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Christopher Pollitt Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Public Management Institute Leuven Belgium

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Most countries now share the prospect of an extended period of public fiscal austerity. Yet at the same time the demands for improved public services continues. This paper reviews the relationship between expenditure restraint and reform. It describes three broad strategies for achieving savings, noting that each has a different mixture of advantages and disadvantages. It then identifies four significant considerations that public service leaders will need to bear in mind as they decide their programs: timing, ethics, communications and legitimacy. The paper concludes with the observation that simultaneously tackling the needs for austerity and reform will call for extraordinary levels of public service leadership.

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  • Moore, J. (2009): Chancellor’s Version of the Three Wise Monkeys is Fooling Nobody. The Independent 11 December, 10–11.

  • National Audit Office (2006a): Achieving Innovation in Central Government Organizations . HC 1447-1. London: The Stationary Office.

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  • O’Donnell, G. (2009): Speech to Public Services in the 2010s: Prosperity, Austerity and Recovery . QEII Conference Centre, London, 11 December.

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  • OECD (2005): Modernising Government: The Way Forward . Paris: OECD.

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  • OECD (2008): Ireland: Towards an Integrated Public Service. OECD Public Management Review , Paris: OECD.

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  • Pollitt, C. — Bouckaert, G. (2004): Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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  • Pollitt, C. — Van Thiel, S. — Homburg, V. (eds.) (2007): New Public Management in Europe: Adaptation and Alternatives . Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan.

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  • Roberts, A. (2006): Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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  • Roberts, A. (2010): The Rise and Fall of the Guardians. Foreign Affairs January 25.

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2023  
Scopus  
CiteScore 1.5
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Society and Economy
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Society and Economy
Language English
Size B5
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1972
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per Year
1
Issues
per Year
4
Founder Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem
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H-1093 Budapest, Hungary Fővám tér 8.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
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ISSN 1588-9726 (Print)
ISSN 1588-970X (Online)