ABSTRACT
State reform should have attracted significant attention from mainstream organizational and management scholars as an extreme case of change management complexity. However, despite exceptions, it has not, although public policy and public administration scholars, who, however, tend to be somewhat disconnected from mainstream organization and management theory, have been studying policy and administrative reform for years. This chapter discusses reform as a special case of the challenges associated with transformational change, involving technical, organizational, institutional and trans-institutional features. It focuses, in particular, on the vicious circles that state reform often generates in southern European countries. The chapter defines the scope of reform and discusses its difficulties and the reason it often triggers vicious circles. It describes the process known as the vicious circle, its causes and its role in State reform. Reform of the state in southern European EU member states proved to be an extraordinarily complex process.
