This article compares public service reform in Canada, France and the United Kingdom from the perspective of the extent and mode of incorporation of neoliberal policy ideas into reform agendas and programmes. It does so with a view to advancing discussion of the role of ideas as an explanatory category in ''historical institutionalist'' accounts of policy realignment. Resilience or permeability to change is linked to the pattern of interaction between ideas and institutions embedded in national and provincial public service regimes, and particularly to constitutive ideals of citizenship and public authority. The article highlights the respective roles of political, administrative and judicial elites in filtering the reception of new reform ideas in the three countries in an era of neoliberal globalization.