Introduction

In recent years it has become increasingly evident that the performance of public organizations is highly variable. Marked differences are present, for example, in the exam passes achieved by schools, death rates across hospitals, levels of crime successfully prevented and detected by police forces, rents collected by public housing authorities and the quality of care provided for elderly people in residential homes. The flood of performance indicators associated with ‘new public management’ reforms has produced much more comprehensive information on the successes and failures of different organizations, and revealed evidence of substantial inequality and ineffectiveness in service standards. These indicators of performance are, of course, open to interpretation and debate. Nevertheless, the evidence is overwhelming that, on specific criteria and measures of performance, some organizations are better than others at delivering effective public services. Taxpayers and service consumers cannot simply assume that they ‘get what they pay for’; instead, service quantity and quality depends partly on where they live and whether local public organizations are performing well or poorly.