ABSTRACT

Allegedly NPM reform was mainly successful in Anglo-Saxon countries, with Great Britain and New Zealand presented as the typical ‘success stories’. Under the regime of the neo-liberal, right-wing prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the British state was ‘hollowed out’. Part of the ‘new right’ ideology of the time was the belief in wholesome effects of management. The circumstances were different in other European countries. Public management reform took diverse shapes in different countries. In many small Continental European countries that have a consensual political system (Lijphart 1984) and corporatist state-society relations (P.J. Williamson 1989), such as the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria, the public management reforms were less ideological and more pragmatic. Reform there was not about ideology and belief, but about effectiveness, efficiency and modern management techniques. In Continental European countries with a predominant legalistic ‘Rechtsstaat’ tradition, such as Germany and France, the public management reform hardly succeeded to break through the monopoly of legalistic thinking. In Southern European countries with a legalistic and formalistic administration, and above all with a highly politicised administration, such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, public management reform also had a hard time to break through (Ongaro 2009).