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Public service systems are transforming into market-like organisations of service delivery and in many countries there is experimentation with user boards, customer choice, and stakeholderism. Meanwhile, democratic governance looks surprisingly much like the way it did 25 or 50 years ago. This article reviews the transformation of governance from the vantage point of democratic values. The basic argument of the article is that western democracies are currently implementing governance reform and administrative reform to increase public sector efficiency without much reflection on the democratic ramifications of reform.

Public service systems are transforming into market-like organisations of service delivery and in many countries there is experimentation with user boards, customer choice, and stakeholderism. Meanwhile, democratic governance looks surprisingly much like the way it did 25 or 50 years ago. This article reviews the transformation of governance from the vantage point of democratic values. The basic argument of the article is that western democracies are currently implementing governance reform and administrative reform to increase public sector efficiency without much reflection on the democratic ramifications of reform. Adapted from the source document.

In this era of globalization and the trend toward a free market economy, states face increasing challenges in their effort to deliver and maintain public services and safeguard a representative and responsible form of democratic government. In the face of growing citizen disenchantment toward traditional structures for political representation and accountability, western democracies have increasingly begun to turn to the 'new governance' model, a partnership-oriented policy strategy in which the state defines policy objectives but gives considerable leeway to key external actors in pursuing those objectives. While meant to enhance government performance, this model doesn't offer a satisfactory alternative to traditional forms of political representation and accountability. Democracies are faced with a dilemma: How to ensure government performance and efficacy without sacrificing political representation and accountability to the electorate? In this article, a comparative study is proposed on how policy makers and civil servants view this conflict of goals and what measures have been taken to resolve it. Toward this end, governance reform will be analyzed and compared in Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, and Britain. Adapted from the source document.

Unlike most other areas of the social sciences, the study of urban politics has been slow in developing a comparative research agenda. This article explores the potential in comparative urban governance research. Urban regime theory does not travel very well, partly because it is an under theorized framework and partly because it is in many ways an abstraction of U.S. urban political economy. To escape these obstacles to comparative research, this article argues that regimes should be conceived of as a culturally and historically specific model of urban governance. Comparative urban governance holds tremendous potential in assisting scholars in uncovering causal mechanisms and drivers of political, economic, and social change at the urban level.