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The purpose of the article is to study the transformation of reform discourse after a major political shift and to discuss some of the factors that may explain change and continuity in reforms.

The study is an embedded case study of four financial reform initiatives in two countries with a political majority system: Australia and the USA. Data gathering is a combination of face‐to‐face interviews and the study of secondary sources.

Reforms do survive political shifts, but they are transformed through political and administrative processes. The retranslation of reforms seeks a correspondence to the dominant ideological environment and challenges the balance of power. Political élites are important but the position of political élites cannot be interpreted solely from their party political standpoint. Reform discourse is a relevant research subject to study the dynamics in reforms.

The main research issues in reform research are about the gap between rhetoric and reality, and the convergence and divergence between countries. The article adds to existing reform literature by focusing on transformation throughout time and on the political aspects of reforms.

Networks are many things¹, but certainly an important feature in contemporary government. In an era of collaboration, as Agranoff and McGuire (2003) ² label it, governments are increasingly networked, using and engaging in all sorts of networks to achieve policy goals. Often, working in and through networks is regarded as the best or even only way to solve wicked problems (Goldsmith & Eggers, 2004). However, at the same time, criticism towards networks as a problem-solving strategy seems to increase in the field: they cost money, are time-consuming, cause transparency and accountability problems and so on (Huxham & Vangen, 2005; Kenis & Provan, 2009; Sørensen & Torfing, 2007). In the region of Flanders (Belgium), for instance, one of the main political issues is to regain grip on the hollowed out state, where much policy making and policy-making capacity is said to be ‘lost’ in a nebula of networks of which neither politicians nor public managers can make sense anymore.

Promoters of performance measurement are convinced that performance measurement can greatly contribute to an efficiency boost in the field of public services. The purpose of this article is to treat this as a hypothesis and examine this hypothesis from various theoretical perspectives.

After some introductory remarks dealing with terminology, the article examines the potential offered by performance measurement and performance‐based contracting for increasing the efficiency of public service delivery. As a framework for this investigation, several theories are used in order to obtain a theory‐driven answer.

The majority of the theories applied are sceptical about the assumption that performance measurement will act as an efficiency driver. All in all an ambivalent picture prevails.

Further research is required into the factors which ensure that performance measurement will function as an efficiency driver for public services. Also, the empirical basis which investigates the relationship between performance measurement and efficiency is, up to now, very slim.

This paper looks into the chances of performance measurement – a central plank of new public management – as an efficiency driver. That performance measurement contributes significantly to an increase in efficiency is often articulated in official documents. This belief is treated throughout the paper as a hypothesis. The chances performance measurement may offer are examined from various theoretical angles. On a theoretical level, the paper contributes to obtaining a clearer picture of the potential performance measurement may offer.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the question of what accounts for appropriate performance reports in the context of the new public management (NPM), and how they can deliver the information they need to politicians.

The study is based on a survey of members of cantonal and federal members of governments and parliaments, where performance contracting has been introduced; 454 questionnaires answered.

The results of the study reflect the distinct roles of the parliament in the performance contracting process. On the content side of the reports, they are expected to contain general as well as detailed information. Outcome rather than output indicators are demanded, especially by parliamentarians. There is, also, a need for “early warning indicators” of long‐term threats, and extra‐ordinary incidents. Formally, a homogeneous reporting format across government should be realized. Reports are expected to be well visualized and to contain the most relevant indicators. Changes and deviations should be commented on. Reports should be printed, additional electronic publication would be accepted; external revision is considered to be necessary. Regarding time‐related aspects, the assumption is confirmed that political decision makers have very little time to deal with the reports. Reporting has to be as up to date as possible. Parliaments demand a one‐ or two‐year rhythm; governments require annual or even semi‐annual reports.

Up to now, public management research has addressed the issue of appropriate performance reporting insufficiently, despite the fact that the central concept of outcomes is a political concept. The research question answered in this paper – what the essential components of appropriate performance reports under NPM conditions, and how should they be characterized in order to give politicians the performance information they need, provides some public management research in a Swiss context.

The purpose of this paper is to provide, at a particularly significant point in its short history, an overview of a unique system of performance management to which all principal local authorities in England have been subject for the past three years.

Comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) is the controversial centrepiece of a system of performance measurement and improvement management that has involved the external classification of each individual local authority as Excellent, Good, Fair, Weak or Poor. It is a system that, as comparative data on the scale of local government demonstrate, could only be attempted in the UK. The article is written as a non‐technical and evaluative narrative of the introduction, early operation and impact of this system, concluding with the changes in methodology introduced to counter the phenomenon of too many of the nation's local authorities becoming officially too good for the existing measurement framework.

Key points that the article brings out concern the exceptional circumstances of UK local government that make such a performance management system even contemplatable, the improvement and recovery part of the regime, and the inherent implications of a system geared to providing regular statistical evidence of continuous performance improvement.

The originality lies in the CPA system itself, aspects of which at least will be of interest both to specialists in performance measurement and management and to those with an interest in decentralized government and intergovernmental relations.

Multifaceted issues such as safety, social inclusion, poverty, mobility, rural development, city regeneration or labour market integration require integrated approaches in their steering. Governments are looking for instruments that can address the boundary-spanning nature of many social problems. In their quest to achieve valued social outcomes, they struggle with their new role, and the inadequacy of both market working and government-led central agency. After three decades of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms, the strengths and weaknesses of this philosophy have become widely apparent. Fragmentation is a prominent observation in many evaluations of the NPM approach. The fragmentation of both policy and implementation lead to unsatisfactory public outcomes and a heightened experience of a loss of control on the part of policymakers. Achieving valued and sustainable outcomes requires collaboration between government departments, private actors, non-profit organisations, and citizens and requires tools that integrate the lessons of NPM with the new necessities of coordinated public governance. The public administration literature has in recent years been concerned with the ‘what's next?’ question, and many alternatives to NPM have been proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to manifest a method that exploits process analytics to discover critical knowledge for a business process. This knowledge eventually answers to the question if process behavior can suggest which activities should be outsourced to get the performance improved.

The author linked waste sources to process behavioral patterns, and adopted the positive deviance paradigm to highlight compelling behaviors. Various analytic tools (generalized regression, clustering, etc.) were used to provide recommendations.

By outsourcing small parts of the process, significant process improvement is expected. Evidence-based process analytics can effectively support the relevant decisions.

The author had no access to the relevant policy makers (process owners).

The author proposed an operationalization of concepts that connects process behavior to waste sources. The author presented the use of positive deviance as a guide for waste elimination projects.