Abstract Amongst his many interests in public administration, the practical and challenging task of implementing and evaluating public service reform has been a consistent feature of the oeuvre of research over Richard Boyle’s career (cf. Boyle, 2004, 2016; Boyle & Joyce, 1988; Boyle & Lemaire, 1999; Boyle & MacCarthaigh, 2011). In this article, the focus is on the role played by the ‘centre’ in public service reform both conceptually and in practice. The article first considers what is meant by the centre in Irish political– administrative life, before reflecting on how we might understand different forms of public sector reform governance and then applying them to the Irish case. The centre-led reforms that occurred between the 1960s up to the late 2000s are reviewed, before more recent efforts from 2011 up to the present are presented. A final section summarises the contribution.

中文翻译：

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“中心”在公共服务改革中的作用

摘要 在他对公共管理的众多兴趣中，实施和评估公共服务改革的实际和具有挑战性的任务一直是理查德·博伊尔职业生涯研究作品的一贯特征（参见博伊尔，2004 年，2016 年；博伊尔和乔伊斯，1988 年；博伊尔和勒梅尔，1999 年；博伊尔和麦卡泰，2011 年）。在本文中，重点是“中心”在公共服务改革中在概念和实践中所发挥的作用。本文首先考虑爱尔兰政治-行政生活中心的含义，然后思考我们如何理解不同形式的公共部门改革治理，然后将它们应用于爱尔兰案例。回顾了 1960 年代至 2000 年代后期发生的由中央主导的改革，在介绍 2011 年至今的最新努力之前。最后一部分总结了贡献。