Recent decades have witnessed the rise in popularity of New Public Management (NPM) as a paradigm of public service reform. Key objectives on the NPM reform menu include a de-bureaucratizing of government services, the stimulation of local market competition for service provision and the introduction of performance measurement techniques. This agenda has been enthusiastically promoted and adopted into a diverse array of developing-country settings, including Solomon Islands (SI). Yet, the

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... outcomes in SI display an uneven character at best. Is such a reform agenda compatible with the reality of achieving effective service delivery in SI? By combining a political history of reform in SI with the perceptions and experiences of respondents from selected public service ministries, state owned enterprises and in-country donor organizations, the following article examines the impact of NPM reforms on SI public service. It considers the ways in which a largely externally instigated reform agenda has been accepted, contested and transformed.