The Evolution of Public Service Bargains of Top Civil Servants in State Administration in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Top civil servants have a crucial role in the management of the civil service. This role has been severely challenged as a result of recent administrative reforms. Most of the literature on public management reforms has focused on managerial and technical aspects. The reforms, however, also have institutional aspects as they have an impact on the statutory systems and on the power relations between senior civil servants and their ministers. One way to perceive these institutional changes is to look at them through the lens of ‘public service bargains’. This concept, first introduced by Schaffer (1973), was further developed by Hood and Lodge in their well-known book ‘The politics of public service bargains. Reward, competency, loyalty – and blame’ (2006). They define public service bargains as ‘explicit or implicit agreements between public servants and those they serve’. In an earlier publication, Hood defined a public service bargain in a more extensive way as ‘any explicit or implicit understanding between (senior) public servants and other actors in a political system over their duties and entitlements relating to responsibility, autonomy and political identity, and expressed in convention or formal law or a mixture of both’ (2000). Key aspects of public service bargains, which were put forward by Hood and Lodge (2006) include reward, competency, and loyalty or responsibility. The concept of public service bargains has not been widely tested so far in empirical research. Hood and Lodge have documented the shift in public service bargains in the UK and Germany but empirical evidence on other countries is less available. In this section, we invite empirical, comparative papers describing shifts in public service bargains, and analyzing the impact of these shifts on the functioning of the civil service in various countries,. Keywords: public service bargains, politico-administrative relations, comparative public administration

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