This enlightening book scrutinizes the shifting governance paradigms that inform public
administration reforms. From the rise to supremacy of New Public Management to new the
growing preference for alternatives, four world-renowned authors launch a powerful and
systematic comparison of the competing and co-existing paradigms, explaining the core
features of public bureaucracy and professional rule in the modern day.

Public governance paradigms: competing and co-existing is the latest recent addition to
Edward Elgar's series on change in action. The book, written by internationally recognised
Danish professors, covers the development of various public governance paradigms over
recent decades and how these different approaches appear to go in and out of fashion. The
authors contrast a 'layer cake'model of separate forms of governance with a 'marble
cake'that involves hybrid forms of public governance, and they aim to explain how these …