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Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 This article is a revised version of the keynote address to the annual conference of the Finnish Association of Public Administration in Rovaneimi in December 2005. The author also acknowledges the useful and insightful comment of both Brint Milward and Erik-Hans Klijn on an earlier draft of this final version. Responsibility for the contents lies with the author alone, however, as always. 2 Brint Milward has made the point to me in a personal communication that there is an inevitable national variance in the nature of Public Administration, and of the other modes. The ‘politics – administration’ split, for example, is perhaps a particularly European, and especially British, emphasis within PA. Moreover all the elements are liable to buckle under extreme stress – the incrementalism of PA was clearly put on hold during the two World Wars of the twentieth century, for example. 3 These concepts of the plural state and pluralist state are reviewed further later. 4 Though Ostrom and Ostrom (1971 Ostrom, V. and Ostrom, E. 1971. Public Choice: A Different Approach to the Study of Public Administration. Public Administration Review, 31: 203–216. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) do offer a more explicitly inter-oganizational approach to public choice theory as a basis for the NPM. 5 Kate McLaughlin at the University of Birmingham, for example, is currently exploring the adaptation of the concept of ‘relational capital’ in order to deepen our understanding of partnering between public service organizations in a public policy context.