LEGITIMACY AND CONTEXT: IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES CHRISTINA W. ANDREWS * State University of Sa˜o Paulo-UNESP, Brazil SUMMARY This article examines the interplay between legitimacy and context as key determinants of public sector reform outcomes. Despite the importance of variables such as legitimacy of public institutions, levels of civic morality and socio-economic realities, reform strategies often fail to take such contextual factors into account. The article examines, first, relevant literature – both conceptual and empirical, including data from the World Values Survey project. It is argued that developing countries have distinctive characteristics which require particular reform strategies. The data analysed shows that in Latin American countries, there is no clear correlation between confidence in public institutions and civic morality. Other empirical studies show that unemployment has a negative impact on the level of civic morality, while inequality engenders corruption. This suggests that poorer and socio-economically stratified countries face greater reform challenges owing to the lack of legitimacy of public institutions. The article concludes that reforms should focus on areas of governance that impact on poverty. This will in turn help produce more stable outcomes. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. key words — public administration; legitimacy; public sector reforms; developing countries INTRODUCTION It is largely accepted as a fact that national cultures affect the structure and performance of Public Administration. Indeed, the subfield of Comparative Public Administration is concerned in knowing how and why different countries differ in their bureaucracies, public policies and governmental service provision. As Jreisat (2005) has argued, the current preoccupation with the effects of globalisation has moved Comparative Public Administration back again to the core concerns of the discipline. Despite global trends, differences between countries remain. Global trends in Public Administration are changing too. In all continents, ‘manager’s autonomy’ is losing ground to ‘citizen participation’. After reaching a peak of prestige in the early 1990s, New Public Management (NPM) is now in decline. Unfulfilled promises, failure to provide legitimacy to managers’ decisions and disregard for political matters are a few reasons why NPM prestige faded away (Ferlie et al., 1996; Cohn, 1997; Maor, 1999; Box et al., 2001; Lynn, 2001; Salway, 2001; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). NPM’s legitimacy deficit has sparkled interest in participatory procedures, accountability and transparency (Thompson, 1995; Blair, 2000; Lowndes et al., 2001a,b; Souza, 2001; Doig and McIvor, 2003; Deighton-Smith, 2004; Wampler and Avritzer, 2004). This change of spirits can be noted both in developed and developing countries. But many developing countries became democracies only in the 1980s, a process known as the ‘third wave’ of democratisation (Huntington, 1991). In these nations, democratisation involves not only establishing traditional political institutions, but also improving the legitimacy of the civil service. In developed nations, the former have already been accomplished, what makes easier to move to the latter task. In developing countries, matters are more complex, especially because contextual factors tend to undermine the performance of public institutions. public administration and development Public Admin. Dev. 28, 171–180 (2008) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.495 *Correspondence to: C. W. Andrews, State University of Sa˜o Paulo-UNESP, Public Administration, Rod. Araraquara-Jau´, Km 1, Araraquara 14, 800-901, Brazil. E-mail: candrews@fclar.unesp.br Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.