P19 Where to Begin? Public Sector Reform in Comparative Perspective
Panel Chairs
Robert P. Shepherd, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada robertp.shepherd@carleton.ca
Sorin Dan, University of Vaasa, Finland
Evert Lindquist, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
Tom Karlsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Call for Papers
This brand-new IRSPM panel invites papers that examine theoretical and practical developments in the field of public governance, public administration and public management reforms and their relevance for the current societal, political and administrative contexts around the world. Calls for public sector renewal have been longstanding in most Western states and prevalent in the literature (Dan, 2024; Funck & Karlsson, 2020; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2017). These calls have since grown louder since the Covid pandemic where citizens in many countries argued governments failed them, which means public services are failing (Dan, Lægreid & Spacek, 2024; Gaskell et. al., 2020). The challenges to public services during the pandemic were manifold: inefficiencies in the lines of communication (Saunders, 2020; Kim & Kreps, 2020); lack of capacity to deliver effective programming (Capano et.al., 2020); lack of relevant performance information (Shepherd, 2022); ineffective governance arrangements across jurisdictions (Schnabel et.al., 2021); and ineffective emergency responses or systems (Adiyoso, 2022), among others. Political leaders held up their public services as prepared and capable of dealing with the challenges of the pandemic and poured significant funding into policy and programmatic responses quickly, while expecting successful outcomes (Broadbent, 2020; Shand et al., 2023). In effect, the pandemic laid bare the incapacities and inefficiencies of public services.
Diagnosing the challenges faced by public services is a need to better understand the relevance of various theoretical paradigms, designs and approaches to public sector reforms and the conflicting public and private values that are inherent in reform programs. Additionally, what is less studied is figuring out the obstacles to reform in various political and administrative contexts, and sorting what challenges are higher or lower in priority, and how to set out a reform agenda that sets the stage for reforming internal administrative policies, systems and processes. Reforms aimed at digital transformation, enhancing public sector effectiveness and responsiveness, open government, greater democratization of decision-making and streamlining intra-state governance are regarded as ways forward. However, each of these requires significant scaffolding before they can proceed successfully.
This panel invites both full papers and concept papers/extended abstracts in the horizontal policy area of public governance, public administration, and public management reforms or specific policy areas and sectors in different countries and levels of government. We welcome papers written by early-career and established scholars as well as contributions from practitioners and public managers, employing different reform paradigms, conceptualizations, methods, and data sources. We invite papers on public sector reforms, broadly understood, and are especially interested in papers that attempt to address one or more of the following themes or others as appropriate: diagnoses of public services challenges in various contexts; positioning of public sector challenges in reform initiatives and programs; and, creating roadmaps for concrete reform efforts. The panel seeks various contributions, therefore, that go beyond diagnosis and provide a rational set of recommendations on administrative reform that creates the conditions or momentum for administrative reform efforts.
References
Adiyoso, W. (2022). Assessing governments’ emergency responses to the COVID-19 outbreak using a social network analysis (SNA). Sage Open, 12(2).
Broadbent, J. (2020). The response to Covid-19 in England: political accountability and loss of trust. Journal of accounting & organizational change, 16(4), 527-532.
Capano, G., Howlett, M., Jarvis, D. S., Ramesh, M., & Goyal, N. (2020). Mobilizing policy (in) capacity to fight COVID-19: Understanding variations in state responses. Policy and Society, 39(3), 285-308.
Dan, S. (2024). Theoretical approaches to measuring governance: public administration, pp. 80-95, in Lewis, J.M. and Triantafillou, P. (eds.) Handbook on Measuring Governance, Edward Elgar.
Dan, S., Lægreid, P. & Špaček, D. (2024). NPM reconsidered: Towards the study of enduring forms of NPM, Introduction to special issue The New Public Management: Dead or still Alive and Co-existing? State of Play at 40+, Forthcoming in Public Management Review.
Funck, E. K., & Karlsson, T. S. (2023). Governance innovation as social imaginaries: challenges of post-NPM. Public Management Review, 1–20.
Funck, E.K. & Karlsson, T. S. (2020). Twenty-five years of studying new public management in public administration: Accomplishments and limitations. Financial Accountability & Management, 36: 347-375.
Gaskell, J., Stoker, G., Jennings, W., & Devine, D. (2020). Covid‐19 and the blunders of our governments: Long‐run system failings aggravated by political choices. The Political Quarterly, 91(3), 523-533.
Karlsson, T. S. (2024). NPM 2.0: A Blast from the Past. In I. Lapsley & M. Power (Eds.), The Resilience of New Public Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kim, D. K. D., & Kreps, G. L. (2020). An analysis of government communication in the United States during the COVID‐19 pandemic: recommendations for effective government health risk communication. World medical & health policy, 12(4), 398-412.Pawson, R., & Tilley, N. (1997). Realistic Evaluation. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Pollitt, C., Bouckaert, G. (2017). Public Management Reforms. A comparative Analysis - Into the Age of Austerity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sanders, K. B. (2020). British government communication during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic: learning from high reliability organizations. Church, Communication and Culture, 5(3), 356-377.
Schnabel, J., & Hegele, Y. (2021). Explaining intergovernmental coordination during the COVID-19 pandemic: Responses in Australia, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 51(4), 537-569.
Shand, R., Parker, S., Liddle, J., Spolander, G., Warwick, L., & Ainsworth, S. (2023). After the applause: understanding public management and public service ethos in the fight against Covid-19. Public Management Review, 25(8), 1475-1497.
Shepherd, R. P. (2022). Internal governmental performance and accountability in Canada: Insights and lessons for post‐pandemic improvement. Canadian Public Administration, 65(3), 516-537.