Public Sector Reform and the Public Servant

This chapter provides a conceptual overview of how trajectories of reform have impacted on how we think about public servants in theory and practice. It will explain the notion of trajectories of reform, and of reform more broadly, making the case we need to recognize it as a complex, multilevel, dynamic set of processes, rather than as some sort of intervention or exogenous shock to public sector systems. We also sketch out the main models of public administration and management that have been so dominant in global public administration, and link these to reform and explain how they shape the very notion of the public servant.