A bundle of measures designed to improve the efficiency of public sector organisations, introduced around the world during the 1990s, came to be known as New Public Management. They were structured around three main propositions:

• that the decentralisation of management responsibilities would allow local knowledge about priority problems to drive more efficient budget allocations and improve local accountabilities;

• that the separation of purchaser and service provider functions would induce both technical and allocative efficiency gains as the commissioners of services could hold suppliers more accountable for the quality and volume of services they provided; and

• that, as a result, budgets could be more related to activities so that central government agencies could use budget allocations to steer resources towards public priorities.

The implementation of these ideas in most countries outside the `leader countries' in Europe and Australasia has been slow and uneven at best and has faltered in even some of the `leader countries'. This seminar series explored why this should be so. Some common themes include the need for strong institutions that hold politicians and service commissioners accountable; the difficulty politicians have in distancing themselves from operational decisions and `managing by contract' and the broader environment of social institutions that determine political and bureaucratic behaviours.

New Public Management: how well does it travel?

Alex Matheson, OECD

Public expenditure management as an instrument of reform

Andrew Lawson, Oxford Policy Management

The New Public Management: improving research and policy argument

Michael Barzelay, London School of Economics & Political Science

Using an NPM template to design government reforms: the case of Brazil

Chico Gaetani, London School of Economics & Political Science

The case of the UK NHS

Karen Caines , IHSD

An economist looks at incentives for public sector reform

David Soskice, University of Berlin

Government, public service and criminal justice

David Faulkner, Centre for Criminological Research, Oxford

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