Different Roads to Unfamiliar Places: UK Experience in Comparative Perspective

This article views the new public management (NPM) as a prime example of the sour laws of unintended consequences in action. Section 1 places the UK in international context by arguing there is no such thing as NPM and suggesting recent public sector reforms vary along six dimensions: privatisation, marketisation, corporate management, regulation, decentralisation and political control. Section 2 updates the UK story by describing developments under New Labour. Section 3 identifies the unintended consequences of reform: fragmentation, steering, accountability, co‐ordination, and public service ethics. Section 4 argues the conventional story of public sector reform as marketization and corporate management omits significant changes. British government differentiated its service delivery systems and now employs at least three governing structures: bureaucracy, markets and networks. The final section discusses whether British experience is different. I argue a satisfactory explanation of the differences must include an analysis of governmental traditions that make public sector reform distinctive everywhere.