Contract regimes and reflexive governance: Comparing employment service reforms in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Considine, M
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3298
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9299.00221
• 发表日期: 2000
• 页码: 613-638

摘要

Contemporary debates concerning the nature of 'new governance' typically focus upon the shifting roles played by bureaucracies, networks and markets in the provision of public services (Kooiman 1993; Ormsby 1988). At the core of these recent changes we find a strong interest in having private agents deliver public services. Sometimes this is expressed as privatization and in other cases a 'mixed economy' of public and private participation may be devised (Williamson 1975; Moe 1984). In this study a number of central elements of neo-liberal public management are brought together in a single focus upon the 'contract regime' in order to examine the extent to which single initiatives might combine to produce a recognizable system of governance. Such an institutional form may then be more carefully specified and its impact compared in different governmental systems. Using a four-country comparison of employment service reform the study shows that distinctions based upon degree of privatization do not adequately explain regime types whereas distinctions based upon 'compliance-centred' or 'client-centred' forms of contracting are more powerful. The type of reflexive interaction between different elements or levels of contracting also explains country differences.