Public Management and Governance

Public Management and Governance is the leading text in international public management
and governance and an ideal introduction to all aspects of this field. It combines rigorous
insight from pre-eminent scholars around the world with a clear structure and supportive,
thoughtful, and intuitive pedagogy. This revised and updated fourth edition responds to the
significant changes in the external environment, as well as the field itself. It includes six new
chapters covering aspects of increasing importance:

• Public management and governance developments in non-OECD countries

• Risk and resilience
• Innovation in public management and governance
• Digital public management
• Digital public governance
• Behavioural approaches to public policy

Throughout the new edition, there is a wealth of new content on emergent topics such as
collaborative leadership, diversity and inclusion, complexity theory and evidence-informed
policy. Each chapter is supplemented with discussion questions, group and individual
exercises, case studies and recommendations on further reading; this edition also includes
more international cases. This highly respected text is an essential resource for all students
on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in public management, public administration,
government, and public policy as well as for policymakers and practitioners seeking an
up-to-date guide to the field.

Tony Bovaird is Emeritus Professor of Public Management and Policy at the University of
Birmingham and Chief Executive of Governance International. He has published widely in
strategic management, public policy evaluation, and public services management.

Elke Loeffler is Senior Lecturer and Director of Strategic Partnerships (CPRL) at the Open
University and Director of Governance International. She has published widely in public
governance, quality management in the public sector and user and community co-production
of public services.
Public Management and
Governance
Fourth Edition

Edited by Tony Bovaird

and Elke Loeffler
Designed cover image: guvendemir
Fourth edition published 2024
by Routledge
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© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler; individual
chapters, the contributors
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the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
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trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2003
Third edition published by Routledge 2015
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 9781032253732 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032232591 (pbk)
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Contents

List of figures viii

List of tables ix
Case examples x
Notes on contributors xii
Foreword xx

PART I
From public management to governance 1

1 Understanding public management and governance 3

TONY BOVAIRD AND ELKE LOEFFLER

2 The changing context of public policy 14

TONY BOVAIRD AND ELKE LOEFFLER

3 The changing role of public spending 27

PETER M. JACKSON

4 Public sector reforms across OECD countries 39

EDWIN LAU AND NICK MANNING

5 Public management and governance trends in non-OECD countries 53

GEORGE ADDO LARBI

6 Behavioural approaches to public management and governance 66

JANNE KALUCZA AND CAROLINE FISCHER

PART II
Public management 77

7 Strategic management and marketing in public service organizations 79

TONY BOVAIRD
vi­ Contents
8 Contracting and partnering for public services 103
CARSTEN GREVE

9 Conceptual revolutions in public financial management 116

JAMES L. CHAN AND ZHIMING MA

10 Human resource management in public service organizations 129

ADRIAN RITZ AND EVA KNIES

11 Public services and management in the digital age 141

VEIKO LEMBER AND JOEP CROMPVOETS

12 Performance measurement and management in public sector organizations 153

GEERT BOUCKAERT AND WOUTER VAN DOOREN

13 Process and quality management in public service organisations 166

KUNO SCHEDLER AND UTZ HELMUTH

14 Regulatory inspection and public audit 181

SLOBODAN TOMIC

PART III
Public governance 193

15 Public governance for public value 195

ELKE LOEFFLER

16 Partnership working across public and private sectors 210

TONY BOVAIRD AND ERIK HANS KLIJN

17 Management at arm’s length: Executive agencies and public bodies 222

SANDRA VAN THIEL

18 Managing ‘wicked problems’ through complex adaptive governance networks 232

CHRISTOPHER KOLIBA AND JOOP KOPPENJAN

19 Innovation in public governance and management 245

JACOB TORFING

20 E-governance: Concept, practice and ethics 258

ARMAN BEHROOZ AND ALBERT MEIJER
 Contents  vii
21 Understanding public leadership 271
JEAN HARTLEY

22 Citizen engagement 284

ELKE LOEFFLER AND STEVE MARTIN

23 Co-production of public services and outcomes 299

ELKE LOEFFLER

24 Managing risk and resilience in the public domain 315

TONY BOVAIRD AND ELKE LOEFFLER

25 Transparency in government 329

ALASDAIR ROBERTS

26 Changing equalities: Politics, policies and practice 341

RACHEL ASHWORTH

27 Ethical considerations in the public sector: What is acceptable behaviour? 355

HOWARD DAVIS, SUZANNE J. PIOTROWSKI AND LOIS WARNER

28 Evidence-informed policy and practice 368

ANNETTE BOAZ AND SANDRA NUTLEY

PART IV
… and finally 383

29 Public management and governance: The future? 385

TONY BOVAIRD AND ELKE LOEFFLER

Index399
Figures

2.1 Types of public agencies  21

7.1 Stakeholder power/interest matrix for UK development aid programme 83
7.2 Public sector Boston matrix 89
7.3 Need and provision matrix  90
7.4 Maps from three stakeholders  90
7.5 The expanded marketing mix for public services  97
10.1 Public HRM value chain 133
12.1 The policy and management cycle  155
12.2 The CAF model 160
13.1 90° rotation from hierarchical to process-oriented organisation 167
13.2 Process map for the application for a Swiss ID (simplified illustration) 170
13.3 The Common Assessment Framework 177
15.1 The Governance International Public Value Model  204
15.2 Governance scorecard of quality of life and governance principles in
Carrick public housing estates  207
21.1 The principal arenas for UK government ministerial leadership 278
22.1 Ladder of engagement  285
22.2 Examples of modes of citizen engagement  292
23.1 Evaluation of effects of co-production on outcomes, quality and efficiency  308
23.2 Barriers to co-production 309
24.1 Priority for action in relation to any given event, given its probability and
potential impact 316
24.2 Pathways to risk reduction  319
24.3 The “whole system resilience network” as a chain linking
user-community-provider-market resilience  321
Tables

3.1 Public expenditure % GDP 1870–2020 34

4.1 Macro models of public sector management 42
4.2 Current technical management trends 44
7.1 Developing corporate and service unit strategies 82
9.1 Government as a coalition of stakeholders 124
12.1 Uses of performance information 158
13.1 Information dimensions for the structured recording of processes 169
13.2 Overview on process optimisation approaches 172
14.1 Examples of regulatory authorities across the world that conduct
regulatory inspection 184
14.2 Examples of SAIs (data as of 2022, as per official national legislation)  188
14.3 A definition of value for money  188
15.1 The move from local government to local governance 201
16.1 A typology of PPP forms  211
16.2 Partnerships from a governance perspective 218
17.1 Types of arm’s length bodies 224
17.2 Assumptions and instruments for the management of
arm’s length bodies in two models 227
22.1 Forms of citizen engagement 286
23.1 Pathways to co-production 303
28.1 Evidence uses and methods 373
29.1 Predictions in previous chapters on likely future developments in public
management and governance 392
Case examples

1.1 Differences between managerial and governance approaches 9

6.1 Behavioural insight teams around the world 73
9.1 American government financial management 119
9.2 Chinese public financial management 120
9.3 UK resource accounting and budgeting 122
9.4 Creating, recognizing and reporting public value 122
9.5 The role of public money in the COVID-19 pandemic 125
12.1 CitiStat in Baltimore 158
13.1 The service charter of the Kenya National Library Service 175
15.1 Assessment of the Finnish public governance system 197
15.2 Police train shop assistants to cut shop-lifting  199
19.1 Governance networks to align private business actors
with climate policy  249
19.2 Co-creation of public value is found in Gentofte Municipality, Denmark  251
19.3 Trust-based management in the Job Activity Centre, Denmark  253
19.4 Mobilization leadership to achieve the UN’s Sustainable
Development Goals  254
22.1 Accessibility failures of local government websites in the UK  287
22.2 Information about local projects and citizen engagement opportunities
in the City of Heidelberg  288
22.3 The UK Climate Assembly  289
22.4 Digital participation at national and local levels in Singapore  290
22.5 The Permanent Citizen Dialogue in East Belgium  295
23.1 Co-commissioning: Participatory budgeting in Brazil  305
23.2 Co-designing innovative solutions with jobseekers: The Co-Production
Labs of Offenbach Employment Agency, Germany  305
23.3 Community Health Workers co-delivering malaria diagnosis and
treatment in Tigray  306
23.4 Self-monitoring of patients in Highland Hospital, Sweden  306
23.5 Digital community co-production to respond to COVID-19:
The #WirVsVirus hackathon in Germany  310
25.1 Diffusion of freedom of information laws  331
25.2 Helping India’s poor  333
 Case examples  xi
25.3 Journalists learn how to use “big data”  337
26.1 An anti-racist action plan for Wales  344
26.2 Representation and reputation of public agencies in Brazil  345
26.3 Achieving gender equality through UN SDGs in Nigeria  350
27.1 Standards in public life, UK  357
27.2 Local government corruption in the United States: ‘The Jersey Sting’  359
27.3 The seven principles of public life, UK  360
27.4 Political corruption in New South Wales, Australia  362
27.5 Corruption and technology in India  363
27.6 The Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsmen – Riksdagens Ombudsmän  365
28.1 Improving the quality of regulations through regulatory impact analysis  371
28.2 The curious incident of research in the papers  373
28.3 Making connections and building collaborations for evidence-informed
public management across Africa 377
Contributors

