In this chapter we explain how the Belgian administration is confronted with a double challenge for building a representative bureaucracy. Representative bureaucracy is concerned with making bureaucracies more responsive to the public they serve (Krislov, 1974; Sowa & Selden, 2003). On the one hand,...

The measurement and comparison of the public administration output of universities is an important means for mapping the state of the field. Yet, such exercises are very sensitive to design choices made in the ranking and measurement methodology. Following an overview of existing research on...

Throughout the 1990s, corruption cases, policy failure and scandals tarnished Belgium's international reputation. In this article, we analyze the effect of federalism and political culture on corruption and policy failures and their impact on the likelihood of such occurrences becoming scandals....

Public confidence in the Criminal Justice System has been found to be relatively low compared to public confidence in many other institutions. This lack of confidence has been attributed, in part, to low public understanding of how the courts work. Greater experience with the justice system is...

This report on making better use of information to drive improvement in local public services was commissioned from the School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham, by the Audit Commission. It explores how decision makers use information when making decisions. These decision makers...

Public sector reforms often focus on high impact agencies in order to restore trust in government and in the public administration. Using a face-to-face survey on citizensiquest; attitudes toward public services, we test what public agencies contribute to citizensiquest; general image of...

Competing values complicate debates on the reform of public services. Attention for competition and efficiency is balanced by concerns for equity and universality in service delivery. These potential value conflicts are best visible in the reform of services of general interest. Despite debates...

Purpose of this paper: A number of studies and indicators have ranked European countries in terms of the performance of their public sectors. This paper demonstrates there are important conceptual problems with such rankings and comparisons.Design/methodology/approach: Using the existing...

Public confidence in the justice system is relatively low compared to that in many other institutions. Part of this lack of confidence has been attributed to a low public understanding of how the justice system really works. Experience with the justice system is often identified as a way to...

Research findings have been contradictory with respect to the determinants of why people choose a public sector job. In this paper we use an internationally comparative design with data from 26 countries to explain public sector employment preference. The study shows that on the individual level...