INDIVIDUALIZED CONTRACTS FOR TOP PUBLIC SERVANTS - COPYING BUSINESS, PATH-DEPENDENT POLITICAL REENGINEERING OR TROBRIAND CRICKET

This article compares the ''contractualization'' of senior civil-servi ce employment in New Zealand and the UK over the past decade. It argue s the conventional interpretation of the introduction of individual co ntracts for senior civil servants-as part of a worldwide process of mo dernizing the public sector by mimicking private-sector practice-neith er explains major differences between the two cases nov the many ways in which private business practice was in fact not followed in either case. ''Political re-engineering'' seems to have been a more important impetus in a form that was highly path-dependent and did not produce convergent outcomes. But even so, it does not follow that the outcome of the Mete contract regimes adopted for top civil servants necessaril y follows the intentions of the architects of reform, Its is shown by discussing two prominent cases in which the new contractualized accoun tability arrangements were tested and an element of ''Trobriand cricke t'' (that is, a game played differently from the intentions of those w ho introduced it) entered into the contractualization of senior civil- service terms.