Rachel Ashworth has served as Dean and Head of Cardiff Business School since September
2018 and is a Professor in Public Services Management. Her research focuses on account-
ability and governance, equality, diversity and inclusion, and organisational change in
public services. Her current projects focus on mainstreaming equality in public policy, the
implementation of Public Value, and governance reform in emergency services. She has
published in journals including Journal of Public Administration, Research and Theory, Journal
of Management Studies, British Journal of Management, Public Administration, Policy and
Politics, and Public Management Review.
Arman Behrooz is a second-year student in the Public Administration and Organizational
Science research Masters at Utrecht University. Previously he completed his Bachelor of
Arts in Social Sciences at the University of Toronto, with a focus on sociology, human
geography, and Middle Eastern civilizations. Although exploring a variety of topics
relating to public administration throughout his two-year master’s programme, Arman’s
research interests include digital governance and public sector innovation. He is cur-
rently developing his thesis project on the effects of phenomenon-based budgeting on
public sector capacity to engage with anticipatory innovation in collaboration with the
OPSI in OECD.
Annette Boaz is Professor of Health and Social Care Policy at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine. She has more than 25 years of experience in supporting the use of
evidence across a range of policy domains. She was part of one of the largest UK invest-
ments in the evidence use landscape, the ESRC Centre for Evidence Based Policy and
Practice and a Founding Editor of the journal Evidence & Policy. She has undertaken an
international leadership role in promoting the use of evidence through the Transforming
Evidence initiative, recently publishing a new book on evidence use, What Works Now:
Evidence-informed policy and practice (Boaz, Davies, Fraser and Nutley, Policy Press 2019).
Geert Bouckaert is Professor of Public Management at the KU Leuven Public Governance
Institute in Leuven, Belgium. He is Past-President of the International Institute of
Administrative Sciences (IIAS) and of the European Group for Public Administration
(EGPA). He was vice-chair of the UN/ECOSOC Committee of Experts for Public
Administration (CEPA). His main research interests are in public sector reform, trust, per-
formance management and measurement, and financial management in the public sector.
Tony Bovaird is Emeritus Professor of Public Management and Policy at INLOGOV,
University of Birmingham and Chief Executive of Governance International. He
directed the meta-evaluation of the UK Local Government Modernisation Agenda on


