This article has three different objectives. The first is to present and discuss the crisis in the implementation of administrative reform policies. That is followed by a selective review of the main contemporary theories that deal with this issue. Third, another theory is suggested: one which relates the crisis in implementing reforms to the problem of the limits in obtaining cooperation simultaneously with program objectives of fiscal adjustment and institutional change. The theory that is proposed argues that the tension between greater bureaucratic flexibility, on the one hand, and the demand for more rigor in internal systems of bureaucratic control, on the other, is a powerful causal mechanism which tends to generate successive crises in the implementation of such policies. For this reason, reforms tend to generate organized resistance to change, coordinating problems, problems of collective action and so forth. The article puts forth the argument that although this explanation can be considered of general validity with regard to administrative reform, it could prove much more critical for management reforms in which the contradiction between the goals of fiscal adjustment and institutional change is much more intense.
administrative reforms; public policies; public policy implementation