Exploring variations in the political discourse on public sector reforms, 1981-2005

This article explores the patterned variations in the references in election manifestos of political parties in OECD countries to marketoriented reforms of the public sector, irrespective whether these references are in favour of these reforms or not. It is expected that these variations are structured by institutional features which are related to national, partisan and sectoral differences. The empirical analysis shows that the national differences between parties are influenced by their membership of 'families of nations' since the adoption of market principles is expected to be ideologically more acceptable in, for example, the Anglo-Saxon world than in Scandinavia. The recent differences between the main party groups are modest, which means that these reforms have become equally 'important' for the established party families that dominate the governments in the selected OECD countries. The differences between policy sectors are partly due to their relation with the welfare state. Most references to reforms are made in the policy sector infrastructure which reflects the numerous attempts to liberalize and privatize this sector. The increase of references to reforms in some sectors that are related to the welfare state (e.g. social affairs and health care) does not coincide with less public expenditures due to the path dependency of spending in these sectors. The diffusion of public sector reforms does not lead to convergence between parties in the sense that national, partisan and sectoral differences become smaller over time. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.