This paper looks at the changing identities and roles of public servant in the last forty years. In much of Europe, those forty years have seen the roll-out of the public sector reforms that are commonly associated with a shift from government to governance. There has been something of a shift from bureaucratic hierarchy to markets and networks. The state has adopted new policy instruments linked to budgetary and contract management and to diplomatic steering of organizational networks. The identity and role of public servants has changed to emphasize these tasks - many public servants find themselves, for example, spending less time on policy advice and more on management, including the management of alternative sources of policy advice. The paper traces the history of these changes to the growing influence of specific forms of modernist social science. It then argues that the impact of the reforms constantly thwarts the intentions of policy makers precisely because public servants and citizens often draw on local traditions to resist the reforms and act in ways that run counter to the expertise provided by modernist social science.
