This paper provides a comparative analysis of how horizontal coordination is organized and managed in central state administration in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The paper attempts to grasp and comprehend the challenges of inter-departmental coordination faced by the permanent secretaries in governments of liberal democracies. Our primary focus is on how the role of the top civil servants in horizontal coordination may vary due to different public service bargains in the countries concerned (Hood & Lodge, 2006. The Politics of Public Service Bargains. Reward, Competency, Loyalty - and Blame: Oxford Scholarship Online). Our basic thesis is that variations in the adoption of a managerial bargain associated with New Public Management will cause variations in the role played by top civil servants in accomplishing horizontal coordination. The hypothesis is tested that when the functioning of top civil servants can be described in terms of a managerial PSB, top civil servants’ role in interdepartmental coordination will be limited, as the focus of top civil servants will be on achieving goals set for their specific department, rather than for the central government as a collective. The analysis is based on data generated in an international comparative research project, the MANDATE project initiated by the Public Management Institute, K.U.Leuven and the Université Catholique de Louvain. Scholars from the countries concerned have participated in this project. The data where generated from desk research, interviews with the top civil servants and country experts, survey responses from the top civil servants as well as secondary data from the countries. We believe our work would fit in well in the panel on changing public service bargains, as the paper compares how the role of top civil servants in providing horizontal coordination may vary in line with changes in the public service bargain.
