Reflecting on the development of public service bargains since the publication of our book The Politics of Public Bargains five years ago, this paper will (a) show some of the ways in which political changes in the later 2000s have put established forms of public service bargains under pressure, with severe stresses on reward bargains, new challenges for loyalty and responsibility, and major competency issues; (b) Argue that the ruling orthodoxy of the ‘managerial bargain’ which dominated public service reform discourse for two decades or so is particularly challenged by these changes; (c) Argue that a reversal of the observed tendency towards ‘complexification’ of reward bargains in several systems might take place in certain extreme conditions, but that in general such complexification can be expected to continue.
