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Providing important insights into the origins of policy ideas, the qualities and capabilities of leaders, the nature and challenges of large organizational changes, and the complexity of efforts to evaluate the outcomes of reform, the contributors consider aspects of public administration reform in countries such as Canada, Thailand, Mexico, and China as well as the ways in which changes have been shaped by global forces, national values, traditions, and culture. An invaluable work for understanding the new challenges faced by the governments around the world, Comparative Administration Change and Reform offers a clear analysis of both the successes and failures of reform and should be read by anyone interested in politics, administration, and public sector reform.

Distinguished scholars from six countries investigate the effects of reforms in a number of areas, including budgeting, personnel management, and accountability. While reforms have been beneficial in some of these areas, success has been far from universal. By comparing and contrasting measures in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, contributors isolate and evaluate factors - such as individual political leaders and the complexity of government - that influence the success or failure of reforms.

Bureaucracy is a much-maligned feature of contemporary government. And yet the aftermath of September 11 has opened the door to a reassessment of the role of a skilled civil service in the survival and viability of democratic society. Here, Ezra Suleiman offers a timely and powerful corrective to the widespread view that bureaucracy is the source of democracy's ills. This is a book as much about good governance as it is about bureaucratic organizations. Suleiman asks: Is democratic governance hindered without an effective instrument in the hands of the legitimately elected political leadership? Is a professional bureaucracy required for developing but not for maintaining a democratic state? Why has a reform movement arisen in recent years championing the gradual dismantling of bureaucracy, and what are the consequences? Suleiman undertakes a comparative analysis of the drive toward a civil service grounded in the New Public Management. He argues that \"government reinvention\" has limited bureaucracy's capacity to adequately serve the public good. All bureaucracies have been under political pressure in recent years to reduce not only their size but also their effectiveness, and all have experienced growing deprofessionalism and politicization. He compares the impact of this evolution in both democratic societies and societies struggling to consolidate democratic institutions. Dismantling Democratic States cautions that our failure to acknowledge the role of an effective bureaucracy in building and preserving democratic political systems threatens the survival of democracy itself.

Civil Service Reform in the States examines the critical importance of civil service systems in modern government and popular efforts to reform those systems. The book provides an up-to-date analysis and assessment of public personnel reforms undertaken by various state governments since 1990 and the extent to which these reforms have been implemented or resisted. With chapters written by nationally recognized experts on civil service and civil service reform, this book will appeal to public policy makers, practitioners, and students alike.

As government management in Israel is gradually replaced by private sector management, it is becoming apparent that the collective-oriented mission of government cannot be fulfilled by the private sector or by the non-profit organizations of civil society. This book provides an analysis of the machinery of government in Israel, highlighting the inadequacy of the private sector as an alternative and how public management will need to cope with the new challenges and pressures of the 21st century. Providing hitherto unpublished data and analysis in English for the first time, this book gives a comprehensive analysis of the issue of public and private-sector management. The author examines the tasks of the civil service; the legal foundation of the public management machinery; and the profile of civil servants, and looks at the unwieldy budget process; the prevalence (and absence) of regulation; and external and internal mechanisms of oversight. This analysis is balanced by a detailed exposition of Israel's political-administrative culture with its excessive centralization, secrecy, turf protection, and legacy of improvisation, and their effect on policymaking and administration. This comprehensive and detailed examination of public management in Israel will be of great interest both to students and scholars of business and management, government and politics, and to policymakers in the region. \"I find the book particularly valuable on a subject that is as complex as it is almost unresearched, namely what does the Israeli civil service do? Galnoor, based on his experience and rich involvement in Israeli public service, for example as Civil Service Commissioner from 1994 to 1996, is able to point out some of the key behavior patterns of the civil service... Galnoor’s comprehensive examination of public management in Israel should be of great interest to both students and scholars of business and management, government and politics, and public law, as well as for regional policy-makers.\" - Assaf Meydani, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, and the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo; Israel Studies Review, Vol.28, Issue 1, Summer 2013. 1. Civil Service: A Comparative Perspective 2. The Public Sector in Israel Broadly Defined 3. The Legal Framework of the Civil Service 4. The Functioning of the Israeli Civil Service 5. Regulation 6. Civil Servants 7. The Senior Echelons 8. The Budget Process 9. Oversight and Control of the Civil Service 10. The Culture of Administration in Israel 11. Public Management Reforms Izthak Galnoor is Herbert Samuel Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Senior Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He was Head of the Civil Service Commission from 1994--6 and served on the Executive Committee of the International Political Science Association. His research interests lie in the areas of Israeli politics and administration, comparative politics, and political humor. His new book, The Israeli Political System (with Dana Blander), will appear in 2011.

A market economy and a more liberal society have brought great challenges to China's outdated governance structure and personnel management. To improve decision-making in government and reshape the management system in face of a more complex economy, post-Mao authorities have implemented a number of administrative reforms, including civil service reform which emphasized on selecting and promoting public officials based on their capability and work performance. Thousands of positions have been filled since the civil service system was implemented nationwide in 1993. The Chinese civil service reform is of far-reaching significance because it had the potential to be a departure from the established structure of cadre personnel management system developed in the 1950s. However, after several years of policy development, scholars observe that the new reforms have done little to undermine the old cadre system. Is this true? Or does this conclusion over-simplify the complicated implementation of the reforms? This book examines the implementation and performance of the on-going civil service reforms in China. Using the principal-agent framework, the author draw upon key case studies showing how the reforms affect civil servants' incentives and behavior in the local context and the Chinese leadership's control over the bureaucracy. China's reform experience speaks directly to many Asian countries facing urgent need to improve state capacity as the global financial crisis unfolds.

In Governance in the Twenty-first Century Canadian and international experts recognize both the difficulty of making predictions and the need to consider the future in order to prepare the public sector for new challenges. The authors' predictions and recommendations are anchored in a thorough understanding of contemporary public administration. They point out that not only have previous reforms made yet more change necessary and inevitable but that the purpose of these reforms is to attempt to return government to the position of respect and competence it enjoyed in the past.

Many countries have undertaken public administration reform projects over the last ten to fifteen years. This book analyzes the experiences and outcomes of these reforms.The analysis starts with “what was broken”; and then moves on to assess what reformers actually did and what they achieved and why reformers faced with similar problems in different countries in fact did very different things.The conclusion is that the level and type of reform activity was determined primarily by the degree of traction available to reformers - the leverage available to reformers and the malleability of basic public sector institutions. In some countries reformers had considerable leverage and were able to launch comprehensive reform programs relatively quickly. In other countries with low traction and with comparatively complex constitutional arrangements for public sector architecture, implementing public administration reform appears to be particularly problematic. A number of practical suggestions for approaches to implementing public administration reform are then identified for policy makers and reformers in low traction countries such as the Russian Federation.