The field of public administration currently lacks sufficient resources for understanding the rationale, implications, and inherent practices of reforming government administration around the world.The Handbook of Administrative Reform satisfies this need by bringing together diverse international experts to analyze the sensible processes an

This book provides a detailed analysis of the dimensions and dynamics of the role of international aid in the reform and capacity development of public service in post-communist Albania. It challenges the technocratic, results-based management frameworks used by aid organizations and reports of official donors operating in the country context, and offers a qualitative and critical assessment of the role of aid in administrative reform and capacity building. Secondly, the book highlights the specificity of the national politico-administrative context and its ability to modify the process of policy transfer from aid organizations to the Albanian bureaucracy. In doing so, it illustrates the domestic challenges in the transfer process towards policy learning and makes a valuable contribution to the debate over the (voluntary vs. coercive) administrative reform in Southeast Europe in relation to the politics of EU accession. ​Artan Karini is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and Adjunct Research Professor at EURUS (European, Russian and Eurasian Studies), Carleton University, Canada.

Politics of the Administrative Process shows how efficient public administration requires a delicate balance—the bureaucracy must be powerful enough to be effective, but also accountable to elected officials and citizens. Author Don Kettl gives students a realistic, relevant, and well-researched view of the field in this reader–friendly best seller. With its engaging vignettes, rich examples and a unique focus on policymaking and politics, the Seventh Edition continues its strong emphasis on politics, accountability, and performance. This new edition has been thoroughly updated with new scholarship, data, events, and case studies, giving students multiple opportunities to apply ideas and analysis as they read.

The consequences of governmental reform are not always intended. In this book, Suzanne J. Piotrowski examines how federal management reforms associated with the National Performance Review have affected, and are still affecting, implementation of the Freedom of Information Act. The intersection of the New Public Management movement and the implementation of the U.S. federal government's transparency policy is, she argues, a clear example of unforeseen outcomes. Particular attention is paid to performance management, customer service, and contracting out initiatives, as well as to unintended consequences and their future implications for public administration scholars, practitioners, and reformers.

After a quarter of a century of implementation of New Public Management (NPM) reform strategies, this book assesses the major real outcomes of these reforms on states and public sectors, at both the organisational level and a more political level. Unlike most previous accounts of reform, this book looks at how reform has changed the role of the public administration in democratic governance. Featuring case studies on the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Post communist states, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey and the European Commission, and focusing on two issues this book: Examines the significant variations in the "trajectories" of administrative reform among West European countries on the basis of empirically rooted research on different national case studies. Assesses the extent to which these "constitutive" public policies have affected the institutions of government and the governing processes of our democratic occidental states and ask how have NPM-inspired programs, with their exclusive focus on managerialist objectives and instruments, challenged the political and democratic nature of public administration? Looking at the broader issues relating to the current recompositions of democratic states, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of all matters relating to public administration and governance within political science, management, public law, sociology, contemporary history, and cultural studies.

In this major new contribution to a rapidly expanding field, the authors offer an integrated analysis of the wave of management reforms which have swept through so many countries in the last twenty years. The reform trajectories of ten countries are compared, and key differences of approach discussed. Unlike some previous works, this volume affords balanced coverage to the 'New Public Management' (NPM) and the 'non-NPM' or 'reluctant NPM' countries, since it covers Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Unusually, it also includes a preliminary analysis of attempts to improve management within the European Commission.

Based on a survey of more than 6700 top civil servants in 17 European countries, this book explores the impacts of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms in Europe from a uniquely comparative perspective. It examines and analyses empirical findings regarding the dynamics, major trends and tools of administrative reforms, with special focus on the diversity of top executives’ perceptions about the effects of those reforms.

This book looks critically at administrative reform in a comparative perspective. The contributors assess its scope and objectives, and the ways in which these reforms have impacted on the traditional roles of civil servants.

What is administrative reform? How is it differentiated from other kinds of social reform? Who are administrative reformers and how do they approach their task? And who benefits and who suffers from it? Does a theory of administrative reform exist?A survey of published research on administrative reform reveals that satisfactory answers to these questions are handicapped by methodological and theoretical shortcomings. There are no common definitions, no agreement over content, no selected boundaries, no clear links with the wide phenomenon of social reform, no firm hypothesis tested by empirical findings, and no continuous dialogue between practitioners and theorists. This book is the first comprehensive and systematic treatment of the subject for professionals and students in the fields of public and private administration. It carefully examines the diverse interdisciplinary literature on the subject and identifies and develops the most promising approaches towards a unified theory.Caiden shows how the study of administrative reform can contribute substantially to the development of administrative theory, and constructs a working definition of the phenomenon of administrative reform, distinguishing it from social change and from administrative change. The practical use of this definition is tested by the analysis of various case histories of administrative cultures of different periods in history, from which a common cycle of reform processes is discerned. The author follows with a detailed examination of the processes themselves. The book concludes with a discussion of the obstacles to reform and a review of the author's findings and conclusions.