Geert Bouckaert

KU Leuven | ku leuven · KU Leuven Public Governance Institute

Since its publication in 2000, Public Management Reform has established itself as the standard text in the field, presenting a comparative analysis of recent changes in Public Management and Public Administration in a range of countries in Europe, North America and Australasia. This completely rewritten second edition radically expands, develops an...

In this major new contribution to a rapidly expanding field, the authors offer an integrated analysis of the wave of management reforms which have swept through so many countries in the last twenty years. The reform trajectories of ten countries are compared, and key differences of approach discussed. Unlike some previous works, this volume affords...

Etorkizuna Eraikiz (referred to as EE sometimes in this book) is an initiative led by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa (PCG), in the Basque Country, northern Spain, capital San Sebastián (or Donostia in Basque). It is aimed at fostering the community capacity to collaboratively understand and address current challenges. Through listening and expe...

"Even when NPM (New Public Management) was not fully implemented in continental Europe, it became clear that applying systematically performance driven market-type-mechanisms in the public sector was not really matching its administrative law framed system. Also, our future society and public sector will need a combined effort to ensure an inclusiv...

La gobernanza colaborativa constituye una aspiración en el estudio y la práctica de la gestión pública. En este empeño, el recurso intangible de la confianza adquiere especial relevancia porque avanzar en la participación de distintos actores en las políticas públicas pasa por otorgar valor a la contribución que estos puedan prestar. Si bien el des...

Sur la base de données provenant de 14 pays d’Afrique subsaharienne, cette étude examine la pertinence de la doctrine de l’État-promoteur pour améliorer l’accès à des sources d’eau potable améliorées et réduire les inégalités entre zones urbaines-rurales dans l’accès à des sources améliorées et à des habitations raccordées. Bien que l’accès à des s...

The Handbook for Ethiopian Public Administration Program Accreditation is a follow-up to the first handbook on Ethiopian Public Administration. The new handbook zooms in on how to improve, assure, and accredit PA education and training programs in Ethiopia. It is consistent with the Pan-Africanism and African Union’s Agenda 2063 and contributes to...

This book provides a research-based analysis of public sector reforms in Pakistan. It offers a broad overview of reforms at different levels of government – including federal, provincial and local – and examines decentralization and devolution reforms in various policy sectors. It also reflects on market-oriented reforms and the steps taken to invo...

Reforms have been the focus of debate in the public sector for decades. A major chunk of the reform literature hails from the West, with recent effective contributions coming forward from the developing and less developed world (Asia and Africa). This chapter reflects on the evolution and operationalisation of three major reform paradigms-hierarchi...

Public sector reform is a policy that includes design, decision, implementation, and evaluation. Increasingly, public management reform policy is globalized and comparative. Visions on ‘Whole of Society’, and ‘Whole of Government’ include ideological, political, and technical choices between ‘Hierarchy’, ‘Market’, or ‘Network’ as driving forces of...

This chapter with a longitudinal study serves as the background for the recent public sector reform narrative of Pakistan by mapping the alternations in the structures from 1947—the year of independence of Pakistan—until 2018. Alongside mapping, reforms are analysed using the three reform paradigms (hierarchies, markets and networks) with figures t...

Public sector reforms are highly context-dependent and their implementation in different countries tend to create ‘national reforms having unique features’. The role and interaction of prominent reform actors in the context of Pakistan including politics, administration, military, judiciary and religion is explored from 1947 to 2018 with the applic...

As Belgium is still perceived as a traditional pro-integration EU member state, European solidarity is expected to be part of the country’s DNA. During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, the country has not displayed particularly strong solidarity, not even towards its neighbouring countries. Neither has it demonstrated positive political leadership.

The book was inadvertently published with an incorrect family name for one of the author in this chapter as Walle, B.V where it should have been Vande Walle, B.

State structures are constantly adjusted for resilience in a social world full of external and internal challenges. Structural shifts or reforms are comprehensively explored in the public management literature; though little is known regarding the dynamics of reforms in a developing context like Pakistan and that too from a longitudinal perspective...

Le présent article propose un cadre conceptuel pour l’analyse de la gouvernance de la crise du COVID-19 au cours du premier semestre 2020 dans une perspective comparative internationale. Notre article porte plus particulièrement sur la question de la gestion des opportunités, c’est-à-dire sur la façon dont les acteurs concernés appartenant à des cu...

This special issue was envisaged to cover diverse scholarly contributions of an empirical nature that focus on various questions linked to the COVID-19 crisis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The choice of countries was intentional; after all, the Czech Republic and Slovakia both experienced controversial developments during 2020. The COVID-19 p...

