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Examines main developments in central government since Prime Minister Blair took office in May 1997; reforms, unintended consequences, and potential modernization; Great Britain.

A governmental tradition is a set of beliefs about the institutions and history of government. In this article I argue the Anglo‐Saxon governmental tradition interprets public sector reform differently to the Rechtsstaat, participation tradition of Denmark, leading to different aims, measures and outcomes. In the Introduction, I define NPM arguing that is has become everything and is, therefore a meaningless term. I identify six dimensions to public sector reform: privatization, marketization, corporate management, regulation, decentralization and political control. In section 2, I describe the six dimensions of public sector reform in Britain and Denmark. In section 3, I explain the idea of a governmental tradition and argue the idea is essential to understanding the differences between Britain and Denmark. In section 4, I compare British and Danish governmental traditions, arguing the key differences lie in beliefs about the constitution, bureaucracy and state‐civil society relations. Finally, I provide a summary explanation of the differences and argue that traditions not only shape the aims, measures and outcomes of public sector reform but also lead to different interpretations of reform and its dilemmas. In Britain, the key dilemma concerns central steering capacity. In Denmark, the main dilemma is democratic accountability.

The term 'governance' is popular but imprecise. It has at least six uses, referring to: the minimal state; corporate governance: the new public management; 'good governance'; socio-cybernetic systems: and self-organizing networks. I stipulate that governance refers to 'self-organizing, interorganizational networks' and argue these networks complement markets and hierarchies as governing structures for authoritatively allocating resources and exercising control and co-ordination. I defend this definition, arguing that it throws new light on recent changes in British government, most notably: hollowing out the state, the new public management, and intergovernmental management. 1 conclude that networks are now a pervasive feature of service delivery in Britain; that such networks are characterized by trust and mutual adjustment and undermine management reforms rooted in competition; and that they are a challenge to governability because they become autonomous and resist central guidance.

This paper explores the changes in the study of Public Administration during the 1980s It documents the continuing contribution of organisation theory in the study of central-local government relations and government-industry relations; the failure of state theory; the challenge of rational choice theory; and the meteoric rise of the new public management. Public Administration experienced contradictory trends. The institutionalist tradition underwent a long lingering decline and was replaced by many competing approaches. The institutional base of the subject was eroded in the 1980s as the subject was absorbed by business schools and research funding evaporated. The New Right was the wellspring of ideas for government reform while 'indifference' best describes official attitudes to Public Administration. But against this inauspicious back cloth, there were clear signs of intellectual vigour with important innovations in, for example, bureaumetrics, policy networks and rational choice models of bureaucracy.