Summary and Integrated Comparison of Countries and Sectors

Abstract

As noted earlier, scholarly debates agree that during the last decades, public administration regimes have undergone substantial change. The question of whether and how these changes have affected public employment is at the core of this study, assuming that public employment in the past was characterized by distinct features historically enshrined in the civil servant status separating this type of employment from private sector employment. It was the ‘Golden Age’ of the modern nation-state, distinguished not only by territorial unity securing the rule of law and the establishment of democratic institutions, but also by willingness to intervene in market dynamics through a welfare state (Hurrelmann et al. 2007; Leibfried et al. 2015). The welfare state generated a substantial expansion of the public sector after the Second World War and established specific functions of public employment. In most OECD countries, the state became the largest employer (OECD 2009). Employment practices in the public sector created internal labour markets, high levels of job security, career progression based on seniority, and initial qualification for the whole range of the large and more heterogeneous public workforce. Moreover, the state aimed at being both a ‘good’ and ‘model’ employer for the private sector by setting high standards of public employment in terms of working conditions, job security, and integrating disadvantaged groups such as women, disabled persons, and migrants (Bach and Kessler 2007; Beaumont 1992).