Chapter 6 Public Administration Modernization: Common Reform Trends or Different Paths and National Understandings in the EU Countries

In this chapter, we present results from an EU-wide survey on public administration reform. Our analysis shows that the 27 public administrations covered still organize their HR services very differently. Divergent structures, traditions, and paths taken do not seem to give rise to an overall shared new model of a European Administrative Space, yet. Different national traditions have a considerable impact on the modernization paths and the organization of HR decision-making structures and account for similarities between more related public administrations. The clusters based on the administrative traditions and on the HR systems proved to be helpful in outlining different patterns, but also revealed several directions for refinement.