 Contributors  xiii
behalf of the Department of Communities and Local Government and led an evalua-
tion for the Cabinet Office of the UK Civil Service Reform Programme. He has under-
taken research for OECD, European Commission, UK central government, National
Audit Office, Local Government Association and many other public agencies in the
UK and internationally. His current research with Elke Loeffler focuses on improving
local governance through user and community co-production and better partnership
working, including projects for the EU Presidency, AHRC Connected Communities
programme, the Scottish and Welsh Governments and the Bertelsmann Foundation. He
is on the Editorial Board of the International Public Management Journal and Complexity,
Governance and Networks.
James L. Chan is a Professor Emeritus of Accounting at the University of Illinois at Chicago,
where he was head of the Department of Accounting and the Ernst & Young Professor.
In his long academic career, he also held visiting appointments at ten other universities,
including the University of Chicago, as the Emmett Dedmon Visiting Professor in Public
Policy, and Peking University, as Distinguished Overseas Professor. Chan has published
over 100 papers and other writings mostly in government accounting, finance and man-
agement. He was chairman of the Government and Nonprofit Section in the American
Accounting Association, and co-founded the Comparative International Government
Accounting Research (CIGAR) Network. Upon his retirement in 2008, he received two
life-time contribution and achievement awards. Professor Chan complemented his aca-
demic interests with practical experiences, serving on the staff and task forces of standard-
setting bodies and consulting with the IMF and other leading international organizations
and with governments in the United States and China. Chinese by birth, he received all
his degrees in accountancy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Joep Crompvoets is Professor of Information Management in the Public Sector and
Research Manager at the Public Governance Institute of KU Leuven University in
Leuven, Belgium. Previously, he was staff member of the research institute CSIC in Spain
and lecturer at Wageningen University (Netherlands). His main research interests are
e-governance, public sector innovation, data infrastructures, GIS and data sciences. ​
Howard Davis is an independent researcher and academic. He has served as Professor of
Social and Local Policy and Co-Director of the Centre for Communities and Social
Justice at Coventry University and Director of The Local Government Centre, Warwick
Business School, as well as positions at Birmingham and Canterbury Christ Church
Universities. He is currently working with colleagues at Kwansei Gakuin University.
He has led a large number of projects advising on and evaluating the modernisation and
improvement of public services – commissioned by both national and local governments.
He also has many years of international working with particular reference to improving
the delivery of local and public services. His experience includes membership of a wide
range of governmental and partnership bodies and a variety of local authority transfor-
mation and programme boards. His UK and international research interests and publica-
tions cover local government, community wellbeing and governance, ethics, structures,
performance, innovation and inspection of public services.
Caroline Fischer is an Assistant Professor for Public Administration and Digital
Transformation at the University of Twente. Caroline obtained her PhD from the
University of Potsdam with a dissertation on public sector knowledge management. In
general, her work often employs a micro-level perspective to public administration with
xiv­ Contributors
an emphasis on motivation, values, attitudes and behaviour of public servants as well as
citizens. She is particularly interested in topics related to error, risk, crisis and learning,
and human resource management in the public sector, as well technological develop-
ments in government.
Carsten Greve is Professor of Public Management and Governance at the Department of
Organization, Copenhagen Business School, where he is also Head of Department. He
has written widely on public management reform and public-private partnerships.
Jean Hartley is Professor of Public Leadership at The Open University Business School,
where she undertakes research on leadership and leadership development by politicians,
public servants and civic activists, and particularly on leadership with political astute-
ness by managers. Jean co-edited the The Routledge Companion to Leadership. She also
researches innovation in governance and public services and has co-written Valuing
Public Innovation, and has writes on and researches about public value. Jean is also the
Academic Director of the Open University’s multi-disciplinary Centre for Policing
Research and Learning.
Utz Helmuth is a Managing Director with the consultancy PwC Strategy&. He has been
leading multiple large scale organizational transformations, including the development
and implementation of new target operating models and processes. Prior to joining
Strategy&, he was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University and worked as a pro-
ject manager at the Institute for Systemic Management and Public Governance at the
University of St. Gallen. He also holds a doctor's degree from the University of St. Gallen,
based on research into performance management, on which he has undertaken a number
of research projects and published several studies. He also served as vice-chairman of
eCH’s section on business process management – a standards committee for the Swiss
government.
Peter M. Jackson was Dean of Social Science and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University
of Leicester, UK. More recently, he was Director of Enterprise for the College of Social
Science and Professor of Economics and Strategy in the University of Leicester’s School
of Management. He had a continuing interest in public finance and public sector manage-
ment for over 40 years. Since starting out his career as an economist with HM Treasury,
he made major contributions to debates on public expenditure management and control
and on approaches to measuring the performance of public sector organisations. His most
recent work focused on public value, public sector efficiency and productivity and pub-
lic private partnerships. In 2001 he was appointed as specialist adviser to the Finance
Committee of the Scottish Parliament, assisting in its inquiry into the Private Finance
Initiative. [Sadly, Peter died shortly after revising his chapter but before publication – the
editors wish to record their huge appreciation of his contribution to the four editions of
this textbook].
Janne Kalucza is an IT manager specializing in digital process management and a lec-
turer in business psychology and statistics. She obtained her PhD from the University
of Hamburg with a dissertation on administrative burden and digitalisation in the
public sector. Her research interests include approaches to behavioural public admin-
istration, the impact of digitalisation on bureaucratic processes, and experimental
methodology.
 Contributors  xv
Erik Hans Klijn is a Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Sociology,
Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His
research and teaching activities focus on complex decision-making and management in
networks, and Public Private Partnerships. In the last decade his research has extended
to branding and the impact of media on complex decision-making. He has published
extensively in international journals and received a honorary doctorate from the univer-
sity of Gent for his work on network governance in 2019. He served as president of the
International Research Society of Public Management (IRSPM) from 2012 until 2018.
Eva Knies is Professor of Strategic Human Resource Management at Utrecht University
School of Governance in the Netherlands. Her research interests include Human
Resource Management and leadership in the public sector, public service performance,
and employee well-being. Knies is co-editor of the Research Handbook on HRM in the
Public Sector (with Steijn) and the book Managing for Public Service Performance (with
Leisink, Andersen, Brewer, Jacobsen, and Vandenabeele). She is a co-chair of the Study
Group on Public Personnel Policies of the European Group for Public Administration.
Christopher Koliba is the Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professor of Public Administration,
Policy & Governance at the School of Public Administration and Affairs at the University
of Kansas. He is also Professor Emeritus in the Community Development and Applied
Economics Department and Co-Founder of the Socio-Ecological Gaming and Simulation
Lab at the University of Vermont (UVM). He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University
of Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2015. His research interests include comparative governance
network analysis, network performance and accountability, organizational learning and
development, and environmental governance. His current research focuses on develop-
ment of complex adaptive systems models and network analysis of critical infrastructure
networks of watersheds, energy grids, food systems, and transportation planning. He is
lead author of Governance Networks in Public Administration and Public Policy (2019, 2nd
edition, Routledge).
Joop Koppenjan is Professor Emeritus in Public Administration at the Erasmus University
Rotterdam. His research interests include public policy, policy networks, public private
partnerships and public management, with a focus on governance, stakeholder involve-
ment, public values and sustainability. He has (co-)authored various books and book
chapters and numerous articles in peer reviewed journals. Together with Erik Hans Klijn
he published the monograph Governance Networks in the Public Sector (Routledge, 2016).
In 2019 he published the edited volume Smart Hybridity, Potentials and Challenges of New
Governance Arrangements (Eleven, 2019, together with co-editors Philip H. Karré and
Katrien Termeer). Website: https://www​.eur​.nl​/people​/joop​-koppenjan/
George Addo Larbi has recently retired from the World Bank Group, where he held positions
including Practice Manager for Governance and Lead Governance Specialist in Africa,
East and South Asia. He is currently an Honorary Senior Fellow at the International
Development Department, School of Government and Society, University of Birmingham
(where he was a Senior Lecturer, prior to joining the World Bank Group in 2006) and
also provides advisory and consultancy services on public sector management and gov-
ernance issues. He has published several articles, books, and reports on public sector
governance issues in refereed journals, including Public Administration and Development,
International Review of Administrative Sciences, Public Management Review, and Journal of
xvi­ Contributors
International Development. His book publications include: Larbi, G.A. and Y. Bangura
(2006), Public Sector Reforms in Developing Countries: Capacity Challenges to Improve Public
Services (Palgrave Macmillan) and Batley, R. and Larbi, G.A. (2004), The Changing Role of
Government: Reform of Public Services in Developing Countries (Palgrave Macmillan). George
holds a PhD degree in Public Policy/Development Administration from the University of
Birmingham.
Edwin Lau is Head of the Infrastructure and Public Procurement Division in the OECD
Public Governance Directorate. His division provides data, analysis and guidance on
strengthening strategic and value for money outcomes through reinforced infrastructure
planning, coordination and delivery, in particular to deliver on climate and resilience
objectives. He also oversees projects on public procurement and public private partner-
ships. Edwin previously led OECD divisions on budgeting and public expenditure and on
public sector reform, including the OECD statistical publication Government at a Glance,
and the Observatory for Public Sector Innovation. Edwin worked in the US Office of
Management and Budget in the 1990s, and holds a Master's degree from the Harvard
University Kennedy School of Government and a diplôme d'études approfondies from
Sciences Po in Paris.
Veiko Lember is Senior Research Fellow in Public Management and Policy at Ragnar Nurkse
Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia,
and Visiting Professor at Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium. He is also a co-
coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus joint Master’s Programme of Public Sector Innovation
and E-Governance (with KU Leuven, University of Münster and Tallinn University of
Technology). In 2017–2022 he served as a member of the Steering Committee of the
European Group for Public Administration (EGPA). Veiko’s main research interests are
in public sector innovation, digital governance, public-private partnerships, citizen co-
production, public procurement of innovation, technology transfer, and innovation policy
governance. His most recent book with Tiina Randma-Liiv is Engaging Citizens in Policy
Making: e-Participation Practices in Europe (Edward Elgar, 2022).
Elke Loeffler is Senior Lecturer and Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Centre for
Policing Research and Learning at the Open University Business School. She is also
Director of Governance International (an international consulting and research com-
pany with nonprofit status in the UK) where she provides accredited co-production
training programmes. Elke is an Associate of the Institute of Local Government Studies
at the University of Birmingham, a Steering Group Member of the European Group
of Public Administration (EGPA), and a Board member of the International Research
Society for Public Management (IRSPM). Previously she was a staff member of the
Public Management Service (now GOV) of OECD. Elke is an editorial board member
of the International Review of Administrative Sciences, Public Money and Management and
der moderne staat. She graduated in political science and economics in Germany and the
US and received her PhD at the German University of Administrative Sciences, Speyer.
Zhiming Ma is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Guanghua School of Management,
Peking University, China. He obtained his PhD in accounting from The Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, and his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in economics
from Peking University. His research interests centre on debt contracting, auditing, and gov-
ernment accounting. His publications have appeared in Journal of Accounting and Economics,
Journal of Financial Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Financial and
 Contributors  xvii
Quantitative Analysis, Review of Accounting Studies, and Accounting, Organizations and Society.
He also serves on the editorial board of Accounting and Business Research.
Nick Manning retired as Head of Governance and Public Sector Management at the World
Bank in December 2013. He led the development and implementation of the Bank’s
updated approach to public sector management. Nick was previously the World Bank
Manager for Public Sector and Governance for Latin America and the Caribbean. He
has also served as Head of the Public Sector Management and Performance Division at
the OECD and as the World Bank Lead Public Sector Management Specialist for South
Asia. He has held advisory positions on public management for the Commonwealth
Secretariat and for UNDP in Lebanon. Nick began his public sector career in local
government in the UK and before moving to international advisory work was Head of
Strategic Planning for an inner London Borough. He holds various honorary academic,
research and advisory positions and has published extensively on public management
reform and development and on public sector developments within the OECD.
Steve Martin is Professor of Public Policy and Management at Cardiff University and
Director of the Wales for Public Policy (www​.wcpp​.org​.uk). His current research focuses
on evidence use by policy makers. He has written widely on public sector reform and
public service improvement and served as an adviser to the European Commission,
Council of Europe, and numerous UK government departments, public bodies and local
government organisations. He is a former editor of Policy & Politics and currently a mem-
ber of the Editorial Boards of Public Money & Management, Policy & Politics, and Local
Government Studies.
Albert Meijer is Professor of Public Innovation at Utrecht University School of Governance.
His research focuses on transparency, open government data, coproduction and social
media. He is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Information Polity, chair of the Permanent
Study Group on E-government of the European Group for Public Administration and
Director of the Governance Lab Utrecht. He has published frequently in journals such
as Public Management Review, Public Administration Review and Government Information
Quarterly. Recently, he published the book Public Management in an Information Age
(Bloomsbury Publishing, with co-authors Alex Ingrams and Stavros Zouridis).
Sandra Nutley is Professor Emeritus at the School of Management, University of St
Andrews. Her research focuses on understanding and improving research use and public
service performance improvement. She has published widely in both these areas and has
served as an expert adviser for a range of government departments and other public bod-
ies. She was the founding Director of the Research Unit for Research Utilisation (www​
.ruru​.ac​.uk) – a research collaboration that investigates the use of social science research
in public policy and service delivery settings. Sandra’s publications include a trilogy of
books on the use of research evidence: What Works: Evidence-based policy and practice
in public services (Davies, Nutley and Smith, Policy Press 2000); Using Evidence: How
Research can Inform Public Services (Nutley, Walter and Davies, The Policy Press, 2007);
and What Works Now? Evidence-informed policy and practice (Boaz, Davies, Fraser and
Nutley, Policy Press 2019).
Suzanne J. Piotrowski is a Professor of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers
University–Newark and Director of the Transparency and Governance Center (TGC).
She researches freedom of information, transparency, and open government issues
xviii­ Contributors
with a strong focus on connecting with communities of practice. In 2020, she became
a co-principal investigator on a $2.3 million Smart and Connected Cities National
Science Foundation Grant to make public services more equitable and efficient in the
City of Newark, New Jersey. In 2022, MIT Press’ Information Policy Series published
her co-authored project, The Power of Partnership in Open Government? Multistakeholder
Governance Reform and the Open Government Partnership.
Adrian Ritz is Professor of Public Management and Director of the KPM Center for Public
Management at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His main research areas are in the
fields of public management, public leadership, motivation, and human resources man-
agement in the public sector. He has published articles in the most relevant journals
in the field. His co-authored German book Public Management (Springer) is now in its
6th edition. He is also President of the advisory board of the Swiss Paraplegic Research
Corporation and a board member of the Swiss Paraplegic Foundation (SPS).
Alasdair Roberts is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
He is a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration. In 2022, he
received the ASPA Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and
Comparative Public Administration. In 2014 he received Canada's Grace-Pépin Access
to Information Award for his research on the right to information. His most recent book,
Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century, was published by Polity Books in 2023.
Kuno Schedler is Professor for Public Management at the University of St. Gallen in
Switzerland. He is Director of the Institute for Systemic Management and Public
Governance at the University of St. Gallen. His research currently focuses on rationali-
ties in organizations, service model innovation, digital government and smart criminal
justice. He has been involved as an expert in several reform projects within the public
sector, from which he draws practical insights for his scholarly work.
Slobodan Tomic is a Lecturer in Public Management at the School of Business and
Society, University of York, UK. His academic interests include all aspects of pub-
lic administration and public policy, especially those that have to do with regulatory
governance. His previous research has focused on the analysis of integrity institutions
and policies, particularly oversight bodies, which he has investigated both in OECD
and non-OECD contexts, with a particular interest in how they manage institutional
autonomy when politicisation pressures are anticipated. He has worked on several
projects with international organisations, including on civil service and autonomous
agencies reform.
Jacob Torfing is a Full Professor in Politics and Institutions at the Department of Social
Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Denmark, and Professor 2 at the Social
Science Faculty, Nord University, Norway. He is the founder and co-director of the
Roskilde School of Governance. He recently acquired the high Danish doctoral degree of
Doctor Scientiarum Administrationis. His recent interests include public sector reform,
collaborative governance, public innovation and co-creation.
Wouter Van Dooren is Professor of Public Administration in the Research Group on
Politics & Public Governance at the Antwerp Management School. His research inter-
ests include public governance, performance information, accountability and learning,
and productive conflict in public participation.
 Contributors  xix
Sandra van Thiel is Professor of Public Management at the Department of Public
Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses
on executive agencies, public management and research methods. Publications include
Government Agencies (with Koen Verhoest, Geert Bouckaert and Per Laegreid), the
Palgrave Handbook on Public Administration and Public Management in Europe (with
Edoardo Ongaro) and Research Methods in Public Administration and Public Management.
She is a frequent consultant for various governments and public sector organizations, in
the Netherlands and internationally. She is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal
of Public Sector Management.
Lois M. Warner is an Associate Teaching Professor of Public Affairs and Administration
at Rutgers University-Newark, and Director of Institutional Assessment. Prof. Warner
teaches courses in the undergraduate, graduate and executive graduate programs, includ-
ing Ethical Public Service, and Administrative Ethics. She researches the use of multi-
media and open educational resources in public administration education and conducts
workshops on these topics at major international conferences.

