New Public Management as an administrative reform ideology as well as conceptual innovation has changed the outlook of public administration during the last ten years. Public administration and public administration reform should not only be concerned with the improvement of the efficiency and coherence – which play an important role in public administration, but also political values like liberty, equity and security as well as legal values like the rule of the law. The modernization agenda of public administration has a rather internal focus, while the ultimate test for the modernization of public administration is the way in which governments are able to respond to changing social, cultural and economic conditions and the ‘wicked’ policy problems which result from them. This publication contains interesting contributions to the science and practice of public administration.