Reinventing governance, reinventing democracy?

Public service systems are transforming into market-like organisations of service delivery and in many countries there is experimentation with user boards, customer choice, and stakeholderism. Meanwhile, democratic governance looks surprisingly much like the way it did 25 or 50 years ago. This article reviews the transformation of governance from the vantage point of democratic values. The basic argument of the article is that western democracies are currently implementing governance reform and administrative reform to increase public sector efficiency without much reflection on the democratic ramifications of reform.