‘Key players' in Swiss cantonal reforms: Exploring committment to leadership in NPM implementation

The research objective of this paper is to explore the characteristics and circumstances that influence whether politicians, especially ministers, stand in for NPM reforms, and why they do it. The paper is based on a broader, ongoing research project at the University of St. Gallen. Reasoning and perspective of cantonal ministers in the German speaking part of Switzerland who have been "key players" in the reforms of their polity has been analysed by qualitative content analysis based on semi-structured interviews. The goal is to understand behaviour of politicians on the individual level. Since the research question has not been addressed so far by theory or research, an exploratory research design was chosen, e.g. the result of this papers are hypothesis for the explanation of behaviour of politicians derived from analysis of interviews. The paper will first give a short background information on NPM reform in Switzerland. After that, methodological issues are outlined. The following chapters address selected topics of engagement parameters of politicians. The paper concludes with an outlook on the future proceeding of the research project.