After the rapid expansion of the welfare state in the 1950s and 1960s, the public
sector has been under considerable pressure in the past few decades. Declining
public confi dence in government institutions and growing demands on public
fi nances have prompted governments to initiate measures to trim the public sector
and make it more effi cient and effective. Reform strategies adopted can be catalogued
as: Maintain, Modernise, Marketise and Minimise (Pollit and Bouckaert 2004)