Suchergebnisse

For the past 20 years, the New Public Management (NPM) has been the dominant paradigm in public administration theory and practice. Given its affinity with markets and private sector management, NPM is arguably as much a casualty of the global economic crisis as are the markets and market mechanisms which underpin it. In this context, this article explores the impact of the crisis on the current and future development of public administration practice. Starting from some stocktaking analyses written immediately prior to the downturn, four possible scenarios are suggested for public management practice in the UK and elsewhere.

Using comparative analytical frameworks developed to explain the incidence, intensity and success or otherwise of managerial reforms in government, this article is a case study of the effects of the Kinnock management reforms in the European Commission. It draws on international experience to identify and evaluate critical success factors, situates the Commission reforms within this comparative international context and then focuses on the reforms and their implementation. Using Commission documentation and other sources including interview material, the article charts the progress of implementation against critical success factors and structural conduciveness, identifying both the unintended outcomes likely to result and the overall likelihood of success.

Unlike public administration systems in many member states, the management of EU programmes has not, until recently, been subject to a radical modernizing agenda. Following the resignation of the Santer Commission in March 1999, a wide ranging programme of management reform has been introduced by the European Commission. Based on the findings of the committee of independent experts reports of 1999, a reform White Paper was published by Commissioner Kinnock in March 2000 with the intention of implementing many of these proposals and adding some new ones. This article will review the content and progress of these reforms in the context of the 'New Public Management/Modernising Government' paradigm, and compare them with earlier change packages initiated by the outgoing commission. The likely trajectory of the current initiatives will be evaluated against this experience taking into account recent Court of Auditor'.findings.

Measuring the performance of public services & programs is now a generally accepted part of the scenery of public management. In practice, it is often honored more in the breach than the observance owing to well-known technical & epistemological problems. In the absence of reliable performance data, normative assumptions may prevail on policymakers & managers alike that are at variance with objective reality. The critique & attempted reform of EU program management is often based on such assumptions. This paper attempts to provide an empirical & epistemological basis to the judgment of EU program management by identifying appropriate performance indicators, collecting data on them from audit reports over a 20-year period & constructing a methodology for analysis. Criteria for reliable sources & the effect of intervening variables on the results are discussed. The paper reviews the evidence of the aggregate data collected for the five major EU spending areas, & suggests some conclusions questioning both commonly held assumptions about, & models for, the reform of EU program management. 5 Tables, 2 Figures, 60 References. Adapted from the source document.