ABSTRACT
States have to cope with many demanding trends, so they think about new ways of organising their executive branches. Most of the recent administrative reforms have counted on elements of New Public Management (NPM), which allows the reformers to choose from a vast pool of strategies and concepts. NPM in this chapter stands for ideas that have been developed in the private sector to enhance its effectiveness and efficiency and then transferred to the public sector without adapting or changing them dramatically. The following section looks at the administrative reform programmes of NPM from a theoretical perspective, linking them to the theories they are based on, namely public choice, principal-agent theory, transaction cost economics and public management. Ensuing this assessment several points of critique are launched hinting at the lack of normative political concepts within the model of NPM. This is especially challenging as the administration and politics are two inseparable systems (Peters, 1995b:4). The third part reverts to administrative reforms in Austria, where elements of NPM have not gained a real foothold yet. Compared to other countries the Austrian NPM programmes show a lack of coherence and force, which can be partly explained by institutional, political and socio-economic conditions and the strict adherence to the rule of law.
