New Public Management reforms in Europe and their effects: findings from a 20-country top executive survey

Points for practitioners For practitioners, this article provides an in-depth perspective on how top public sector executives perceive the impact of NPM-style public sector reforms on a number of performance dimensions. It allows them to better understand the relationship between reform strategies and outcomes in European administration, and allows them to compare their own experiences with those of top executives in other countries. This article assesses the impact of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms in European countries as perceived by top public sector officials. Using data from an executive survey conducted in 20 European countries, we look at the relationship between five key NPM reforms (downsizing, agencification, contracting out, customer orientation and flexible employment practices) and four dimensions of public sector performance: cost efficiency, service quality, policy coherence and coordination, and equal access to services. Structural equation modelling reveals that treating service users as customers and flexible employment are positively related to improvements on all four dimensions of performance. Contracting out and downsizing are both positively related to improved efficiency, but downsizing is also associated with worse service quality. The creation of autonomous agencies is unrelated to performance. This suggests that policy-makers seeking to modernize the public sector should prioritize managerial reforms within public organizations over structural transformations.