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As in other Western countries, a wave of reform has swept the Danish public sector. The record of these reforms is mixed and paradoxical; an ambiguous delegation of executive authority and radical privatization have been successfully implemented, while other measures, especially contracting out and user democracy or the introduction of greater choice, turn out to have failed. The paper argues that this experience offers two general lessons. First, shortterm costs and benefits are decisive to those who enact and implement public sector reform. Second, institutional factors specific to each type of reorganization have a major impact on the political distribution of costs and benefits. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

The Belgian federal administration has been undergoing a major reform programme since 1999, known as the Copernicus reform. In 2000 a survey was launched by the Minister of Civil Service and Modernisation of the Public Services to assess and measure civil servants' attitudes towards the reform and to stuimulate employee commitment. This article analyses the survey responses using the participation model of de Leede and Looise. Concludes that the amount of influence civil servants exerted through their participation and involvement in the survey appears to be small. Furthermore, there are criticisms levelled at the ways that the results of the survey have been used.

AbstractThis article is partly a response to McCourt and Sola (1999), who raised a number of important observations about the role and limitations of training in promoting public sector reform in Tanzania. In particular, their discussion of the relationship between individual and organizational change is referred to. The article outlines a possible alternative to the straight training approach to capacity building, and suggests it as a possible model for the kind of OD intervention mentioned in McCourt and Sola, The author describes a programme of capacity building for rural district councils in Zimbabwe, which tried to avoid the mistakes of earlier public sector training programmes. In discussing ways of integrating human resource development into programmes of capacity building and public sector reform, the article adds to the debate about process and blueprint approaches as discussed in this journal by Cook, (1997), Blunt (1997) and others. The article concludes with an attempt to assess some of the achievements and failures of the training programme after the initial three years. It draws attention to some of the external factors in the programme operating environment which combine with the internal coordination and management aspects, in determining the overall achievement of such a complex programme. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract. As in otherWestern countries, a wave of reform has swept the Danish public sector. The record of these reforms is mixed and paradoxical; an ambiguous delegation of executive authority and radical privatization have been successfully implemented, while other measures, especially contracting out and user democracy or the introduction of greater choice, turn out to have failed. The paper argues that this experience offers two general lessons. First, shortterm costs and benefits are decisive to those who enact and implement public sector reform. Second, institutional factors specific to each type of reorganization have a major impact on the political distribution of costs and benefits.

Even though public sector reforms have become nearly every day-business in many countries, the implementation of the reforms is often a challenge for change management. This is the case also in Finland. Nationwide local government reform aiming to create a thriving municipal structure was launched in 2011 and gained a lot attention and criticism. We aim to analyze what kind of diverse views occurred in the implementation phase of this particular reform and how those affected the reform process. Thus we aim to analyse the reform as a complex social process by using the figuration theory of Elias'. According to our analysis it seems that there is a dominant discourse that includes actors with different goals. We also identified counter discourse, arisen as a reaction to the dominant discourse. In the reforms there also seems to be some structural diversity due to actors who look at things from various perspectives. Thus the implementation of reforms is not only a question of the policy goals but also a question of different actors competing with each others. This underlines the fact that managing public sector reforms should focus more on building long-term processes of co-operation and not only on institutional or rationally explained changes.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.9.12795

Die Expansion des öffentlichen Sektors war bis Ende der 70erJahre ein unbestrittener Grundpfeiler des traditionellen "Schwedischen Modells". Diese Ausweitung sollte sowohl soziale als auch makro-ökonomische Probleme lösen und wurde als Schlüssel zur Demokratisierung der schwedischen Gesellschaft betrachtet. In den 80er Jahren wurden die Folgen dieser Politik kritisiert und mit Privatisierungs- und Dezentralisierungskonzepten konfrontiert. Die sozialdemokratischen Regierungen reagierten mit einer umfassenden Reformstrategie, die mit der Betonung auf Dezentralisierung eine Alternative zu weitreichenden Privatisierungsplänen bilden sollte. Mit der These, daß diese eher defensive Strategie das traditionelle Modell nicht ersetzen konnte, untersucht der Autor Inhalt und Prozeß der Reform des öffentlichen Sektors in den 80er und die entstandene Problemkonstellation in den 90er Jahren. (AuD-Ber)

"Civil service reform," which has become the nickname for
public sector management reform in the parlance of development
economics, has only recently and grudgingly been accepted by those who
advise on policy in the poor countries. Even then, the approach is
somewhat paternalistic in that it emphasises externally-designed rules
and processes for management, organisation, audit and accountability. It
recognises the role of people in terms of noting that incentives and
employment policies matter but only in terms of right-sizing the
government and second to the need to spread budgetary resources over the
politically chosen level of employment. What it does not accept is that
and the drive to manage the public sector better has to be led and
implemented by the domestic talent and in that they must have both the
incentive and the honour of doing just that. This paper argues that the
main reason that the public sector management has suffered in many of
the poor countries is that incentives have been allowed to erode rapidly
as public sector employment was viewed politically as a means of
providing welfare.