A Review of Public Sector Reform

Abstract

In the 1980s, public management reform became a policy in its own right. The author offers his interpretation of how academic thinking about the policy has evolved and been implemented. Patterns of reform were known as New Public Management (NPM), but also known as “managerialism” or “re-inventing the government”. The author recognizes that the definition of public management is ambiguous and problematic. In addition, the same techniques and management tools are perceived by Governments and populations in both Anglo-Saxon and Continental European cultures, often through opposing semantics as is the
case for example with the concept of “agency”. The article includes a discussion on a model of management reforms as well as a review of the state of comparative knowledge concerning NPM. The author suggests that individual reforms should be grouped according to their “dominant logics” rather than looking for a “generic model”.