However, following the budget cut-backs and the dismantling of many public services, we can identify signs of a changing perspective on governments and what governments are expected to do and how they should do it. In this introductory chapter we suggest that the new emerging way of thinking about government is characterized by three general ideas or concepts. First, there has been a gradual shift in focus among the political and administrative elite as well as among social scientists from input control towards outcomes and output control. This is not to say that institutions should be of any less interest than hitherto. Throughout the western world the past decade has witnessed numerous and extensive structural and institutional changes which suggest that institutions still matter a great deal. Also, constitutional issues remain to the fore as devolution and other regional reforms in the UK and experiments with alternative channels of citizen engagement in policy-making and policy advice in Canada suggest. In public service production and delivery, however, institutional forms as such appear to have become less important than efficiency and productivity.