What is administrative reform? How is it differentiated from other kinds of social reform? Who are administrative reformers and how do they approach their task? And who benefits and who suffers from it? Does a theory of administrative reform exist? A survey of published research on administrative reform reveals that satisfactory answers to these questions are handicapped by methodological and theoretical shortcomings. There are no common definitions, no agreement over content, no selected boundaries, no clear links with the wide phenomenon of social reform, no firm hypothesis tested by empirical findings, and no continuous dialogue between practitioners and theorists. This book is the first comprehensive and systematic treatment of the subject for professionals and students in the fields of public and private administration. It carefully examines the diverse interdisciplinary literature on the subject and identifies and develops the most promising approaches towards a unified theory. Caiden shows how the study of administrative reform can contribute substantially to the development of administrative theory, and constructs a working definition of the phenomenon of administrative reform, distinguishing it from social change and from administrative change. The practical use of this definition is tested by the analysis of various case histories of administrative cultures of different periods in history, from which a common cycle of reform processes is discerned. The author follows with a detailed examination of the processes themselves. The book concludes with a discussion of the obstacles to reform and a review of the author's findings and conclusions.

The field of public administration currently lacks sufficient resources for understanding the rationale, implications, and inherent practices of reforming government administration around the world.The Handbook of Administrative Reform satisfies this need by bringing together diverse international experts to analyze the sensible processes an

Adminstrative reform in most western democracies over the past couple of decades has been characterized by bringing in market-based concepts of public-service delivery. This book looks critically at administrative reform in a comparative perspective. The contributors - experts on administrative reform - assess its scope and objectives, and also the ways in which these reforms have impacted on the traditional roles of elective office and civil servants. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and academics in Politics and Public Administration, as well as for civil servants and experts on administrative reform.

This book addresses the problems of administrative reform in Third World countries by examining recent reform efforts in Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. Dr. Hammergren discusses the politics of administrative change and the interaction of the political and technical dimensions of reform in the three countries. The failure of many reform programs, she suggests, can be traced to their conception primarily in technical terms; the neglect of the political dimension encourages a division between the interests dominating the technical, planning stages and the groups needed for implementation. In the case of Third World programs, this division is further aggravated by the impact of external actors on the power base and orientation of national reform planners. While international support helped establish reform programs in the three countries studied, it also dissuaded planners from building ties with other national groups and from broadening and intensifying their political bases. Dr. Hammergren explores the sources of program content in the case studies and the notion of reform success or failure and examines alternative strategies for designing reform programs. Her emphasis is on identifying political, programmatic, and organizational variables that can be manipulated to enhance program implementation and effectiveness.

Based on a survey of more than 6700 top civil servants in 17 European countries, this book explores the impacts of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms in Europe from a uniquely comparative perspective. It examines and analyses empirical findings regarding the dynamics, major trends and tools of administrative reforms, with special focus on the diversity of top executives’ perceptions about the effects of those reforms.

This title was first published in 2000: Economic development has become one of the popular public policies in many developing and economic-transforming countries for the past few decades. Public policy makers and researchers have recognized that an effective administrative system is critical to the success of economic development and administrative reform is necessary to promote economic development. This book studies economic development policy by focusing on the relationship between administrative reform and economic development.

This book analyzes China's bureaucratic behavior since the inauguration of administrative reform in the late 1970s. Although bureaucratic behavior in China in the past decade was increasingly corrupted, this aspect of China's post-Mao reform has not been subjected to a rigorous scrutiny. This book explores the gulf between desired and the actual bureaucratic behavior among China's public administrators. The author argues that this behavioral gap in China's modernization stems from several factors including the nation's cultural heritage, the ruling party's approach to government, and the absence of trusted, full-fledged academic groups assigned to advise on administrative reform. The book then probes one of the gravest consequences of the behavioral gap: 'reform corruption', a phenomenon which seems to be a mixed blessing of modernization.

Reform is a politicized, ideological, sometimes drifting, and chaotic process. As such, what public administration reform means, why it occurs, whose interests it serves, and whether it makes the world a better place, remain contested. Addressing these questions, this major comparative study sheds new light on existing and emerging issues in the field of public administration reform.