Secchi, L. Caeiro, J.C. Pinto, R.R. and Sáez, M.A.
Administrative reforms in Portugal and Spain: From bureaucracy to digital transition
- International Review of Administrative Sciences
- 91(1), Mar, 2025: p.8-26
This article analyzes the administrative reforms that took place in the national governments of Portugal and Spain in the last 100 years. The shifts of administrative paradigms are the bureaucratic transition, the managerialist transition and the digital transition. The dimensions of analysis are the doctrines of the reforms; their justifications and underlying values; policy leadership, implementation styles and instruments; and resistance to change. We conducted a systematic literature review consulting 33 peer-reviewed articles on public management paradigms and 46 on administrative reforms in Portugal and Spain, and analyzed 32 official documents on the theme. The results show that the digital transition, compared with the two previous reforms, has relied on networked policy entrepreneurship, various instruments for policy change (beyond regulation), integration of values and a shift in the pattern of resistance to change. The article concludes that incremental changes occur between administrative reforms (punctuations), and the introduction of instruments inspired by one public management paradigm does not halt or replace the introduction of other instruments derived from other paradigms.- Reproduced