Foreword

This book has been written with the aim of giving readers a clear picture of the current state
of play and the most important emerging issues in public management and governance. We
intend that it will help students of public issues to be better informed and help policymakers
and managers who work in public services (whether in public, voluntary or private sectors)
to be more effective.
The book is also written to help readers to understand what it means to become better
citizens and, as such, to help to change the current practice of public management and
governance. In this way, we hope that the ideas in the book will help readers to make a
greater contribution to their neighbourhoods, their local authorities, their regions and the
countries in which they live – and perhaps even to the quality of life of citizens elsewhere
in the world.
In this fourth edition, the importance of government shines out even more clearly than
before, as the world during the past few years has looked to its political leaders and public
service managers for help through a savage economic recession, citizen revolts against gov-
ernments perceived as ineffective and unresponsive, major threats to world security and
the global environment, and a devastating health pandemic. However, the weaknesses of
government in the face of these challenges have also come through strongly. We hope the
book will play a part in helping the next generation of leaders and managers to cope with
such threats and ensure that public management and governance become a byword for suc-
cess and wellbeing, not simply the name of a textbook.
Finally, it is with sadness that we record the death of some previous authors (Chris
Bellamy, Andrew Erridge, Peter Jackson, Christopher Pollitt), who contributed so whole-
heartedly to the success of previous editions. And we welcome our host of new authors who
have taken on the mantle of making the study of public management and governance not
only worthy but exciting.

Structure of the book

The book comprises three main parts:

1 From Public Management to Governance, setting out the role of the public sector, public
management and public governance, and how these have evolved in recent years in
different contexts.
2 Public Management, exploring the main managerial functions which contribute to the
running of public services.


 Foreword  xxi
3 Public Governance, exploring the ways in which organizations in the public domain
work together with their partners, stakeholders, citizens and networks to influence the
outcomes of public policies.
4 … and finally, looking to what the future may hold for public management and
governance.

Logical though we believe this to be, we know from our own reading habits, as well as the
even more inexplicable habits of our colleagues and past students, that many readers will
find their own wholly idiosyncratic pathway through this book. To help make this process
just a little more systematic, we have provided multiple cross-references to other chapters
throughout.

Some thanks
We have had enormous help, as always, from our fellow authors in this book, to whom we
are hugely grateful for their patient and imaginative responses to our demands. However,
there are others who stand behind them to whom we are also greatly indebted – particularly,
the reviewers who fed back how the book works on their courses, and the many students who
have told us how they have used previous editions.
Part I

From public management to

governance

Part I forms an introduction to the key themes of the book and locates the public sector in
its political, social and economic context.
Chapter 1 examines what is “public” about the public sector and about public services. It
distinguishes public management from the wider issues of public governance.
Chapter 2 explores recent changes in the context of public policy, identifies the major
paradigm shifts in public policy making in recent decades and examines the changing role
of politics in public governance.
Chapter 3 examines the size and scope of the public sector. It compares trends in the
size and composition of public expenditure across OECD countries and looks at some of the
forces that shape these trends. It then considers the implications of these trends for public
sector management.
Chapter 4 examines the objectives and results of that generation of public sector reforms
which has occurred since the 1980s, the different reform trajectories across OECD countries,
and some of the risks and unintended consequences of public sector reform.
Chapter 5 looks beyond OECD countries and examines public management and govern-
ance developments in other parts of the world.
Chapter 6 discusses one of the major methodological innovations of recent years, explor-
ing behavioural approaches to public management and governance.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003282839-1
1 Understanding public
management and governance
Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler

Why study public management and governance?

Welcome to this fourth edition of Public Management and Governance. We aim to provide
you with up-to-date state-of-the-art knowledge on what the public sector is doing, why it is
doing it and how it might do it better. We hope also to challenge you to think for yourself
how your society should be governed – one of the questions that has fascinated people for
thousands of years – and how your governors should be managed – a question that is much
more recent. Along the way we hope that you will have fun as well. Above all, we will be
introducing you to the ideas of some of the leading analysts of the public sector and public
services around the world, so that you can weigh up their arguments and develop your own.
So what’s in store? A book full of analysis of worthy but boring public sector activities?
Actually, issues of public management and public governance are often very interesting (see
Box 1.1). That’s why they attract some highly talented and dedicated people, who might
otherwise earn a great deal more money in other jobs. However, we also want to warn read-
ers of this book that it can no longer be taken for granted that the activities of public man-
agement and governance are always ‘worthy’ – sometimes they are conducted by “sharks”
rather than by “suits” (see Box 1.2).
Consequently, nowadays public managers have to earn our respect and gratitude, rather
than simply assume it. And the players in the public policy arena have to earn the trust of
those for whom they claim to be working, rather than claiming legitimacy simply on the
grounds that they were elected or that they are part of a prestigious profession. So this fourth
edition of Public Management and Governance suggests some tough questions for you to ask
to see if that trust has indeed been earned – and gives you some ammunition for the debate.

Learning objectives
The key learning objectives in this chapter are:
• To be aware of the different meanings of “public”
• To understand the main differences between public management and public
governance
• To understand the motives for studying public management and public governance

DOI: 10.4324/9781003282839-2
4­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler

Box 1.1 Public management and governance issues are interesting…

Public policy on global warming
The more I think about it, the more fatalistic I become … I suspect the newspapers
echo public opinion on this subject. Just about all national papers now accept global
warming, but they still object to anything required to deal with it. Low-energy light
bulbs will cause old folk to fall down stairs. Higher petrol duties or road charges will
be unfair to the poor (although most poor people don’t own cars). Restrictions on
cheap air travel breach the time-honoured British right to celebrate summer by vom-
iting over waiters in Faliraki. Wind turbines are ugly. And so on. Does anyone really
think that, barring technological miracles, we have the slightest chance of averting
calamity?
Source: Peter Wilby, Eat canapé, avoid catastrophe, New Statesman, 14 September
2009, p. 10.

Box 1.2 …But not necessarily “worthy”

The Great Chicago Sell-Off
When Chicago needed some extra income to support its public services in 2008 and
sold 36,000 parking spaces for 75 years to an investment conglomerate (including a
megabank, an international venture capital firm and a Middle Eastern investment
authority) they did more than just outsource a current public service. Parking meter
prices immediately went through the roof (quadrupling or more in the first year), and
already by 2019 the investors, who paid the city $1.15b, had made a profit of $500m
and looked forward to 64 more profitable years. Estimates suggested the city was under-
paid by at least a factor of ten times. However, even worse, the city has now lost
control over what it can do with and on its streets. If a meter is removed or cannot be
used (e.g. due to road construction or repair, a fair, a street parade, etc.), the city has
to pay the lost income. For 75 years, any plans to manage or change parking spaces
in Chicago, e.g. by allowing bars, cafes and restaurants to replace parking spaces by
outdoor tables, have effectively been ruled infeasible. And the city has had to fork out
$20m annually due to street closures.
Source: Mike Kampf-Lassin (2022), “The Great Chicago Sell-Off”, Jacobin, 45:
147–148.
 Understanding public management and governance 5
What do we mean by “public”?

Box 1.3 The public domain

The essential task of the public domain can be interpreted as enabling authoritative
public choice about collective activity and purpose. In short, it is about clarifying, con-
stituting and achieving a public purpose. It has the ultimate responsibility for constitut-
ing a society as a political community which has the capacity to make public choices.
Producing a “public” which is able to enter into dialogue and decide about the needs
of the community … is the uniquely demanding challenge facing the public domain.
Source: Ranson and Stewart (1994, pp. 59–60).

Before we go further, we should explore what we mean by “public”. We start with a clear
statement from Ranson and Stewart (Box 1.3) as to what constitutes the public domain.
(They wrote in the context of local government, but their analysis applies quite generally.)
This short passage explains how the public domain is the arena in which public choice is
exercised in order to achieve a collective purpose. This is the arena which this book explores.
Ranson and Stewart also introduce another meaning of the word “public” – the group (or
groups) of people who inhabit the public domain. They clearly identify the political concept
of “a public which is able to enter into dialogue and decide about the needs of the commu-
nity”, which we might contrast with the marketing concept of different “publics”, each of
whom expects to be treated differently by public services and public managers.
Another common usage of “public” is to distinguish between the “public sector” and the
“private sector”, which essentially revolves around differences of ownership (collective own-
ership, in the name of all citizens, versus individual ownership) and motive (social purpose
versus profit). This meaning is particularly relevant when public managers claim that the
public sector is different from the private sector and that therefore private sector manage-
ment methods would not work in their agency – see Allison (1994) on the concept that
public and private management are alike in all unimportant respects! However, there are
other, wider meanings of “public”. For example, “public services” are sometimes delivered by
private or third sector contractors, rather than public agencies. Here, the concept of “public”
generally means that the providers have to observe and satisfy some form of “public service
obligation”. Again, “public issues” are those which cannot simply be left to the decision-
making of private individuals – they typically necessitate mobilising the resources of public
and voluntary sector organisations or regulating the behaviour of private firms or individuals
or groups in civil society.
We shall examine each of these dimensions of “public” in this book. Consequently, we
shall take the word “public” to be part of the problematic, i.e. the set of concepts to be
explored in this text, rather than defining it unambiguously here at the outset.
6­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler
Public management and governance: Some key issues
So, what is public management? And what is public governance? While most people will
immediately assume they have a general grasp of what public management entails, fewer will
have a feel for what is meant by public governance. Moreover, we want to argue that both
concepts actually cover quite a complex set of ideas.
We shall take public management to be a set of approaches and tools to optimise the use of
resources in and by public service organisations in order to coordinate organisational efforts,
so that organisational objectives can be accomplished and public needs are satisfied (adapted
from Noordegraaf 2015, p. 20). It therefore covers the set of activities undertaken by manag-
ers in two very different contexts:

• in public sector organisations

• in public service organisations, whether in public, voluntary or private sectors

This raises a number of issues that we will consider later:

• What distinguishes “public management” from “public administration”?

