UNITED NATIONS AS A MEMBERSHIP ORGANIZATION
ROBERT I. MCLAREN

PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION FOR THE MANAGERIAL AND THE POST-MANAGERIAL ERA: PROMISES AND REALITIES IN A
ERAN VIGODA-GADOT, AVIV SHOHAM, NITZA SCHWABSKY, AYALLA RUVIO

This article1 deals with the fuzzy concept of organizational innovation in public sector domains. While it is not the first attempt to bring organizational innovation into the realm of public administration, the article provides a broader understanding of innovation in modern bureaucracies and points to some empirical efforts that may accelerate post-public managerial reforms. This understanding builds on a system approach and on existing knowledge about innovation its characteristics, antecedents, and consequences as they have been previously encountered in the private business arena. We suggest that this knowledge should be treated as another key element of New Public Management (NPM) doctrine and the reinventing government paradigm that have dominated discussions in this discipline in recent years. The article presents a clearer perception of the innovation process, its unique meaning for modern bureaucracies, and its potential evolution into reform-seeking governance. We conclude that innovative bureaucracy is not necessarily a self-defeating concept. Bridging the gap between the promise and the realities of innovation has never been an easy task. Turning ideals into realities is still a major challenge facing public administration reform, now and for the foreseeable future.

OBEDIENT SERVANTS? MANAGEMENT FREEDOMS AND ACCOUNTABILITIES IN THE NEW ZEALAND PUBLIC SECTOR by Rich
SILVIA HORTON

MAPPING THE FIELD OF QUASI-AUTONOMOUS ORGANIZATIONS IN FRANCE AND ITALY
MARINE ALLIX, SANDRA VAN THIEL

The quango continuum designed by Greve, Flinders, and Van Thiel aimed to help in identifying and categorizing different quasi-autonomous organizations in the UK, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Here, the continuum is applied to France and Italy in order to test its validity as a tool to study the field of quangos and to introduce French and Italian quasi-autonomous organizations. The continuum turns out to be a relevant framework to show the specific features of these organizations in different countries. On the whole, France seems to favor more public bodies than Italy, which is more inclined to turn them into private entities.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
STEVEN KELMAN

BOOK REVIEW: REINVENTING LEVIATHAN: THE POLITICS OF ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES by
MICHAEL BARZELAY, GUILLERMO CEJUDO

BOOK REVIEW: PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE: STRATEGIC PLANNING IN THE U.S. AIR FORCE by Michael Barzelay
JOHN M. BRYSON

VALEDICTORY EDITORIAL
FRED THOMPSON

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF ETHICS LAWS
BETH A. ROSENSON

This article assesses the impact of ethics laws at the state level in the U.S., focusing on laws that apply specifically to one category of public officials: legislators. I first discuss the positive contribution of ethics laws to the functioning of democratic government. I then turn to the costs of the laws, which are often subtle and counterintuitive. The discussion of the costs of ethics laws draws on a growing body of empirical evidence, and highlights the ways that legislation can have unintended and undesirable consequences.

REVIEW ESSAY: BUDGETING AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE by Jerry L. McCaffery and L.R.
ROY T. MEYERS

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS FOR POLITICIANS?
JOHN UHR

Democracies typically impose onerous regulation on the conduct of bureaucratic officials and remarkably light regulation of the conduct of elected officials. The traditional presumption was that politicians should be allowed to self- regulate. In many democratic regimes, politicians have shown themselves unable to carry this burden of public trust. As a result, political ethics is regulated from a perspective of public distrust, associated with fears of political corruption. Despite my personal reservations about professional ethics models (recorded here by reference to recent fictional work of novelist J.M.Coetzee), I revive a trust-based perspective to make a case for a regime of self-regulation for democratic politicians, based on a democratic hope that politicians can be trusted to act as responsible professionals.

PATH DEPENDENCE AND SELF-REINFORCING PROCESSES IN THE REGULATION OF ETHICS IN POLITICS: TOWARD A FRANCE
DENIS SAINT-MARTIN

In some countries, concerns over the erosion of public trust have led legislatures to introduce some form of independent element in their arrangements for regulating political ethics, while legislators in other countries are refusing to make similar changes even if they also face severe problems of declining confidence in politics. Why? To explain these differences, this article explores the fruitfulness of historical- institutionalist approaches, and of path dependence in particular. It suggests that ethics regulation processes are self-reinforcing over time, leading to more rules that are still enforced through self-regulation mechanisms (the no-change scenario, as in the U.S.) or to path-shifting changes where legislatures, hoping to break the ethics inflationary cycle, opt for a more depoliticized form of ethics regulation (as in the UK and Canada).

MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP AND THE ETHICAL IMPORTANCE OF LEGACY
J. PATRICK DOBEL

A good theory of public trust should unite personal integrity, moral commitments, legal authority, and accountability and effectiveness. This article presents leaving a legacy as an approach to organize managers’ and leaders’ reflection. This approach unites personal search for meaning with an organizational focus on mission. It connects the individual’s preoccupation with self-worth and significance with organizational results. It embeds leaders in an historical setting, linking their inheritance from the past and their obligations to the future. Finally, thinking of a legacy can guide individuals to a less controlling leadership style, supporting people and institutions capable of adaptation and growth. While legacy does not capture all aspects of managerial leadership, it maps a broad and rich understanding of leadership and individuality linked to trusteeship. Legacy unites many of the best aspects of the most common normative explanations of trusteeship.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
STEVEN KELMAN

JUNE PALLOT: A VOICE OF REASON
SUSAN NEWBERRY

This article commences with an outline of June Pallot’s career, during which she took part in New Zealand’s public sector financial management reforms. Her interest in public sector financial management issues preceded 1984, the year New Zealand commenced an extreme and rapid period of economic and public sector reforms (see, for example, Pallot and Clarke 1981; Hutton and Pallot 1982), and continued until her death. The second part of the article identifies themes in the work June regarded as her most significant. June Pallot’s death from cancer on 5 November 2004 at the age of fifty-one is a great loss to the academic world. Her research on public sector financial management, and New Zealand’s public sector financial management reforms in particular, was both prodigious and insightful. June Pallot had a vibrant personality, a great sense of humor, she supported and cared for others, and she always exhibited graciousness and optimism. Beyond recognizing her professional accomplishments, for many, June’s death is also the loss of a dear friend.

JUNE PALLOT AWARD FOR BEST ARTICLE IN THE

ETHICAL POLITICAL CONDUCT AND FIDELITY TO THE DEMOCRATIC ETHOS
COLIN M. MACLEOD

Ethical conduct by politicians involves more than respect for the law and adherence to rules governing conflicts of interest. It displays fidelity to a democratic ethos. In this article, I provide a characterization of the democratic ethos and sketch its connection to recent work in democratic theory. Second, I describe the sort of fidelity to the democratic ethos that is a condition of ethical conduct by politicians. Third, I suggest a mechanism through which greater adherence to a suitable version of the democratic ethos might be achieved.