This article provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of COVID-19 crisis governance in the first half of 2020 from a cross-country comparative perspective. It focuses on the issue of opportunity management, that is, how the crisis was used by relevant actors of distinctly different administrative cultures as a window of opportunity. We star...

With performance as a core theme of public sector reforms, this article explores performance management systems in inter-organizational settings while testing the effect of performance measurement on its use for accountability and control. Using economic neo-institutional perspective in a hierarchical context with turbulent political history, the a...

Public Administration in Ethiopia presents a wide range of timely issues. The chapters in the volume contribute to answering the overarching question: How can we describe and explain the contexts, the processes and the results of the post-1990 politico- administrative reforms in Ethiopia? And what are the implications for sustainable development? T...

While public museums in advanced economies operate in constrained funding environments after public sector efficiency drives, there has not been a common sector‐wide response. Museums cope differently with tensions between the two logics of consequences and of appropriateness, which are mapped in this study based on annual reports. A ‘logic of appr...

The public sector in our society has over the past two decades undergone substantial changes, as has the academic field studying Public Administration (PA). In the next twenty years major shifts are further expected to occur in the way futures are anticipated and different cultures are integrated. Practice will be handled in a relevant way, and mor...

Using data from 14 sub-Saharan African countries, this study investigates the relevance of the developmental state doctrine to enhancing access to improved drinking water sources and to reducing urban–rural inequalities in access to improved sources and piped-on premises. Although access to improved water sources and urban–rural inequality seems be...

The COVID‐19 crisis has shown that European countries still remain poorly prepared for dealing and coping with health crises and for responding in a coordinated way to a severe influenza pandemic. Within the EU, the response to the COVID‐19 virus has a striking diversity in its approach. By focusing on Belgium, France, Germany and Italy, four count...

This paper is about organising knowledge on the functioning of the public sector. This knowledge is not contained within a single discipline but within many empirical disciplines ranging from law, economics, management, and political science to sociology, psychology, and the like. This knowledge is clustered and scientifically organised in the fiel...

Trust between members of highly information driven governmental agencies is crucial to ensure efficient information transfer. This article seeks to understand better the link between perceived trustworthiness of boundary spanners and the willingness to exchange information between them. Semistructured interviews with professionals involved in decis...

This chapter outlines the strategy of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) and reflects on some of its key strengths, and how these may equip the European community of scholars and practitioners of public administration (PA) to contribute to the development of the field. The chapter reviews the key trait of the EGPA organisational mo...

This article investigates the impact of the audit and ombud process on the implementation of recommendations made by supreme audit institutions and ombudsmen in Belgium and the Netherlands. Based on previous findings, the focus lies on influential internal and external factors in determining the effectiveness of the audit and ombud investigations....

This paper offers the first link between models of the measurement and management of performance and the dimensions of governance arrangements in federal systems. Four ideal type approaches to governance in federal systems are correlated against four ideal types of measuring and managing performance. The paper develops a model that will support emp...

Using a time series data from 14 Sub Saharan African countries, this study investigated the relevance of developmental state doctrine to enhance access to improved drinking water sources and reduce urban-rural inequalities on access to improved sources and piped on premises. The study has not found sufficient support for the claim that developmenta...

What makes public sector innovations survive? An exploratory study of the influence of feedback, accountability and learning The question whether public sector innovations last, and what determines their chances of survival, remains a gap in the public management literature. This exploratory study focuses on the winners and nominees of public secto...

Resilience is the capacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to hazards or challenges to adapt, by resisting or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure (Haase, 2009). Governments all around the world face a number of external and internal challenges and crisis and in order to deal...

The fulfilment of government objectives is dependent on information. Traditionally, this information originates from a classic process of input, (processing) activities, and output. However, in light of increased intergovernmental data sharing, the movement towards open data and opportunities concerning big data, traditional government information...

The question whether public sector innovations last, and what determines their chances of survival, remains a gap in the public management literature. This exploratory study focuses on the winners and nominees of public sector innovation awards in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia and the UK. Through a survey covering 220 cases, i...

Concerns to improve efficiency in public services increasingly receive global attention. Using a five-year data set, this study examines the technical efficiency of Grade 2B Municipalities in Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia, in supplying drinking water. The study applied a Banker-Charnes-Cooper output oriented Variable Return to Scale Data...

Can performance management contribute to strengthening accountability in joint agreements in a federal system? A case study approach is used to analyze implementation of the Australian National Education Agreement as a joint agreement between the commonwealth and state governments. Special attention is directed to the Australian government’s Reform...

Emmanuel Kant asked three important questions which will always be with us: What can we know? What should we do? What may we hope for? These three key existentialist questions are, of course, also relevant for a reflection on the future of Public Administration: What can we know, as researchers in the field of Public Administration, about our objec...

