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From Managing the State to Managing Contingencies: Changing Roles of the Senior Civil Service in Sweden

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From the Active to the Enabling State

Part of the book series: Transforming Government ((TRGO))

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Abstract

It has been open season on civil servants and the public bureaucracy in many western democracies for the past 20–25 years. The critique has been most noticeable in countries which have embraced New Public Management as a strategy of administrative reform (Peters, 2001).1 In Britain, Mrs Thatcher staged a campaign to ‘deprivilege’ the public service (Hood, 1995) and in Canada, Prime Minister Mulroney pledged to provide civil servants with ‘pink slips and running shoes’ (Savoie, 1994). Similar patterns of portraying civil servants as the epitome of the alleged inertia and rigidity could be found in Australia and New Zealand. However, there are similar — if less pronounced — shifts in the views and status of public servants in other jurisdictions as well.

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Authors
  1. Jon Pierre
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom

    Edward C. Page (Sidney and Beatrice Webb Professor of Public Policy) (Sidney and Beatrice Webb Professor of Public Policy)

  2. Nuffield College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

    Vincent Wright (Sometime Fellow) (Sometime Fellow)

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© 2007 Jon Pierre

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Pierre, J. (2007). From Managing the State to Managing Contingencies: Changing Roles of the Senior Civil Service in Sweden. In: Page, E.C., Wright, V. (eds) From the Active to the Enabling State. Transforming Government. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288768_10

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