12. Thirty Years of Performance Research at the European Group of Public Administration

Van Dooren, Askim and Van de Walle describe the orientation of research on public sector performance since 1988, and especially the last 15 years, using Study Group 2’s call for papers and the European Group of Public Administration (EGPA) conference venues as lieux de memoires. Changes in orientation over time show how performance research connects with developments in the wider public administration research community. Over time, scholarly attention has increased to, for example, the social construction of performance and the role of politics in designing systems for measuring performance and in using the information generated. The linkage with new public management (NPM) has weakened; the research reflects that performance management has become an integrated element in the governance of the public sector beyond NPM.