COCOPS

The COCOPS project (Coordinating for Cohesion in the Public Sector of the Future) seeks to comparatively and quantitatively assess the impact of New Public Management-style reforms in European countries, drawing on a team of European public administration scholars from 11 universities in 10 countries.

COCOPS

COCOPS analyses the impact of reforms in public management and public services that address citizens' service needs and social cohesion in Europe. Evaluating the extent and consequences of NPM's alleged fragmenting tendencies and the resulting need for coordination is a key part of assessing these impacts.

In eight related international research projects, COCOPS maps and analyzes innovative mechanisms in the public sector to improve social and policy coordination, especially when the public sector is facing the fiscal crisis. The research will contribute to our understanding of the impact of NPM by integrating sectoral and national analyses and to the development of future public sector reform strategies by drawing lessons from past experience, exploring trends and studying emerging public sector coordination practices.

Professor Per Lægreid with the Department of administration and organization theory, leads the WP5 Research Project. The title of this project is “The governance of social cohesion: innovative coordination practices in public management”.

COCOPS is funded under the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme as a Small or Medium Scale Focused Research Project. The project started on Jan 1st 2011 and will run for 3,5 years. With a budget of nearly 2, 5 million Euros this is one of the largest comparative research projects in Europe.