New Public Management and services of general economic interest : An impact on Union law? (original) (raw)
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New Public Management in Europe
New Public Management (NPM) is the label which many academics have given to a series of reforms from the 1980s onwards, to improve the efficiency and performance of western governments and/or public sector organizations. Examples are the development of performance indicators and benchmarking, personnel reforms aimed at 'normalising' public sector employment on private sector models, placing executive bodies at arms' length from ministries, establishing public private partnerships and introducing new management techniques and instruments. Continental European governments have adapted and re-interpreted many of the Anglo-American ideas underpinning the NPM, to adjust them to their own national politico-administrative contexts. As a consequence, reforms of the public sector may have the same labels in different countries but need not be the same in practice or in meaning; there is both convergence and divergence.
2002
Cooperation in Public Administration is of an informal nature because the Treaties of the European Union do not foresee community powers regarding the organisation of the Public Administrations, and for existing substantial differences in national personnel policies and administrative systems of the Member States. However, the impact of community law and administrative cooperation is increasingly affecting the administrative, organisational, legal and political structures of the Member States. Some experts even argue that this form of Europeanisation is leading to a European administrative space or a European model of Public Service in the long run. This article is discussing the how and why the integration process is affecting the national public services despite the limited competence of the EU. A special emphasis will be placed on the question whether the current development may produce – in the future – a convergence of the national public services.
The paper seeks to explore and understand the relationship between two major contemporary public management reform doctrines: the New Public Management (NPM) and the post-NPM doctrines. In particular, we wish to identify and test competing hypotheses about the possible causal relationships between these two doctrines. These hypotheses centre around two questions. Firstly, whether post-NPM reforms are triggered by earlier NPM reforms (and, in particular, by the perceived problems and failures brought about by them) or, rather, by other factors largely unrelated to NPM. Secondly, whether post-NPM reforms can be conceived of as an anti-thesis of NPM aimed at undoing the changes of the previous epoch or, rather, post-NPM elements add up to a new, additional “layer” of public management reforms, leaving the earlier ones largely untouched. The empirical basis of the analysis is a recent large-scale questionnaire survey of senior public administration executives working in sixteen European countries.
Principles for the Europeanisation of Public Administration
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Administrative regimes are no longer isolated phenomena: they are constantly confronted with international influences, which shape the internal structure and system of the states. The cooperation between the European Union and the Member States’ administration is today a kind of convergence in principles. This is what the EU expects from the candidate countries and in the neighbourhood policy. The main question of the study is whether the content of the principles used by the EU is cognisable and consistent. The study covers two policy instruments: the SIGMA project, which is a joint EU–OECD collaboration, and the comparative legal activities of the ReNEUAL. These instruments testify two completely different attitudes: one does not explain the principle but holds it accountable, the other seeks the means to understand its content and the reasons for the differences in interpretations. Both programs have undergone internal development, but while SIGMA has moved away from its administ...
European public administration under the principles of legality, proportionality and subsidiarity
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Within the European Union order, the national public administrations play a very important role. They are responsible for the enforcement and the control of the execution of the policies of the European Communities, in all the states of the European Union, in the interest of the respective governments. Although the European Union has a central administration, she doesn't have external agencies. Applying the European instructions and regulations depends on the national governments. Because of rules such as mutual recognition, each government depends on the quality of executing the Community policy, for the purpose of achieving its own responsibilities. The role of the public administration in the European unification is a decisive one; and this is not only because the public administration is connected to the institutional and governmental mechanisms, but also because the real, practical, technical and "aesthetic" convergence of different administrative cultures is the key element of the European integration. Thus we are faced not only with a new supra-national institutional order, but also with a new juridical order given by the integration through law.
2010
The reforms driven by New Public Management (NPM) led to the introduction of management principles in local governments, marketisation and outsourcing. They made the greatest impact in the United Kingdom, but were also put in place in other European countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Germany, and – to the least degree – in France (compared to other countries discussed in this paper). There is a risk that NPM-inspired reforms may come to lose sight of the underlying social purpose of public services. NPM has not however become a new, universal model for public sector management. Issues tackled in the debate concerning the reform of public services have moved (mostly in the UK) beyond the concerns of NPM towards the emerging concept of networked community governance.
Provision of Public Services in European Countries: From Public/Municipal to Private and Reverse?
2011
The institutional development, which the provision of social and public services has undergone since its early beginnings in the 19th century, is analysed. At the beginning, certain social services and public utilities were provided by municipalities and municipally owned enterprises, forming local welfare state. The national welfare state was the most developed in the 1960s. Since the 1980s, these services are under the impact of neo-liberal policy, the New Public Management concepts, and the European Union market liberalization policy. European Union law has developed its own legal definition of public services and labelled them as services of general economic interest. The development in five countries is analysed: United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Norway. Cross-country institutional commonalities and variance, as well as the factors that have impinged upon such country-specific trajectories are iden-