New Public Management (NPM) is the label which many academics have given to a series of reforms
from the 1980s onwards, to improve the efficiency and performance of western governments
and/or public sector organizations. Examples are the development of performance indicators
and benchmarking, personnel reforms aimed at ‘normalising’ public sector employment on
private sector models, placing executive bodies at arms’ length from ministries, establishing public
private partnerships and introducing new management techniques and instruments. Continental
European governments have adapted and re-interpreted many of the Anglo-American
ideas underpinning the NPM, to adjust them to their own national politico-administrative contexts.
As a consequence, reforms of the public sector may have the same labels in different
countries but need not be the same in practice or in meaning; there is both convergence and divergence
