Abstract
Throughout Western Europe, governments have recognised the importance of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector in response to economic and financial pressures, consumer demands for better public services and other forces. In the words of two observers, ‘a desire for management reform has been sweeping across the public sector in all West European countries’ during the 1980s and 1990s (Eliassen and Kooiman 1993: 205). Such developments have not, of course, been confined to Western Europe. The reform of the public sector is seen by Osborne and Gaebler (1992: 328–30) as a global phenomenon, while Aucoin maintains that there has been an ‘internationalization of public management’ (Aucoin 1990: 134; see also Hood 1995: 104–5). A recent report on public management developments in industrialised countries concluded that ‘efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector and the way governmental institutions are managed are now part of the policy agenda of almost all governments’ (OECD 1990a: 7).
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Butcher, T. (1997). Reinventing Government: The European Experience. In: Symes, V., Levy, C., Littlewood, J. (eds) The Future of Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25379-1_3
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