Institutions, distributional concerns, and public sector reform

As in other Western countries, a wave of reform has swept the Danish public sector. The record of these reforms is mixed and paradoxical; an ambiguous delegation of executive authority and radical privatization have been succ essfully implemented, while other measures, especially contracting out and user democracy or the introduction of greater choice, turn out to have fail ed. The paper argues that this experience offers two general lessons. First , short-term costs and benefits are decisive to those who enact and impleme nt public sector reform. Second, institutional factors specific to each typ e of reorganization have a major impact on the political distribution of co sts and benefits.