While trust within and between organisations is considered a major indicator for successful organisation the debates on reforms of the judicial system overlook the need for internal trust. Drawing on a case study of the Flemish juvenile public prosecutor’s office and juvenile court, this chapter aims to explore the organisational trust phenomenon i...

This article contributes to the debate on the incorporation of performance information in European local government budgets. At the core is the development of an analytical model for comparing efforts of performance budgeting (PB). Evidence in ten cases indicates that performance structures and the span of performance differ, that performance indic...

This contribution explores the functional and dysfunctional roles of interorganizational trust and distrust in the public sector. We construct a conceptual framework and analyze 59 qualitative interviews with key informants in Flemish executive and judiciary public sector organizations. Results indicate that the combination of “trust as rule” and “...

Local governments all over Europe are in a period of increased reform activity and intensity, especially since this level of government has been the most seriously affected by the continuously expanding global financial crisis and the austerity policies in some countries. The reforms involve a variety of trajectories ranging from New Public Managem...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) constitutes the global development agenda to be achieved by 2030. Public Administration features more prominently in the SDGs than in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). First, having a proper public administration system is now a standalone development objective. Second, public governance systems are now...

When the financial crisis hit the Eurozone, Belgium, along with several other countries, postponed its consolidation policies until after the general elections. What followed was the longest caretaker rule that any stable democracy had ever experienced. This article analyses the phenomenon of policy continuity and change during this double crisis....

The country comparisons presented in this book have revealed four areas of research addressing major cross-cutting issues of local public sector reforms in Europe: (1) Rescaling, restructuring, and multilevel governance. (2) Output legitimacy, citizen satisfaction, and service delivery. (3) Input legitimacy, trust, and participation. (4) Local auto...

In search for efficiency, effectiveness and fiscal sustainability, governments gather more performance information than ever before. As many of them have sought to incorporate and use this kind of information in budgeting and planning documents, the main goal of this article is to discover how local government performance budgeting practices can be...

In times of rising expectations and decreasing resources for the public sector, performance management is high on the agenda. Increasingly, the value of the performance management systems themselves is under scrutiny, with more attention being paid to the effectiveness of performance management in practice. This new edition has been revised and upd...

This paper assesses the influence of a new regulatory framework (approved in 2010) concerning strategic management in the Flemish municipalities. Particularly, the paper’s focus is on the impact of the introduction of the policy and management cycle (PMC) on the management team’s (MT) role in the formulation, execution and evaluation of local polic...

This paper shows the initial results of research conducted within the LIPSE research 2. Two gaps in the literature are addressed in this research and in this paper: a longitudinal focus on public sector innovations, and a focus on failed innovations. Drawing on an extensive literature review we hypothesized feedback, accountablilty and learning to...

Welke invloed heeft de implementatie van regelgeving betreffende de beleids- en beheerscyclus op de rol van de managementteams bij beleidsvoorbereiding, -uitvoering en -evaluatie in de Vlaamse gemeenten? Deze centrale onderzoeksvraag beantwoorden we op basis van de resultaten van twee surveys uitgevoerd in 2008 en 2013 bij de Vlaamse gemeentesecret...

Our objective in this paper is to explore the roles played by interorganisational trust and distrust in the empirical reality of Flemish public administration on the basis of interviews with senior civil servants in the Flemish administration. We construct a conceptual framework and use it to structure qualitative interviews according to four disti...

This article argues that interorganizational trust is a crucial but understudied topic in public administration research. It consolidates the relevant literature and identifies the conceptual building blocks that are required to study interorganizational trust and distrust as specific phenomena in public administration. The authors argue that both...

Avaliar as reformas da gestão pública numa perspectiva internacional é um exercício científico difícil e problemático. Cinco problemas parecem emergir: a unidade de análise para uma comparação internacional é menos óbvia do que parece. Níveis de governo são diferentes de setores e de instrumentos e processos específicos. A unidade de sentido é o se...

One of the most significant European higher education reform initiatives of the last decade is the introduction of a European Qualification Framework (EQF) emphasising Learning Outcomes (LOs) in higher education. The EQF is offered as a reform to contribute to increased transparency and mobility, and also implies a certain degree of standardization...

In vijf Working Papers verkennen we het interorganisationeel vertrouwen, of “bestuurlijk vertrouwen”, in de Vlaamse overheid. Ze zijn een eerste onderdeel van het onderzoeksproject “Bestuurlijk Vertrouwen” (2012-2015) dat wordt uitgevoerd in het kader van het Steunpunt Bestuurlijke Organisatie – Slagkrachtige Overheid. Dit onderzoeksproject concent...

Oomsels, P., Bouckaert, G., Verhoest, K. (2013). Exploring Administrational trust in Flanders: Sources of interorganisational trust and distrust in the Flemish public administration. N