As the study of administrative reform has progressed over the past decades, worthy descriptive research on these changes has accumulated across a number of countries. This volume seeks to push the analysis beyond said first generation of research, focusing on the 'paradoxes' or unintended effects of public sector reform. Therefore, it does not attempt to provide a detailed description of administrative change in the 14 systems considered, but to analyse them selectively from a 'paradox perspective', i.e. highlighting apparently surprising or unintended aspects of administrative reform. The administrative systems discussed in this volume include not only the developed industrial democracies, but also transitional and developing countries such as the People's Republic of China and the former socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the European Union is analysed as a compound administrative system constructed from its constituent parts.

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