Introduction

Abstract

For more than a century, Western public bureaucracies have been inspired and constructed according to what is usually known as the ‘classic public administration paradigm’. In Europe, this paradigm was heavily influenced by Weberian ideas of bureaucracy and, in the United States, by Woodrow Wilson’s battle with late nineteenth-century American political patronage: ‘… poisonous atmosphere of [city] government, the crooked secrets of state administration, the confusion, sinecurism and corruption ever again discovered in the bureaux at Washington’ (Wilson, 1887: 206). Classic public administration models developed over more than two centuries. Especially the German and French models are often mentioned as examples of administrations that have persisted throughout times of instability and turbulence (König and Beck, 1997; Kickert, 1997).