Government Transformation and the Future of Public Employment

Public administration has traditionally been characterised with such bureaucratic features as hierarchical and formalised organisational structure, clear and rigid career paths, lifetime tenure, full-time employment, principle of seniority, advantageous pension schemes and rigid remuneration systems. These features were introduced in late 19th century to reduce the risk of excessive political influence, corruption, misconduct and instability of government. Today, however, numerous administrative and managerial reforms are affecting these longstanding aspects of public employment. Size and composition of workforce, its working and employment conditions, nature of work, and values and legal status are all undergoing a process of change. The various reforms are also gradually shrinking the size of central public administrations of the EU-27 Member States. They are becoming more decentralised and fragmented, more diversified, more aligned and less specific. The on-going financial crisis and the introduction of hasty austerity measures have a strong impact on the public workforce in most EU Member States. So far, restructuring programmes and effects of austerity measures have not been a subject of rigorous scrutiny. Similarly, the effects of public management reforms have not been studied either and have resulted in national administrations having no longer a single coherent framework. Filling this important gap, this comparative study attempts to assess the effects of these developments in public employment in the central public administrations of the EU Member States offering insight into the future of public employment.

Christoph Demmke is Professor of Comparative Public Administration at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe. He holds a PhD in Administrative Sciences and taught Comparative Public Administration at several European Universities, national civil service academies and European institutions. The author was an Emile Noel Fellow at Harvard Law School and visiting fellow at American University and the University of Georgia. His fields of specialisation are comparative studies of public service reform including human resource management reforms. He published many books and articles on comparative public service reforms and public-service ethics, among other topics. He has regularly advised the different EU-Presidencies in the field of public services reforms and human resource management reforms.
Timo Moilanen, M.Soc.Sc., is a political scientist specialised in public-service ethics and human resource management. For most of his working career he has been affiliated with the University of Helsinki. He has taught human resource management, organisational ethics and research methods at various universities. He has worked for several EU Presidencies in the European Public Administration Network, and carried out projects for several international institutions. The author has conducted a number of comparative studies and evaluations on state personnel and employer policy, governing bodies and public-service ethics among the EU Member States.