'New public managers' in Europe: Changes and trends

New Public Management (NPM) reforms as described in Chapter 1 have affected the profile and functioning of top civil servants. This chapter discusses the combined effect of personnel reforms and the creation of so-called quasi-autonomous organizations. It would seem that as a result of these reforms two different types of ‘new public managers’ have emerged: senior public officials within the central departments and the top executives of quasi-autonomous agencies. We expect a number of differences between these two categories. The main aim of this chapter is to investigate these expectations. To do so, we will use data from two surveys of our own (on the Netherlands and France) and secondary sources on a number of countries (Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom).