Public Management Reform and Modernization: Trajectories of Administrative Change in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain

331 Pages·2010·3.92 MB·English

by  Edoardo Ongaro

Public Management Reform and
Modernization
For Rita and Ezio: thank you
For Anna: your patience and still support have made this book
a joyous enterprise
For Tommaso and Pietro: the mystery of Faith, Being,
Mankind be the heart of your life
Public Management
Reform and
Modernization
Trajectories of Administrative Change in
Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain
Edoardo Ongaro
Bocconi University and SDA Bocconi School of Management,
Italy
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham, UK (cid:129) Northampton, MA, USA
© Edoardo Ongaro 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior
permission of the publisher.
Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
The Lypiatts
15 Lansdown Road
Cheltenham
Glos GL50 2JA
UK
Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
William Pratt House
9 Dewey Court
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009933392
ISBN 978 1 84720 810 1
Printed and bound by MPG Books Group, UK
Contents
List of fi gures and tables vi
Preface by Christopher Pollitt vii
Foreword by Elio Borgonovi x
Acknowledgements xii
1 Introduction 1
PART I PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM IN ITALY
2 Reforming the public sector in a politico-administrative
context in motion 31
3 Financial management, audit and performance measurement,
personnel 88
4 Organizational reforms 123
5 Explaining the dynamics of public management reform in Italy 156
PART II COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: PUBLIC
MANAGEMENT REFORM IN NAPOLEONIC
STATES
6 Trajectories of reform in France, Greece, Portugal, Spain:
comparison and generalizations 201
7 Administrative traditions and models of reform: Napoleonic
countries between global paradigms and the Neo-Weberian
State 247
References 281
Index 305
v
Figures and tables
FIGURES
4.1 Trajectory of coordination in Italy (1992–2007) 137
5.1 Process of building management capacity at the individual
public sector organization level 176
TABLES
2.1 Events of reform in Italy (1992–2008) 32
2.2 Trajectory of public management reform in Italy 67
3.1 The diff usion of accrual accounting in local governments
in 2004 93
3.2 Numbers, economic reward, type of contract and age of
public managers in Italy 107
4.1 Reallocation of personnel from the state to regions and
local authorities – gap between designed and implemented 126
4.2 Mapping coordination events: symbols and description 131
4.3 Decision powers in local governments before 1992 and
after the reforms occurred over the period 1992–99 152
6.1 Politico-administrative systems of France, Greece, Italy,
Portugal and Spain: outline of some key features 215
7.1 Evolving features of the Napoleonic administrative
tradition in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain 253
vi
Preface
Christopher Pollitt
I can truthfully say that this book is one I have been waiting for for more
than a decade, and I am therefore delighted that it has fi nally arrived.
It was in the late 1990s, when I was working with my colleague Geert
Bouckaert on the fi rst (2000) edition of Public Management Reform: A
Comparative Analysis, that I realized that we had very little (at least in
English) on Southern Europe. Neither did we have the time, skills or
resources necessary to fi ll that huge gap. For one thing, we had decided
not to try to cover countries where neither of us had even a passive knowl-
edge of the language – the dangers of relying on selective translations was
just too great. In the second edition of that book, thanks to the generous
help of Edoardo Ongaro and Elio Borgonovi, we were able to cover Italy,
but that, we knew, was only a beginning. Now, however, the job is done –
anglophone readers at last have a detailed, sophisticated, up-to-date treat-
ment not only of France (which has frequently been covered) but also of
Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
Yet the value of this work goes far beyond just the provision of infor-
mation about what was previously largely terra incognita on anglophone
management maps (useful accomplishment though that is in itself). To my
mind it has several major additional virtues. First, it is a theoretically chal-
lenging work, engaging not just with the NPM but with other traditions,
as well as with the more recently formulated model of a Neo-Weberian
State (NWS). Further, it attempts a multi-level approach, integrating
observations about developments at the EU level with the analysis of
reforms within each particular country, plus some interesting observations
about the evidently fl exible relationship between national reform motifs
and the trajectories of subnational governments, and even individual
public sector organizations. All this has required some very wide reading
– and an ambitious attempt to integrate a variety of approaches, concepts
and levels of analysis.
Second, and perhaps less obviously, the detailed analysis implies some
signifi cant reorientations for those (many) Anglophone scholars who have
hitherto worked comfortably within the thought-world of North America
and North-Western Europe. Such scholars can no longer assume that their
vii
viii Public management reform and modernization
world is ‘normal’ and anything else is a deviation to be assessed against
what is happening in the USA, the UK, the Netherlands or Sweden. In
this part of the zoo you will fi nd some diff erent kinds of animal, but also
some familiar animals behaving in unfamiliar ways. Thus (for example)
the grands corps in Italy evidently do not behave in the same way as the
grand corps in France, and the public sector unions in most of the south-
ern countries play a bigger role than we are used to in, say, the UK or the
Netherlands. And civil service reforms such as managerialization of the
upper grades and a more contract-like form of employment take on a dif-
ferent hue when implemented within an intense patronage/spoils system
such as prevails in Italy.
Third, although its author is too modest to say so, I would suggest that
this book is another nail in the coffi n of ‘generic’ public management or
‘global recipes’, because what we see here is some very diff erent types of
systems, which exhibit both continuity and change as they pursue distinc-
tive trajectories of their own. As such it is also a sign of growing maturity
in the fi eld of academic public management. We no longer need to debate
everything in relation to one simple model, or even a succession of simple
models (‘NPM turns into networks, which then turn into governance’,
as some of our linear-thinking students occasionally but misleadingly
suggest). We can tolerate complexity and diversity, and still make com-
parisons and build bridges between the diff erent strands of thinking and
practice. Even the OECD has now moved away from the linear language
of countries being ‘behind’ or ‘ahead’ which characterized some its 1990s
publications. ‘Modernization is context dependent’ it says in a recent over-
view (although it still tries to hang on to a singular ‘way forward’ (OECD,
2005, p. 22; Pollitt et al., 2006).
Academic books and articles are supposed to go as far as they can and
then suggest where other scholars might go next. In this case Edoardo
Ongaro brings home a rich harvest of further questions and potential
projects. I would hope to see a range of spin-off s and further projects
emerge from the debate which I hope this book will provoke. One longer-
term strategic vision which I would myself like to add is that public
management scholars could get together to formulate an even more ambi-
tious project – one that compares the diff erent ‘families’ of countries or
‘traditions’ of administration. Thus we might envisage a broad compari-
son of the Napoleonic systems with the Scandinavian systems, the post-
Communist states of Eastern Europe, Germanic federalism and British
centralism. This would require a team eff ort and substantial funding, but
it would give substance and depth to what has hitherto been a prominent
but somewhat intangible concept, that of a ‘European administrative
space’. If such a large-scale project is ever launched then its founders
Preface by Christopher Pollitt ix
will be able to look back on this book as one of the milestones along the
road.
Christopher Pollitt
Research Professor in Public Management
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Belgium
REFERENCES
OECD (2005) Modernising Government: The Way Forward. Paris: OECD.
Pollitt, C., Kettl, D., Haque, S., Premfors, R. and Talbot, C. (2006) ‘Modernizing
Government: A Symposium’, International Review of Administrative Sciences,
72:3, pp. 307–340.