This enlightening book scrutinizes the shifting and overlapping governance paradigms that inform public administration reforms. Exploring the models that shape and reshape the daily operation of public organizations, it explains the core features of public bureaucracy and professional rule in the modern day. From the rise to supremacy of New Public Management to the growing preference for alternatives, such as Digital Era Governance, Public Value Management and New Public Governance, four world-renowned authors launch a powerful and systematic comparison of the competing and co-existing paradigms.

Advancing the 'public governance diamond' as a critical tool for comparing the core features of governance paradigms, this insightful book discusses the underlying behavioural assumptions of these models and the challenges faced by leaders when managing in a public sector.

Informed by both key theory and empirical analysis, this book will be crucial reading for students and researchers seeking an authoritative voice on competing and co-existing modes of governance. Public leaders and managers, as well as public employees, will also benefit from its insights into the varying and multifaceted dynamics of public governance.

About the Author
Jacob Torfing, Professor of Politics and Institutions, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Denmark and Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Nord University, Norway, Lotte Bogh Andersen, Professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Carsten Greve, Professor, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Kurt Klaudi Klausen, Professor, Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Reviews
'The Danes have done it again: advancing the field of public administration in a way that is both imaginative and helpful. Public Governance Paradigms provides us with a highly sophisticated ''think piece'' about the consecutive philosophies and designs of how to design and run a system of government that have emerged since Max Weber laid down his model of bureaucracy. Clear, concise, balanced, and constructive, this book effortlessly traverses a hundred years of public sector scholarship and reform. Easily the single best compass available to students, researchers and practitioners seeking to balance continuity and innovation in the ways in which we envisage and craft our public institutions and their professional practices.'
--Paul 't Hart, Utrecht University and Netherlands School of Public Administration, the Netherlands

'This book orients readers to the major issues and debates concerning how the public sector should be organized and run. The authors brilliantly use their ''public governance diamond'' to provide back-to-back comparisons of seven different public governance paradigms, bringing each paradigm's relative strengths and weaknesses into clear focus.'
--Christopher Ansell, University of California, Berkeley

Book Information
ISBN 9781802202182
Author Jacob Torfing
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
Publisher Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd