Is there a future without civil service and civil servants? This volume concludes a large comparative project that started in 1990. The book considers the changes in the past fifteen years, and looks to the challenges facing civil servants in the 21st century: performance, globalization and legitimacy. Given the lack of attention for civil servant "systems"as specifically public sector institutionalized arrangements in a political and societal context, this study fills a clear gap.

This revised and expanded edition of a benchmark collection compares how civil services around the world have adapted to cope with managing public services in the 21st century. The volume provides insights into multi-level governance, juridification and issues of efficiency and responsiveness as well as exploring the impact of fiscal austerity.

The role and position of the civil service as core actors in the public sector has been seriously questioned in recent years. This volume provides a comparative study of civil service systems in Asia, Western Europe and Africa. The cast of international contributors provide new insights.

Civil Service Systems in Western Europe presents a comprehensive overview of the important issues in modern bureaucracies and provides a comparative analysis of the civil service systems of nine Western European nations. In each chapter expert contributors examine a country specific case study and employ a neo-institutional framework, combined with extensive empirical research, to emphasise the specific nature and development of civil service systems, paying special attention to the current features of each country's civil service.The authors focus initially on the structural dimensions of civil service systems, which are explored through themes such as internal labour markets and reform and diffusion. The interface between civil service systems and their political and social environment is studied by analysing issues such as representativeness, politicisation and public opinion, whilst the dynamic nature of civil service systems is emphasised by examining their historical development. The authors conclude by comparing the civil service systems discussed in the book, attempting to find parallels and variations between them and proposing possible explanations for the development of these similarities and differences. This comprehensive book will prove popular with scholars and students of public administration, political science and international affairs as well as civil servants, politicians and policymakers.