• What is “public” about public services?
• Are “public services” always in the “public sector”?
• Is public management only about public services?

We take public governance to mean “how an organisation works with its partners, stake-
holders and networks to influence the outcomes of public policies”. (You will find other
approaches to defining “governance” in Chapter 15.) The concept of public governance raises
a different set of questions, such as:

• Who has the right to make and influence decisions in the public domain?
• What principles should be followed in making decisions in the public domain?
• How can we ensure that collective activities in the public domain result in improved
welfare for those stakeholders to whom we accord the highest priority?

This chapter addresses these issues and sets the stage for the rest of the book.

Is “public management” different from public administration?

In the middle of the twentieth century, the study of the work of civil servants and other pub-
lic officials (including their interface with politicians who passed legislation and set public
policy) was usually labelled “public administration”. As such, there is no doubt that “public
administration” conjured up an image of bureaucracy, life-long secure employment, ‘mud-
dling through’ and lack of enterprise – dark suits, grey faces and dull day jobs.
From the 1980s onwards, however, a new phrase began to be heard and even achieved
dominance in some circles – “public management”. This was interpreted to mean differ-
ent things by different authors, but it almost always was characterised by a different set
of symbols from those associated with public administration – it was thought to be about
budget management not just budget holding (see Chapter 9), a contract culture (including
 Understanding public management and governance 7
contracts with private sector providers of services (see Chapter 8) and employment con-
tracts for staff, which were for fixed periods and might well not be renewed (see Chapter
10), entrepreneurship and risk taking and accountability for performance (see Chapter 12).
These differences can be (and often were) exaggerated. However, it appears that the
expectations of many stakeholders in the public domain did alter – they began to expect
behaviour more in keeping with the image of the public manager and less with that of the
public administrator.

What is “public” about public services?

In everyday discussion, we often refer to “public services” as though they were “what the
public sector does”. However, a moment’s reflection shows that this tidy approach doesn’t
make much sense any longer, at least in most countries (see Chapters 4 and 5).
After all, we have for a long time become used to seeing private firms mending holes in
our roads and repairing the council’s housing stock. More recently it has become common-
place in many areas to see private firms collecting our bins and running our leisure centres.
Moreover, whatever country we live in, there are very few services that are never run by the
private sector – in the UK it has long been possible to find some places that have private
provision of hospitals, schools, child protection, home helps for the elderly and disabled,
housing benefit payments and a local council’s Director of Finance. (Indeed, in the UK we
even had, for a while, provision of the post of Director-General of the BBC by a private
company.)
Furthermore, there are some things that are done by the public sector that might cause
raised eyebrows if described as “public services” – such as running a telephone company (as
the city of Hull did for many decades) or a city centre restaurant (as Coventry did up to the
1980s).
So what is public about public services? There is no single answer to this prize question
– but neither is there a lack of contenders to win the prize (see Box 1.4). The answer you
come up with is very likely to relate to the discipline in which you were trained and to your
ideological position.
For welfare economists, the answer is quite subtle but nevertheless quite precise – public
services are those which merit public intervention because of market failure (see Chapter 3).
In other words, any good or service that would result in suboptimal social welfare if it were
provided in a free market should be regulated in some way by the public sector and in this
way qualifies as a “public service”.
This definition of “public services” is attractively rigorous but unfortunately very wide-
ranging. Almost all services, under this definition, exhibit some degree of “publicness”,
since the provision of most goods and services in the real world is subject to market failure
for one or more of the common reasons – chronic disequilibrium, imperfect competition,
asymmetric information in supply or in consumption, externalities, discrimination based on
criteria other than cost or technical ability to satisfy user requirements, uncertainty, non-
rivalry in consumption, non-excludability in supply or users’ ignorance of their own best
interest. Consequently, this yields a definition of “public services” that is only occasionally
useful – for example, it suggests that all theatres and cinemas are worthy of public interven-
tion (since they are at least partly non-rival in consumption), whereas anyone who has sat
through a performance of most Broadway or West End musicals knows that there are real
limits to the justifiable level of public subsidy to many theatrical events.
8­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler

Box 1.4 Characteristics of public services

• focus on democratic accountability, fairness and public interest
• restricted by regulation/legal frameworks
• need to respond to socio-political demands, political pressure and public
discourse
• exposure to (expert and non-expert!) public/political/media scrutiny
• need for rationing, not maximising ‘sales’
• monopolistic, not responding to customers
• ‘non-excludable’ (i.e. automatically available to everyone)
• successes and failures have ‘externalities’ (knock-on benefits or costs)
• performance not defined by simple bottom line or shareholder value
• multiple, complex, long-term outcomes, affected by external factors

An alternative approach to defining the scope of “public services” comes from politics. It
suggests that “public services” are those which are so important for the re-election of politi-
cians or, more realistically, of political parties, that they are given a public subsidy. Under
this perspective, where a service is so important in political decision-making that politicians
are prepared to spend some of their budget on it, then its “publicness” must be respected.
However, the attractive simplicity of this stance has again been bought at the expense of
mind-numbing expansion of the definition of what is potentially a “public service”. There
are very few goods or services that are never important electorally. However invisible is the
widget in the sprocket in the camshaft in the car that is bought by international customers
who have no interest in the producer or its location, when it is proposed that a local widget
factory should be closed and the widgets should be produced elsewhere (especially if it is
“abroad”), so that local politicians are goaded into proposing public subsidies to keep the
production going in its present location, then that widget becomes a “public good” under
this definition.
A third approach, which similarly sounds like common sense, focuses on all those goods
where providers are placed under a “public service obligation” when they are given the right
to supply the service. This approach defines as a public service all those services in which
Parliament has decreed a need for regulation. However, this approach probably results in a
definition of “public service” that is too narrow. For example, there is a legal public service
obligation imposed on the providers of all electricity, gas and water utilities and on broad-
casters but not on the provision of leisure centres – yet the latter services may form a major
part of the quality of life of certain groups, particularly young people and families with young
children, and as such may be widely supported by politicians as important services to be
provided in the public sector or through public subsidy.

What is public governance?

Trying to define public governance seems to open Pandora’s box. Although there is a gen-
eral acknowledgement that public governance is different from public management, the
academic literature on governance (which each year increases exponentially) offers a myriad
of definitions. Indeed, even the authors of different chapters in this volume offer different
ideas of what is “public governance”.
 Understanding public management and governance 9
The definition of governance is not, in itself, of critical importance, particularly because
many practitioners are widely familiar with governance in practice, although they may find
it difficult to recognise it in the forms discussed by academics (see Chapter 15). Nevertheless,
we have given a definition above, because we believe it helps to focus discussion.
Whereas in public management a lot of attention is usually paid to the measurement of
results (both individual and organisational) in terms of outputs, public governance pays a
lot of attention to how different organisations interact in order to achieve a higher level
of desired results – the quality-of-life outcomes for citizens and stakeholders. Moreover, in
public governance, the ways in which decisions are reached – the processes by which differ-
ent stakeholders interact – are also seen to have major importance in themselves, whatever
the outputs or outcomes achieved. In other words, the current public governance debate
places a new emphasis on the old truths that “what matters is not what we do, but how peo-
ple feel about what we do” and that “processes matter” or, put differently, “the ends do not
justify the means”. These contrasting emphases – on ends AND means - make “good public
governance” exceptionally difficult but may well represent non-negotiable demands by the
public in modern society.
The difference between a managerial and a governance approach is illustrated in Case
Example 1.1.

Case Example 1.1 Differences between managerial and governance

approaches
Whereas public-management-oriented change agents tend to focus their efforts on
improving street cleaning and refuse collection services, a local governance approach
emphasises the role of citizens in respecting the communal desire that no-one should
throw litter or allow dog-fouling on the streets in the first place and that materials
should be recycled, not simply thrown away. This involves education (not only in the
schools, since “litter-bugs” come in all sizes and ages), advertising campaigns, encour-
agement of people to show their disgust when dirty behaviour occurs and the provision
of proper waste facilities (including those for dog waste) which will help to prevent
litter and dog-fouling problems occurring in the first place.

Box 1.5 Corporate governance and sustainability

Governance involves ensuring that Boards are focused on the long-term sustainability
of their business. They should be confident that their business models will deliver this
– with appropriate risk mitigations as necessary – and that performance indicators and
incentives reinforce the desired behaviours.
Source: CIMA (2010, p. 1).

