Making sense of public management reform

This article establishes a basic framework for a comparative analysis of public management reform around the world in recent times. It focuses on politicians and administrators as ‘drivers’ and/or ‘supporters’ of reform, as influenced by their policy roles and contributions, along with electoral politics and government-legislature alignments. Three models are outlined on the basis of the reform experience of selected countries. The models are then related to various reform initiatives by way of eight propositions. The underlying aim is to provide some guidance for research and understanding of reform in different contexts.