A Comparative Study of Modernizing Government and Public Service Reforms: Analysis of the "Canada Model" and the Lessons for Japan(in Japanese)

0samu Koike

ESRI Discussion paper series from Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)

Abstract: In the past twenty years many industrialized nations have initiated various administrative reform strategies to reduce government deficit and to revitalize national economy. Based on the assumption that only economic rationality can improve government services, political leaders immediately effected the privatization, deregulation and outsourcing of public service delivery with the emphasis on the use of corporate management measures in public administration. These reform measures called the "New Public Management" [NPM for brevity] arrived in Japan in the late 1990's, although the same was already very successful in countries like the UK and New Zealand. Nonetheless, questions against the NPM have occurred in Europe. Scholars and practitioners criticized it for resulting to the fragmentation of governmental services and the decline in the public's trust on the government. The "Joined-Up" government initiative in the UK and later a chorus of the "whole of government" in Australia and New Zealand are the representatives of the new reform proposals under a cover of the "Modernizing government". A mixture of the NPM and the "Modernizing government" reform measures had a great impact on the civil service reforms in the world. The devolution of personnel management authority to the line managers, abolition of permanent employment system and performance management became popular among OECD countries in the late 1990's. While the total number of Japanese civil servants is the least among the OECD countries, no major change has taken place in Japan's civil service management system for quite a long period of time and while the trust on the bureaucracy and the popularity of government jobs are now in the decline. Finally, this paper discusses Japan's reform agenda for its civil service system through the analysis of reform experiences in other advanced countries and with special attention to the Canadian experience in public service reform in the 1990's.

Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2007-04
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