Review by Choice Review
This book has an ambitious agenda: to determine whether various contemporary public management practices in selected West European countries are appropriate for adoption by the East European countries. It contains 22 chapters organized in four parts: 1) the introduction and models of public management reform consisting of radical reform (e.g., public choice, entrepreneurialism), incremental reform, and moderate managerialism; 2) public management in Central and Eastern Europe with case studies of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia; 3) public management in the OECD countries, with case studies of the UK, Ireland, Australian and New Zealand, the Netherlands, and France; 4) and a conclusion about the applicability of Western reforms to East Europe. The descriptions and analyses are solid, although they are based heavily on formal structures and not enough on behavioral studies. The biggest problem, however, which becomes clear in the case studies of Central and Eastern Europe, is that the public agencies of the former communist countries have a long way to go before they can even consider innovations in public management. Simply developing a career civil service that attracts top-flight personnel and offers some autonomy from the political process must come first and must be accomplished in a manner related to the unique characteristics of each country. These findings are essentially acknowledged in the conclusion. Upper-division undergraduates and above. S. E. C. Hintz; University of Wisconsin--Oshkosh
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
