| Summary: | Within the rubric of the New Public Management, performance management has become a routine part of both the rhetoric and the toolkit of modern governments. The concept of performance auditing has emerged since the 1970s, and international standards for performance management and auditing in the public sector have been developing. The attendant proliferation of audit practices in the public sector has led supreme audit institutions (SAls), to include in their mandates concerns regarding economy, efficiency and effectiveness of government undertakings. In the European Union institutional arrangements, the external audit body of the EU budget, the European Court of Auditors, has included in its remit sound financial management issues from the beginning of its creation and over the past few years has devoted an increasing amount of attention to performance audit along with its traditional audit practice. Concurrently, the academic literature has started to incorporate issues of management for results during the implementation of public sector budgets and there is a rapidly emerging literature on performance auditing practices. However, one area where there is little specific and extended analysis, is that regarding performance arrangements in EU budget management and policy implementation, where shared management engagements exist between the European Commission and the member states, such as in the case of most of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This thesis aims to contribute to filling the gap in research over the use of performance management techniques in this area and the possibility of measuring and auditing the performance of policy implementation in the EU. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate whether the preconditions of sound implementation exist and where they may be lacking regarding the institutional actors implementing the EU's CAP budget. The thesis adds to the literature on the performance of EU programme management and opens new ground for research in the areas of performance management and performance auditing of a set of inadequately researched management bodies. The research employs a descriptive case study approach and draws on interdisciplinary literature research and on empirical fieldwork of an EU policy. Empirical fieldwork based on participant observation and elite interview techniques is used to draw a set of sub case reports. The thesis provides an original contribution to knowledge by identifying some of the factors influencing sound financial management during the implementation of the EU budget, and showing the role that public sector audit could play in achieving it. The unit of analysis provides an illustration of the limitations in existing management arrangements at the European Commission and the member state agencies to deliver optimally the results expected by the policy making bodies. Namely, the limitations that are imposed by the role of the Commission as a policy entrepreneur with a lack of incentives to adequately manage policies and, the role of the Member State-Commission combination in setting policy and also implementing it in a multi-actor setting with conflicting interests. The main conclusions are that proper performance management frameworks are not in place at all levels of implementation, thus imposing severe limitations to results-oriented reforms and that there is a positive role that properly aimed audit practice could play at ensuring policy goal attainment in this process.
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