Bureaucracy and the New Public Management

After several years from the advent of the global financial crisis, the economic situation of many of the world’s most advanced countries still seems to be affected by its startling consequences. This situation, characterized by international calls for interventions to promote growth and foster fiscal consolidation and financial sustainability, is a direct consequence of the 2008 financial crisis. Many governments have tried to address these issues following pro-cyclical fiscal policies. This choice refers to the strategy of decreasing spending and increasing revenues (tax and public services incomes). While this option is the more direct with the achievement of financial sustainability and fiscal consolidation, as a matter of fact, it is quite difficult to be implemented because it is characterized by the struggles in reducing spending. In order to reduce public spending, many countries launched austerity action plans, even characterized by the introduction of New Public Management (NPM) reforms aimed at increasing the efficiency of bureaucracies. This brief chapter discusses the introduction of the spending review as tool inspired by the NPM movement. In particular, the objective of this work is to present the potentiality of spending reviews in reducing public spending in bureaucracies, by examining this tool and its differences with other budgetary and regulatory tools of bureaucracies. Finally, in the conclusion, some concerns about the challenges in implementing spending reviews are presented.