Public Sector Accountability and New Public Management Reforms

Abstract

From the mid-1980s, public service bureaucracies in almost all countries underwent processes of substantial restructuring as part of an international movement for public sector reform, a movement that has had a significant impact on public sector accountability. The reform programmes were variously named, sometimes as ‘managerialism’, more commonly now as ‘the new public management’, terms which mark a new emphasis on the role of management and managers in government. The reformers followed somewhat different paths in different countries, according to their particular constitutional traditions and ideological leanings. None the less, the reforms shared sufficient common themes and common remedies to be counted as a single movement and not just a haphazard collection of isolated changes.