1、 外文文献翻译译文 原文 Performance Audit and Public Management Reform Audit is one of the oldest and most venerable state functions. The French Cour des Comptes traces its origins back to 1318； the UK National Audit Office cites 1314 as the date of its first manifestation； the Dutch Algemene Rekenkamer finds
2、ancestors as running back to 1386.State audit thus long preceded the emergence of modern forms of democratic government. However state audit offices have made many adaptations in the course of their long history and during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they fashioned a crucial role for them
3、selves within the machinery of democratic accountability. On this kind of historical scale, performance audit is a very recent activity. Although more or less plausible claims can be made for the existence of performance audit-like activities back to the 1960s or even considerably earlier performanc
4、e audit as a large-scale, self-considerably distinct practice dates mainly since the late 1970s.Performance audit represents a modern variant of audit not the only one but, as well shall demonstrate, a challenging and fascinating one. It is distinctive to state audit and does not have a close counte
5、rpart in private-sector, commercial audit. Over almost exactly the same period as performance audit has emerged as a distinct form of audit, the government of Western Europe, North America, and Australasia have embarked upon extensive programs of public management reform. These have aimed at moderni
6、zing, streamlining, and in some cases minimizing the whole of the state apparatus. Although the details of these reform programs have varied considerably between one country and another, most of them have given a central place to the themes of decentralization and performance management. This has en
7、tailed a widespread rethinking of the balance between the autonomy and the control of public organizations. It has generated a search for mechanism and incentives will help realize these new management ideas in practice. Prima facie, it appears highly probable that there is a connection between thes
8、e two phenomena: on the hand the growth of performance audit and on the other the search for a new solution to the ancient governmental problem of giving autonomy yet retaining control. Yet there seems to have been little systematic investigation of what the nature of this interaction might be. One
9、of our ambitions is to fill this gap. We begin, in the next chapter, by looking at the boundaries and definitions of performance audit, and they move directly to describe the patterns of management reform in the five countries that form the basis for our comparisons: France, Finland, the Netherlands
10、, Sweden, and the UK. This provides the context against which later chapters and tease out the connections between the development of performance audit and the forces of management change. If the official descriptions are anything to go by, performance audit is not just a technical tool. It does not
11、 at all correspond to the traditional image of auditing as a process centered on checking the books in order to see that they have been accurately and properly kept. Performance audit has a more ambitious manifesto. Its practitioners declare that they are seeking to establish whether public policies
12、 or programs or projects or organizations have been conducted with due regard to economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and good management practice. It thus brings together, in a potent new combination, the older tradition of audit with a much more recent focus on performance . The exact terms within
13、which audit bodies undertake this activity vary from country to country and over time. So we should not rush to say exactly what it is or isnt, but rather should problematize and explore the concept. In that chapter we will also take a brief look at some of the many other uses to which the term audi
14、t has recently been put, a diversification of meaning and practice that recently led one academic to write an ambitious text entitled The Audit Society. For the moment, however, it will suffice to say that sets of practices termed performance audit or value-for-money studies have become central acti
15、vities for an increasingly powerful group of organizations-Supreme Audit Institutions. In most democratic countries, the SAI is located near the heart of the apparatus of the state. Potentially, therefore, performance audit should be of considerable political and democratic significance. It is pract
16、iced by powerful, independent institutions and is presented as a mode of investigation aimed at establishing whether, at what cost, and to what degree the policies, programs, and projects of government are working. Given these general characteristics, one might expect that the considerable community
17、 of scholars working in subjects such as political science, public administration, public management, and public finance and accountancy would have generated a large literature about performance audit. Surprisingly, this is not the case. One may speculate on the reasons why SAIs and, within them, pe
18、rformance audit have suffered relative neglect as compared with, say, various aspects of public management reform. Several reasons for the apparent disparity of interest in performance audit and public management reform suggest themselves. To begin with, public management reform has been led or at l
19、east fronted by politicians, for whom it is natural to make public claims that what they are doing is innovative, valuable, and successful. Furthermore, such change has generated its own supporting industry, including various kinds of consultant who have taken every opportunity to propel such reform
20、 even higher up political and administrative agendas. By contrast, SAIs are single institutions and generally rather sober ones. The bulk of their work appears to be technical and detailed and they take some pains to stand clear of party political controversy. Typically, supreme audit institutions a
21、re mentioned briefly in general textbooks which describe the institutions of government in a given country, but few books or articles have been written specifically about them. The USA, though not part of the present study, was perhaps something of an exception to this general neglect, with a certai
22、n amount of analytical literature focusing upon the General Accounting Office. Only in the last few years has the trickle of journal articles and booklets begun to gather some momentum. In the past, SAIs seldom went out of their way to publicize themselves it is only in the last decade that most of
23、them have begun to produce booklets and brochures for popular consumption, or to deal proactively with the mass media. Some are still cautious in these respects. Finally, there is, of course, a difference of scale. Public management reform has swept across entire public sectors, affecting ministries, executive agencies, quangos,
