The European public sectors in the age of managerialism
| Author | Giovanni Esposito,Ewan Ferlie,Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395717727253 |
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2017
Article
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(4) 480 –499
The European public sectors
© The Author(s) 2017
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in the age of managerialism
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717727253
DOI: 10.1177/0263395717727253
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Giovanni Esposito
HEC Liège School of Management, Belgium
Ewan Ferlie
King’s College London, UK
Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta
University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, Italy
Abstract
During the past 50 years, European public sectors have undergone a profound process of
organizational change, where managerial tools and principles from the private sector have
permeated through governments and administrations of many countries. A substantial amount
of academic literature has now been devoted to public management reforms. Many scholars
have associated them with the diffusion of a managerialist ideology. However, the relationship
between public management reforms, political ideology, and public expressions of support
for these reforms by political parties has been a relatively under-explored topic within the
literature and is the gap we address in this article. Using a longitudinal framework of study, our
analysis shows how issues surrounding managerialist reforms have evolved across the electoral
manifestos of European parties during the past 50 years. Our findings reveal that these reforms
have enjoyed a growing political profile over time in many countries within Western and
Eastern Europe. Furthermore, we also examine and discuss the differences and similarities of
these reforms across countries.
Keywords
electoral programme, managerialism, New Public Management, party manifestos, public sector
reform
Received: 15th October 2016; Revised version received: 13th July 2017; Accepted: 17th July 2017
Corresponding author:
Giovanni Esposito, Lentic Center, HEC Liège School of Management, ULg, Boulevard du Rectorat, 19 – B 51,
Sart Tilman, 4000 Liège, Belgium.
Email: g.esposito@ulg.ac.be
Esposito et al.
481
Introduction
In the mid-20th century, Burnham (1941) asserted that, as of the early years of this cen-
tury, American state agencies came progressively to be dominated by a new ruling class
of managerial professionals. This ‘managerial revolution’ occurred in the wave of the
opposition against the extension of government ownership and the setting up of new
bureaus and governmental bodies. These were subject to a constant stream of propaganda
which depicted them as ridden with inefficiencies compared with private businesses
(Burnham, 1941; Preston and Post, 1974).
During the past 50 years, European public sector organizations have experienced
the same process of change. Private sector managerial tools and principles have
spread across both central and local governments, with the aim of improving effec-
tiveness, efficiency, and economy (Aucoin, 1990; Hood, 1995; London, 2002; Walsh,
1997). Many scholars have associated this process of change with the diffusion of
managerialism (Clarke and Newman, 2004; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011; Saint-
Martin, 1998).
Managerialism differs from management. The latter defines a set of practices in
organizations involving the definition of objectives and the linking of appropriate
resources and work structures to their pursuit. The former, on the other hand, refers to
a set of ideas based on the assumption that organizations can only work properly if
decision-making is placed in the hands of professionally trained managers (Enteman,
1993; Parker, 2002). In the context of public sector organizations, managerialism is
synonym of New Public Management (NPM) (Hood, 1991; Hood and Peters, 2004;
Pollitt, 1990) and is based on the belief that the public sector would work better if it
takes on private sector management as an organizing principle. Many national govern-
ments have implemented managerial reforms using the NPM model as a basis. They
have introduced private sector values of efficiency and productivity in the administra-
tion of public bodies, on the assumption that the former is superior to the latter (Lynch
et al., 2012; Pollitt, 2013).
A substantial amount of academic literature has now been devoted to the topic of
managerialist reforms. Ferlie et al. (1996) have focused on the managerial logic behind
these reforms in the context of the United Kingdom, a leading NPM jurisdiction.
Aucoin (1990) and Hood (1991) suggest that a key declared purpose of NPM reforms
is to move from the traditional Weberian/bureaucratic model to a more customer-ori-
ented and flexible management style which is grounded in private sector approaches.
Some scholars (Clarke and Newman, 2004; Pollitt, 1990) have rather focused on the
normative foundations of NPM reforms and have noticed that these are the outcomes
of a neoliberal ideology. They believe that greater efficiency and effectiveness in the
delivery of public services could be achieved using management practices derived
from the corporate world. Following on from this perspective, Enteman (1993) has
investigated the managerialist conception of society and Parker (2002) its core beliefs
with regard to the organization of human interactions in society. Other studies have
focused on the consequences of managerialism by highlighting its impact not only in
the provision of basic public services (i.e. Trowler, 1998) but also in the extent to
which public decision-making processes are independent from external private actors
(i.e. Saint-Martin, 1998).
NPM reforms to government are led by elected ministers who are themselves lead-
ing members of political parties. Ministers are elected on the basis of a party manifesto
482
Politics 38(4)
which contains collective commitments and aspirations and which can be seen as an
important document for analysis. The relationship between NPM reforms, political ide-
ology, and public expressions of support for these reforms by political parties has been
relatively under-explored in the literature and is the gap we address here.
Recent studies suggest that national parties are key players for the promotion of
NPM reforms: they are important to secure voters’ support to managerialist values and
– once in power – are crucial to effectively transform values into national reform plans
(Esposito et al., 2016). Nevertheless, the primary focus of these studies is party mani-
festos released in Europe between a relatively short time period (1997–2011). They do
not provide any comprehensive historical picture about the spread of NPM across
national party manifestos.
This article is the first to systematically map political party commitments to NPM
reforms over a much longer time period. The Comparative Manifesto Database (CMD;
Budge et al., 2001; Klingemann et al., 2006) is used to collect data on political parties,
and more specifically quantitative information on the content of parties’ electoral pro-
grams. By studying national parties’ political rhetoric from a longitudinal perspective
(Pettigrew, 1990), this article offers a new angle on an old research topic. It explores the
evolution of the importance of NPM reforms across national parties’ manifestos in Europe
during the past six decades. It answers the following question: Have NPM reforms been
construed as a technical, rational analytic, and evidence-based domain, disconnected
from party political life, or, conversely, have these reforms been characterized by a grow-
ing political profile over time?
The article is structured as follows. Section ‘Managerialism in European party mani-
festos: insight from the literature’ examines the relevant literature on public-sector mana-
gerialism and formulates a number of hypotheses with regard to how NPM reforms have
evolved across national parties’ manifestos in Europe during the past six decades. Section
‘Data and analysis’ describes the process of data collection and the methodology used in
order to test the theoretical conjectures. Section ‘Results’ presents the findings of our
empirical tests, which are then extensively discussed in section ‘Discussion’. Finally, sec-
tion ‘Conclusion’ provides the overall conclusions.
Managerialism in European party manifestos: Insight from
the literature
In the context of public sector organizations, NPM is the best-known and most important
manifestation of managerialism (Pollitt, 1990, 2014) As we explore further below, a great
amount of scientifically accredited publications have focused on the country-level imple-
mentation of NPM reforms. Nevertheless, theory development continues to be insuffi-
cient for those who wish to learn more about the importance devoted to this topic by
national parties. On the basis of the existing literature, a number of theoretical hypotheses
can be formulated with regard to the evolution of these reforms across national party
manifestos in Western and Eastern Europe.
Western Europe
In many Western European countries, managerialist values have increasingly dominated
the societal discourse of the 21st century and NPM reforms have become increasingly
Esposito et al.
483
important across many electoral programmes (Klikauer, 2013). Many authors (Aucoin,
1990; Dunsire, 1995; Gruening, 2001) argue that these values coalesced into a homogene-
ous system of beliefs during the 1950s and 1960s with the rise of new institutional eco-
nomics and public choice theory (Buchanan, 1972; Downs, 1957; Niskanen, 1971). They
came to...
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