Public service reform: A comparative west European perspective

Clark, David

doi:10.1080/01402380008425382

Cited by 30 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…During the past two decades, publicly funded health care systems in northern Europe have been subject to reforms such as purchaser-provider split, decentralisation, privatisation, the introduction of explicit measures of performance and focus on service and client orientation, often referred to as New Public Management (NPM) reforms [1,2]. Swedish health care is no exception.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice of primary care provider: Results from a population survey in three Swedish counties

Glenngård¹,

Anell²,

Beckman³

2011

Health Policy

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice of primary care provider: Results from a population survey in three Swedish counties

Glenngård¹,

Anell²,

Beckman³

2011

Health Policy

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“…The public service narrative emphasised the need to ensure an efficient state and an effective public sector in order to defend a French social model; its proponents looked to forms of contractualisation between public service providers, but did not advocate a radical overhaul of existing processes, professional public sector norms or established bureaucratic hierarchies (Gaudin, 1999;Clark, 2000;Chevallier, 2003). The state productivity narrative emphasised NPM, an emphasis on outputs, the attainment of results, the private delivery of (some) public goods, the involvement of private sector consultants and operators and a clear preference for budgetary (over general administrative) actors (Bezes, 2009;Eymeri-Douzans and Pierre, 2011;Epstein, 2013).…”

Section: Divergencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not saying, not doing: Convergences, contingencies and causal mechanisms of state reform and decentralisation in Hollande’s France

Cole

2014

Fr Polit

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Are States in contemporary Europe subject to new forms of convergence under the impact of economic crisis, enhanced European steering and international monitoring? Or is the evolution of governance (national and sub-national) driven fundamentally by diverging, mainly domestic pressures? Drawing on extensive new data, the article combines analysis of the State Modernisation and Decentralisation reform programmes of the Hollande-Ayrault administration, drawing comparisons where appropriate with the previous Sarkozy regime. The limits of President Hollande's anti-Sarkozy method were demonstrated in the first 2 years; framing state reform and decentralisation in negative terms prevented the emergence of a coherent legitimising discourse. The empirical data is interpreted with reference to a comparative 'States of Convergence' framework, which is conceptualised as a heuristic device for analysing variation between places, countries and policy fields. The article concludes that the forces of hard convergence are gaining ground, as economic, epistemic and European pressures continually challenge the forces of institutional inertia.

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“…But such examples are rare. Civil servants are attached to the terms and conditions of public officials as set out in the civil service code created in 1946 (Clark, 2000). The statute seeks to ensure that the terms and conditions of service for officials are equal and comparable across the French administrative system.…”

Section: State Reform and Public Servicementioning

confidence: 99%

State Reform in France: From Public Service to Public Management?

Cole

2010

Perspectives on European Politics and Society

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The 'Reform of the State' is one of the recurrent themes in French politics, but it is deeply ambivalent. Understanding the causes or independent variables of state reform cannot be dissociated from understanding the core narratives that are used to justify the reform process. In this article we observe processes of state reform since the late 1980s through the lens of two rather different forms of justification that are labelled as public service and state productivity. Though there are some similarities between the two, they represent distinct ways of understanding the nature and scope of the State and the weighting of endogenous and exogenous forces driving the reform process itself. While state reform is a by-product of the public services narrative, it occupies a central role in that of state productivity. Crucially, for the purposes of this article, they take a different stance towards new public management, which is firmly resisted in the public services narrative as foreign to French political and administrative traditions, but forms a central theme in accounts of state productivity.

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Public service reform: A comparative west European perspective

Cited by 30 publications

References 42 publications

Choice of primary care provider: Results from a population survey in three Swedish counties

Choice of primary care provider: Results from a population survey in three Swedish counties

Not saying, not doing: Convergences, contingencies and causal mechanisms of state reform and decentralisation in Hollande’s France

State Reform in France: From Public Service to Public Management?

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