Book excerpt: After a quarter of a century of implementation of New Public Management (NPM) reform strategies, this book assesses the major real outcomes of these reforms on states and public sectors, at both the organisational level and a more political level. Unlike most previous accounts of reform, this book looks at how reform has changed the role of the public administration in democratic governance. Featuring case studies on the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Post communist states, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey and the European Commission, and focusing on two issues this book: Examines the significant variations in the "trajectories" of administrative reform among West European countries on the basis of empirically rooted research on different national case studies. Assesses the extent to which these "constitutive" public policies have affected the institutions of government and the governing processes of our democratic occidental states and ask how have NPM-inspired programs, with their exclusive focus on managerialist objectives and instruments, challenged the political and democratic nature of public administration? Looking at the broader issues relating to the current recompositions of democratic states, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of all matters relating to public administration and governance within political science, management, public law, sociology, contemporary history, and cultural studies.