How well do governments do in converting the resources they take from us, like taxes, into services that improve the well-being of individuals, groups, and society as a whole? In other words: how well do they perform?
This question has become increasingly prominent in public debates over the past couple of decades, especially in the developed world but also in developing countries. As the state has grown during the second half of the 20th century, so pressures to justify its role in producing public services have also increased. Governments across the world have implemented all sorts of policies aimed at improving performance.
But how much do we know about what actually improves performance of public organisations and services? On what theories, explicit or more often implicit, are these policies based? The answer is: too much and too little. There are dozens of theories, models, assumptions, and prescriptions about 'what works' in improving performance. But there's been very little attempt to 'join up' theories about performance and make some sense of the evidence we have within a coherent theoretical framework.
This ground-breaking book sets out to begin to fill this gap by creatively synthesising the various fragments and insights about performance into a framework for systematically exploring and understanding how public sector performance is shaped. It focuses on three key aspects: the external 'performance regime' that drives performance of public agencies; the multiple dimensions that drive performance from within; and the competing public values that frame both of these and shape what public expects from public services.

Public sector bureaucracies have been subjected to harsh criticism. One solution which has been widely adopted over the past two decades has been to 'unbundle government' - that is to break down monolithic departments and ministries into smaller, semi-autonomous 'agencies'. These are often governed by some type of performance contract, are at 'arm's length' or further from their 'parent' ministry or department and are freed from many of the normal rules governing civil service bodies. This, the first book to survey the 'why' and the 'how' of this epidemic of 'agencification', is essential reading for advanced students and researchers of public management. It includes case studies from every continent - from Japan to America and from Sweden to Tanzania, these 14 case studies (some covering more than one country) critically examine how such agencies have been set up and managed.

This book seeks to explain how human beings can appear to be so malleable, yet have an inherited set of behavioural instincts. When the founder of sociobiolgy, E.O. Wilson, made a plea for greater integration of the physical and human sciences in his book "Consilience", there was an underlying assumption that the traffic would be mainly one way - from physical to human science. This book reverses this assumption and draws on a new branch of human sciences, paradoxical systems theory, to re-conceptualise some of the most innovative developments from evolutionary psychology, ethology and behavioural genetics. The approach is also applied to politics, economics and public policy. The author is Professor of Public Policy at Nottingham University.

Contents:
Part One: Setting the Scene
1. Managers managing? The international trend towards agencies, quangos and contratualization Colin Talbot
2. Patterns of structural change Geert Bouckaert and Guy B. Peters
Part Two: Agencies, Quangos and Contracts in the Heartlands of the New Public Management
3. Adapting the agency concept: variations within 'Next Steps' Francesca Gains
4. Executive agencies and joined-up government in the UK Oliver James
5. Contracting and accountability: a model of effective contracting drawn from the U.S. experience Jocelyn Johnston and Barbara Romzek
6. Contractualism and performance measurement in Australia Linda McGuire
7. The agency concept in North America: failure, adaptation and incremental change Andrew Graham and Alasdair Roberts
Part Three: Autonomization in Continental Europe and Japan
8. Quangos in Dutch government Sandra van Thiel
9. Lost in translation? Shifting interpretations of the concept of 'agency': the Dutch case Amanda Smullen
10. Central agencies in Sweden: a report from Utopia Jon Pierre
11. Agencification in Japan Kiyoshi Yamamoto
Part Four: Autonomization in the Developing and Transitional Countries
12. New Public management in a developing country: creating executive agencies in Tanzania Janice Caulfield
13. Agencies in Thailand Bidyha Bowornwathana
14. The design, performance and sustainability of semi-autonomous revenue authorities in Africa and Latin America Robert R. Taliercio Jr
15. Castles built on sand? Agencies in Latvia Christopher Pllitt
16. Agencies in Jamaica Colin Talbot
Part Five: Overview
17. Theoretical overview Christopher Pollitt

How well do governments do in converting the resources they take from us, like taxes, into services that improve the well-being of individuals, groups, and society as a whole? In other words: how well do they perform?
This question has become increasingly prominent in public debates over the past couple of decades, especially in the developed world but also in developing countries. As the state has grown during the second half of the 20th century, so pressures to justify its role in producing public services have also increased. Governments across the world have implemented all sorts of policies aimed at improving performance.
But how much do we know about what actually improves performance of public organisations and services? On what theories, explicit or more often implicit, are these policies based? The answer is: too much and too little. There are dozens of theories, models, assumptions, and prescriptions about 'what works' in improving performance. But there's been very little attempt to 'join up' theories about performance and make some sense of the evidence we have within a coherent theoretical framework.
This ground-breaking book sets out to begin to fill this gap by creatively synthesising the various fragments and insights about performance into a framework for systematically exploring and understanding how public sector performance is shaped. It focuses on three key aspects: the external 'performance regime' that drives performance of public agencies; the multiple dimensions that drive performance from within; and the competing public values that frame both of these and shape what public expects from public services.