Whereas the governance discussion in the public sector is relatively recent (see Chapter 4),
there has been a debate in the private sector for some time on one aspect of governance –
corporate governance, which refers to issues of control and decision-making powers within
organisations (not just private companies) – see Box 1.5.
10­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler
Subsequently, international organisations have issued guidelines as to how to improve
corporate governance (OECD Watch 2017). Although many reforms were implemented
in OECD countries, the fallout around the collapse of Enron in the United States in 2001
showed that corporate governance is not only a matter of drafting a stricter legal framework
but also of respecting societal values – in the words of Solomon (2007, p. 5), “corporate
governance checks and balances serve only to detect, not cure, unethical activity”.
Another longstanding governance debate surrounds the issue of global governance from
the field of international relations, focusing on how to cope with problems that transcend
the borders of nation states (such as climate change migration, sex tourism and trafficking or
the exploitation of child workers), given the lack of a world government. Some commenta-
tors have remained optimistic about the possibilities – e.g. senior UN staff have argued that
globalisation needs to be “managed” and have proposed to “govern” globalisation and “make
it work for the poor” or simply to achieve “globalisation for all”.
However, pessimists suggest that globalisation means that governments everywhere have
become powerless and that managing globalisation is an oxymoron, since globalisation is
shaped by markets in a “race to the bottom”, not by governments. Some have suggested that
this powerlessness is reinforced by the coming of the Internet age – that there is no govern-
ance against the “electronic herd” (Friedmann, 2000).
Moreover, the events following 9/11, 2001, in New York City have cast a fur-
ther, more troubled, light on the idea that global activities (such as terrorism) can be
“fought” through collective international action. A recent international research project
(Papaconstantinou and Pisani-Ferry, 2022, p. 325) has concluded that “Global interde-
pendence is undergoing a fundamental transformation. What was once regarded as a uni-
fied system is fast morphing into a multi-polar regime characterised by the coexistence of
alternative policy preferences”.
Recently, Irwin (2020) has argued that the COVID-19 pandemic has added further
momentum to the deglobalisation trend, which is evident in declines in world trade, export
bans on “critical” goods such as medical equipment, personal protective equipment and
pharmaceuticals and protectionism to avoid “trade dependence”, and suggests that the
absence of a coordinated and cooperative international response could accelerate destruc-
tive “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies not seen since the 1930s.
Whereas governance is a positivistic concept, analysing “what is”, good governance is
obviously a normative concept, analysing “what ought to be”. Even though particular
international organisations like the United Nations and the Council of Europe have
excelled in providing rather abstract definitions of the characteristics of “good govern-
ance”, we believe that this concept is highly context-dependent. This means that instead
of using a simple operational blueprint or definition, the meaning of “good governance”
must be negotiated and agreed upon by the various stakeholders in a geographical area or
in a policy network.
“Good governance” raises issues such as:

• stakeholder engagement
• the equalities agenda (gender, ethnic groups, age, religion, etc.)
• due process and fair treatment
• ethical and honest behaviour
• transparency
• accountability
• sustainability
 Understanding public management and governance 11
Importantly, the implementation of all of the governance principles agreed upon between
stakeholders has to be evaluated – ideally, by those same stakeholders.
However, there is as yet no theoretical reason to suppose that all of the principles which
we would wish to espouse under the label “good governance” are actually achievable simul-
taneously. This “good governance impossibility theorem” (mirroring the “general equilib-
rium impossibility theory”, which shows that it is impossible for markets to deliver all of the
welfare characteristics which economists have traditionally held dear) is troubling – if valid,
it means that politicians need to trade off some principles of good governance against others
to which they give a lower priority. This is not a debate that has yet surfaced explicitly in
many countries – and it is one that we must suspect politicians will be keen to avoid.
The final section of the book, from Chapter 15 onwards, goes into these public govern-
ance issues in greater depth.

What is the role of public management within public governance?

The concepts of public management and public governance are not mutually incompatible.
Nevertheless, not all practices of public management are part of public governance, and not
all aspects of public governance are part of public management.
For example, some practices of public management revolve around the best way to pro-
vide computer support and training to staff of a public agency. There are few public govern-
ance dimensions to this decision, which is a common concern for most organisations in all
sectors. On the other side, there are issues of co-production of public service between family
members and social care staff paid by the local authority, who come together to look after
the welfare of a young person with special educational needs and disabilities – the division
of roles within the family in liaising with and helping shape decisions by the formal care
system is a public governance issue but need not (and usually will not) involve intervention
from any public manager.
Consequently, we suggest in this book that the realms of public management and public
governance are separate but interconnected. One is not a precursor to the other, nor supe-
rior to the other – they do and should co-exist and should work together, through appropri-
ate mechanisms, in order to raise the quality of life of people in the polity.
Of course, not all aspects of public management and public governance can co-exist.
When taken to extremes, or interpreted from very contrasting standpoints, contradictions
between public management and public governance can indeed be detected. For example,
Rod Rhodes (1997, p. 55), writing from a governance perspective, characterises the “New
Public Management” (NPM) (one branch of public management) as having four weak-
nesses: Its intra-organisational focus, its obsession with objectives, its focus on results and
the contradiction between competition and “steering” (which often requires collaboration)
at its heart. While each of these elements of NPM, if treated in a suitably wide framework,
can be reconciled with a governance perspective, an extreme NPM proponent who insists
that her/his view of the world is the only way to understand reform of the public sector is
bound to antagonise a proponent of the governance perspective (and vice versa).

So why should you study public management and governance?

Finally, we want to make a claim for this book that we hope will encourage you to read
it with more enthusiasm – and to read more of it than you otherwise might. We want to
claim that the study of public management and governance will not only make you a more
12­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler
informed student and a more effective manager (whatever sector you work in), but that it
will also make you a more engaged citizen. You should be able to make a greater contribu-
tion to the neighbourhood, the local authority, the region and the country in which you
live. You may even be able to make a contribution to the quality of life of many citizens
elsewhere in the world. And if you decide you do NOT want to know more about public
management and governance – just remember that you will be making it more difficult for
all those people who will therefore have to work harder to substitute for the contribution
you might have made.
So our greatest hope is that, however you use this book, it will help you to find out more
about and care more about what it means to be an active citizen, influencing the decisions
made in the public domain.

Structure of the book

The book has four main parts:

• an introductory part, setting out the role of the public sector, public management and
public governance and how these have evolved in recent years in different contexts
• a second part on public management for public service organisations, exploring the main
managerial functions that contribute to running public services
• a section on governance as an emerging theme in the public domain
• and a final part which explores what the future might hold for public management and
governance

Questions for review and discussion

1 How would you define public services? Show how this question would be answered by
authors from different schools of thought, and try to come up with your own definition.
2 In many cities across the world, food poverty has become a serious problem. Think of
a public management and a public governance solution to this problem. Why are they
different?

Reader exercises
1 How do you think the image of the public sector has changed in the last five years?
Have you personally experienced significant changes to public services, especially
since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic? If yes, have these changes shown that the
public sector is able to deal effectively with problem issues? If not, why do you think
this was so?
2 Does ownership matter – i.e. does the efficiency or effectiveness of a service depend on
whether it is in the public or private sector? Why? How would you collect evidence to
support your view – and to try to refute it?
3 Find someone in your organisation who read the first, second or third edition of this
book (from 2003, 2009 and 2015, respectively). Explore with them how its key themes
have changed since they read it – e.g. by comparing chapter headings or summaries in
particular chapters.
 Understanding public management and governance 13
Class exercises
1 In groups, identify the main differences between “public management” and “private
management” and between “public governance” and “corporate governance”. Thinking
about the news over the past month, identify instances where these concepts might
help in deciding who has been responsible for things that have been going wrong in
your area or your country. (Now try answering the question in terms of things that
have been going right in your area or your country. If you find this difficult, what light
does this throw on how the media shape debates on public management and public
governance?)
2 In groups, identify some public services in your area that are provided by private sector
firms. Each group should identify ways in which these services are less “public” than
those that are provided by the public sector. Then compare your answers in a plenary
session.

Further reading
Tony Bovaird (2005), ‘Public governance: Balancing stakeholder power in a network society’.
International Review of Administrative Sciences, 71(2): 217–228.
Edoardo Ongaro and Sandra van Thiel (eds.) (2017), The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration
and Management in Europe. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, in Particular Parts I and II.
Kuno Schedler (ed.) (2022), Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Management. Cheltenham and Massachusetts:
Edward Elgar, in Particular, Part I.

References
Graham Allison (1994), ‘Public and private management: Are they fundamentally alike in all
unimportant respects?’ In F.S. Lane (Ed.), Current Issues in Public Administration (5th ed.). New
York: St Martin’s Press, pp. 14–29.
CIMA (2010), Corporate governance: developments in the UK. London: Chartered Institute of
Management Accountants.
Thomas Friedmann (2000), The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalisation. London:
HarperCollins.
Douglas A. Irwin (2020), The Pandemic Adds Momentum to the Deglobalization. Trend. (Available at:
https://www​.piie​.com​/blogs​/realtime​-economics​/pandemic​-adds​-momentum​-deglobalization​-trend).
Mirko Noordegraaf (2015), Public Management: Performance, Professionalism and Politics, Palgrave.
London and New York: Macmillan.
OECD Watch (2017), Calling for Corporate Accountability: A Guide to the 2011 OECD Guidelines for
Mulitinational Enterprises. Amsterdam: OECD Watch.
George Papaconstantinou and Jean Pisani-Ferry (2022), ‘Main take-aways’. In George Papaconstantinou
and Jean Pisani-Ferry (Eds.), New World, New Rules? Final Report on the Transformation of Global
Governance Project 2018–2021. Florence: European University Institute, pp. 325–340.
Stuart Ranson and John Stewart (1994), Management for the Public Domain: Enabling the Learning
Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Rod Rhodes (1997), Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and
Accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press.
2 The changing context of public policy
Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler

Introduction
Public expenditure in most parts of the world increased rapidly after 1945, as the “welfare
state” in its various forms became widespread. However, by the early 1980s, budget deficits
provided a major motive for public sector reforms in many parts of the world – reforms that
covered both the content of public policy and the way in which public policy was made.
In the following 25 years, many governments, at least in the OECD countries, achieved
more favourable budget positions (see Chapter 3). However, from 2008, the most severe
economic recession in the world economy since the 1930s ushered in a period of financial
austerity in public sectors which has persisted in many countries to the time of writing
(mid-2023).
Meanwhile, other challenges have emerged since the 1980s to drive reforms in public
policy. These new pressures on governments consist of a mixture of external factors (such
as the COVID-19 pandemic, global climate change, the ageing society, the information
society and the “tabloid society”) and internal factors (including the consequences, both
planned and unplanned, arising from the “first generation” of public sector reforms, as out-
lined in Chapter 4). These new pressures have emphasised the quality of life implications
of public policies and the governance aspects of public sector organisations. They have
typically pushed the public sector in a different direction to the managerial reforms of the
1980s and 1990s. In particular, they have re-emphasised the role of politicians in making
tough policy decisions (e.g. on lockdown during COVID), the role of populist politicians in
spreading “fake news” and increasing social divisiveness and the importance of an engaged
civic society for effective public policies.

Learning objectives
The key learning objectives in this chapter are:
• To identify recent changes in the context of public policy
• To identify the major paradigm shifts in public policy-making in recent decades
• To identify the changing role of politics in public policy

DOI: 10.4324/9781003282839-3
 The changing context of public policy 15
Recent changes in the context of public policy
Most policies have spending implications. If money becomes scarce, policy-makers have less
space to manoeuvre. However, financial crises also have an upside – they put pressure on
public organisations to become more efficient. In particular, the fiscal crises in most OECD
countries in the 1980s (lasting in some until the 1990s) were a key trigger for public sector
reforms (see Chapter 4). As these crises receded in many OECD countries before and after
the millennium, the financial imperative for public sector reforms remained, but in weaker
form, only to reappear in savage form after the global financial crash of 2008.
As well as economic and financial factors, other pressures on governments have remained
important, consisting of a mixture of external factors and internal factors. We can map
the external factors against the so-called ‘PESTEL’ headings – political, economic/finan-
cial, social, technological, environmental and legal/legislative (see Box 2.1). Many of these
external factors have operated for decades, while others have become significantly more
important recently, particularly the global health pandemic. The first factor to make a major
impact was the global environmental crisis, particularly since the Rio Summit in 1992 (in
spite of the growth of “climate change denial” in many governments in the last decades,
sometimes driven by desperate attempts to cope with the short-term effects of financial aus-
terity, while shutting their eyes to the long-term potential disasters facing them). The “costs
of an ageing society”, including the increase in pension costs, have also become a major
public policy issue around the world, reinforcing the concern with public sector spending
deficits. However, increasingly interest has grown in many countries in the quality of health
(not just health care), the quality of life of children, particularly the prevalence of child
poverty (not just the quality of public services for children), and the quality of life of the
elderly (not just the quality of their social care).

Box 2.1 External factors driving public policy reforms

Political
• new political and social movements in many countries – and internationally –
which contest the neo-liberal world view, especially in relation to world trade,
the global environment, gender and racial discrimination and attitudes to civil
liberties
• rise of populist leaders, advocating radical nationalist and anti-establishment
agendas
• loss of popular legitimacy by some long-established public leadership elites, such
as political party leaders, local politicians, etc.
• changing expectations, fuelled by globalisation (particularly through tourism and
the mass media), about the quality of services that governments should be able to
deliver, given what is currently available in other countries
• changing expectations that there will be widespread and intensive engagement
with all relevant stakeholders, but particularly citizens, during policy-making and
policy implementation processes
16­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler

• changing expectations about the extent to which public services should be “per-
sonalised” to the needs of individual citizens
• increased insistence by key stakeholders (and particularly the media) that new
levels of public accountability are necessary, with associated transparency of deci-
sion-making and openness of information systems

Economic/financial
• decreasing proportions of the population within the “economically active” cate-
gory as conventionally defined, with knock-on effects on household income levels
and government tax revenues
• economic recession from 2008 in most OECD countries, and many other parts of
the world, generally producing falling tax revenues, increasing welfare payments
and rising budget deficits for governments, followed since 2020 by COVID-19
lockdown/slowdown and, since February 2022, the energy and cost-of-living cri-
ses, sparked partly by the Russian invasion of Ukraine
• increasing (or continuing) resistance by citizens to paying higher rates of tax
• weakening roles of trade unions as labour markets become more flexible (although
their resistance to cost of living crises may reverse this)

Social
• traditional institutions such as the family and social class have changed their
forms and their meanings in significant ways, so that old assumptions about family
behaviour and class attitudes can no longer be taken for granted in policy-making
• traditional sources of social authority and control – police, clergy, teachers etc. –
are no longer as respected or influential as formerly
• changing expectations about the core values in society – just as the 1980s saw
traditional values such as public duty and individual responsibility being replaced
by values of individual self-realisation and rights, so in the 1990s there was a slow
return to the understanding that caring and compassion are vital characteristics
of a “good society” and that “social capital” is vital to a successful public sector.
In the current era of fiscal austerity there is some evidence of growing selfishness,
e.g. hostility to welfare benefit recipients, asylum seekers, and economic migrants
• the ageing society, which means that much higher proportions of the population
are in high need of health and social care
• changing perceptions about the minimum quality of life for certain vulnerable
groups that is acceptable in a well-ordered society – especially in relation to child
poverty, minimum wages for the low paid and the quality of life of elderly people
(especially those living alone)
• a revolt against conceptions of “difference”, whether of gender, race, physi-
cal or mental (dis)abilities, as “given” rather than socially constructed, so that
disadvantaged groups with increased expectations are seeking new political
settlements
• changing perceptions about which behaviours towards vulnerable people are
socially acceptable in a well-ordered society – particularly in relation to child
abuse, child poverty, domestic violence and levels of anti-social behaviour
 The changing context of public policy 17

• the growing realisation that public services not only alter the material condi-
tions experienced by users and other citizens but also affect the emotional lives of
users, citizens and staff, affecting their ability to form fulfilling social relationships
within a more cohesive society
• the growing desire by many citizens to realign the balance between paid work,
domestic work and leisure time, particularly to tackle some of the gendered ine-
qualities embedded within the current (im)balance of these activities
• the new level of scrutiny that the “tabloid society” provides to the decisions made
by politicians and by public officials (and also scrutiny of their private lives), often
concentrating more on the “people story” side of these decisions rather than the
logic of the arguments

Technological
• technological changes, particularly in ICT, which have meant that public poli-
cies can now take advantage of major innovations in ways of delivering services
(e.g. through artificial intelligence) and also that the policy-making process itself
can be much more interactive than before
• the information society, in which a much higher proportion of the population can
make use of new ICT technologies
• increased concern about the efficacy and reliability of “hi-tech” solutions
• renewed interest in “alternative health care” and in “alternative technologies”
• increased risks of hacking and cyber-crime and concern about privacy, data secu-
rity, growth in the “surveillance society” and misuse of ‘big data’
• Misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) and ‘decision-making by algorithm’

Environmental
• increasing concerns with global warming and the impact of climate change, e.g.
through flooding, hurricanes, “deep freezes”
• willingness to take some serious steps to reduce the usage of non-renewable energy
sources and to recycle waste materials, e.g. through a “Green New Deal”
• increasing pressure for governments (and increasingly private firms and third sec-
tor organisations, too) to demonstrate the environmental impact of all new legis-
lation, policies and major projects

Legal /legislative
• increasing influence of supra-national bodies – e.g. UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO,
EU – in driving legislative or policy change at national level
• growing public discontent in some countries about influence of supra-national
or foreign governments on domestic policy (e.g. concern in developing countries
with IMF-imposed reforms and in Greece about EU-imposed fiscal austerity and
in the UK about “EU-imposed laws”)
• increasing legal challenge in the courts to decisions made by government, by citi-
zens, by businesses and by other levels of government
18­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler
Many of these external factors have tended to push most governments in rather similar
directions – e.g. the concern with climate change means most governments have had to pre-
pare “net zero by 20XX” plans, the longstanding slowdown in economic growth has gener-
ated austerity programmes, child poverty has driven many governments towards “workfare”
programmes (encouraging parents to accept work, even if low-paid, either through incen-
tives such as tax breaks or sanctions such as threatening withdrawal of benefits), the ageing
society means that the pensions policies of most OECD countries are now under threat, the
information society means that e-government is a major theme everywhere, and the “tabloid
society” has driven governments in most countries to take public relations (now generally
known as “spin”) much more seriously than (even) before.
However, the internal factors that are driving changes in public policy tend to be more
context-specific. For example, in many countries governments are contracting out a high
proportion of public services and also looking to the private sector for advice and con-
sultancy on many policy-relevant issues. This is sometimes because of the superior access
to capital finance enjoyed by the private sector, and sometimes because of the perception
that the private sector has greater expertise in certain functions. This has had a number of
important policy implications: for example, a new generation of public sector employees no
longer expects to enjoy a “job for life”, which increases the flexibility of policy-making (but
probably also means higher salaries have to be paid and, where greater mobility occurs, may
lead to a loss of “institutional memory”).
Moreover, in some countries where governments have gone far down the road of con-
tracting out public services to the private sector (see Chapter 8), there have emerged new
and serious concerns about fraud and corruption in privately run public services (see Chapter
27). In other countries such as Germany the reverse trend can be observed: Many local
authorities have reduced the outsourcing of public services. Here, the inflexible accounting
system in the public sector had been a major reason for contracting out public services to pri-
vate sector companies. However, this often meant that the local council lost influence over
how public services were provided, budgets were less transparent and “creative account-
ing” became more common. Also, most German local authorities by 2009 had introduced
resource accounting, which reduces the emphasis on balancing current year cash budgets, so
that the benefit-cost ratio of outsourcing appeared less attractive.
Again, the concerns about fragmented and disjointed public policies and governmental
structures (often the consequence of “managing at arm’s length” or “agencification” – see
Chapter 17) have encouraged governments to find more mechanisms for coordination and
integration, but in different ways in different countries. While it is widely agreed that today’s
“wicked” problems can no longer be solved by a single policy or by a single actor, govern-
mental responses have differed significantly, from the emphasis on “joined up government”
in the UK and “whole of government” approaches in Australia, to the “seamless services”
agenda in the USA and the “one stop shop” initiatives for citizens and investors now seen
in many countries.

Public policy at a time of austerity

Since the onset of widespread economic recession in 2008, and subsequent fiscal austerity,
two economic issues have appeared to have exercised particularly strong influence over pub-
lic opinion and public policy – government spending deficits and the national debt (or, more
precisely, growth in or the rate of decline in the national debt).
 The changing context of public policy 19
The arguments in this debate, though often crude and ill-informed, have often seemed
to revolve around some widely shared assumptions. Indeed, a casual observer might assume
that some of the old and long-since discredited “golden rules” of economic policy (“maintain
a balanced budget”, “keep your currency linked to gold”) had been replaced by new golden
rules. Yet this is not the case. Let us consider some of the common assumptions behind this
policy debate and notice how ill-founded they are.
New golden rule – proposal no. 1: Don’t run a budget deficit – and, if you have a deficit, you
must get it down. Sounds reasonable? Yet the USA Federal Reserve spent more than $4 tril-
lion in its three rounds of bond buying from 2008 to 2014 (known as “quantitative easing” or
QE), contributing a large element of the USA government deficit, and as a result almost cer-
tainly prevented a more dire economic situation. Indeed, the growth in US net private worth
has been greater than this, halting a precipitate decline occasioned by the housing market
collapse of 2007 and the stock market collapse of 2008 (see http://online​.wsj​.com​/articles​/
SB1​0001​4240​5270​2303​8242​0457​9423​1833​97213204). Moreover, subsequently economic
growth was significantly faster in the US than in the Eurozone, which insisted on tight aus-
terity measures and budget deficit reduction plans in all of its members. Was this policy ill-
advised? Admittedly, QE does have some complicated consequences (see https://www​.bbc​
.co​.uk​/news​/business​-15198789) – it makes subsequent government borrowing more expen-
sive, makes pension schemes more expensive and raises the value of shares and property
relative to cash savings, which redistributes wealth towards more wealthy people. We have
seen further rounds of major QE since the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, which appear, once again, to have staved off severe economic downtowns in most
countries – but the final balance of these interventions has still to be seen.
New golden rule – proposal no. 2: Don’t allow national debt to rise above a certain level
– although, confusingly, the level specified tends to vary between rule proposers. The
argument is that this could make a country vulnerable to people wanting to cash in
that debt. Logical? Well, not in theory, if most of the national debt is held by local
people, so it actually represents their assets! Nor does it make sense if the debt has been
accumulated in order to invest in valuable assets – for example, as we discussed above,
“quantitative easing” refloated the US economy after 2009 and drove up asset values in
housing and industry, so that it increased US economic net worth and could be argued to
have actually paid for itself. In any case the US and Denmark have had similar rates of
economic growth (2.0% p.a. from 2013 to 2021, IMF data, see https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_growth_rate#List_(2013–2021)), but the ratio of
national debt in the US was 107% in 2021 and only 33% in Denmark. So how reliable a
rule is that? Actually, this suggests an alternative golden rule – anyone who talks about
“debt” without mentioning in the same sentence the value of corresponding assets should
be wholly ignored until they get the point!
What does this add up to? Well, it is essentially a warning that most of the conventional
wisdom on economic policy is misinformed. There is likely to be only one golden rule in
economic policy – the appropriate spending and tax balance in your country, and in your
local authority, depends on your circumstances, NOT on any rules.

Changing paradigms of public policy

In the 1980s, the drivers of change, particularly the financial pressures, pushed most Western
countries towards a focus on making the public sector “lean and more competitive while, at
20­ Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler
the same time, trying to make public administration more responsive to citizens’ needs by
offering value for money, choice flexibility, and transparency” (OECD, 1993: 9). This was
later known as “new public management” (Hood, 1991) (see Box 2.2).

Box 2.2 Elements of New Public Management (or NPM)

• emphasis on performance management
• more flexible and devolved financial management
• more devolved personnel management with increasing use of performance-related
pay and personalised contracts
• more responsiveness to users and other customers in public services
• greater decentralisation of authority and responsibility from central to lower lev-
els of government
• greater recourse to the use of market-type mechanisms, such as internal markets,
user charges, vouchers, franchising and contracting out
• privatisation of market-oriented public enterprises
Source: OECD (1993: 13).

Whereas some scholars considered this reform movement as a global paradigm change (e.g.
Osborne and Gaebler, 1992: 325 and 328), others were more sceptical of the transferabil-
ity of Westminster-type managerialism to Western Europe and other countries. Certainly,
the credence given to the NPM paradigm by public sector practitioners in a major country
such as Germany has remained rather low throughout the past three decades.
In NPM, managers were given a much greater role in policy-making than previously in
the “old public administration” (PA), essentially at the expense of politicians and service
professionals. While this clearly helped to redress the traditional balance in the many coun-
tries where management had been rather undervalued in the public sector, it quickly led
many commentators to question whether this rebalancing had gone too far. In particular,
it led to a vision of the public sector that often seemed peculiarly empty of political values
and political debate.
As Chapters 4 and 5 show, different countries responded to the challenges in different
ways, depending on a variety of factors. However, one factor in most of these responses was
a concern with the governance dimension of public policy and the governance of public sec-
tor organisations (see Chapter 15). This governance-oriented response tended to emphasise:

• the importance of “wicked problems” that cut across neat service lines, so that “quality
of life” improvements are more important than “quality of service” improvements
• the need for these “wicked problems” to be tackled cooperatively, because they cannot be
solved by only one agency – thus the need for multi-stakeholder networking; for example,
evidence indicates that clinical care may account for only 20% of health outcomes, while
socioeconomic, behavioral, and environmental factors determine the rest (PCIC, 2023)
• the need for agreed “rules of the game” that stakeholders will stick to in their interactions
with one another, so that they can trust each other in building new joint approaches to
the problems they are tackling – extending “corporate governance” principles into the
sphere of “public governance”
 The changing context of public policy 21
• the critical importance of certain principles that should be embedded in all interactions
which stakeholders have with each other, including transparency, integrity, honesty,
fairness and respect for diversity

Of course, the set of responses described above have developed gradually rather than over-
night. Indeed, many of today’s wicked problems are the emerging and unresolved problems
from yesterday. Also, in many cases, fiscal pressures have deepened and have become mixed
with the new demands on governments. Which pressures are dominant and which are less
relevant depend essentially on the setting (see Chapters 4 and 5). As public policy contexts
become more differentiated in the future, the variety of governance reforms is likely to be
much greater than in the NPM era.
Pollitt and Bouckaert (2017: 19) also use the concept of the “Neo-Weberian State”
(NWS) to describe a public sector model characteristic of stable and prosperous Western
European democracies such as Germany, France and the Nordic group. NWS consists of key
“Weberian” characteristics such as the central role of the state and the preservation of a pub-
lic service with a distinct status, to which they add principles such as citizen-orientation and
performance management. While Pollitt and Bouckaert argue that NWS is a hybrid concept
which consists of rather contradictory Weberian and neo-characteristics, Byrkjeflot et al.
(2018) consider that it is more useful to distinguish between “degrees of Weberianism”. After
all, the Weberian state was originally conceived as an ideal-type, not a depiction of reality.
These challenges put public agencies under pressure to adapt. Whereas some agencies
respond to the new environment quickly or even proactively, others change more slowly or
not at all. As a result, old and new structures and management approaches are often found
side by side (Hood, 1991). This messy situation is multiplied by the many different kinds
of reform going on – some of which are described in Parts II and III in this book. Figure 2.1

Law - Service - Citizen -

driven driven driven

Goal: legal competitiveness community quality

of life
Perspective: conformity public/private
service providers civil society
Coordination state
mechanism: hierarchy market networks

Logic legal managerial political

Model PA NPM Governance

Figure 2.1 Types of public agencies.

Source: Translated and adapted from Gerhard Banner (2002).