9 research outputs found
Back in the OECD...an oblique comment on the World Bank's "Better results from public sector institutions
Most of my thinking and experience has been focused on the developed world, rather than developing countries. Thus I bring an outsider’s perspective to the World Bank’s 2012 document, Better results from public institutions. I am grateful to Nick Manning and Willy McCourt for their invitation to peer over one of the many walls which subdivide the territory of public administration,
Since at least the 1950s ‘development administration’ has been a separate academic subfield; one often characterised, tightly or loosely, explicitly or implicitly, with the notion that its mission is to export the good practices of the developed world to replace the bad practices of the underdeveloped one. It is easy to understand why this should appear to be a core mission
Politics, Administration and Performance: A continuing search, but no one best way?
Introduction: I have been tasked with the following question: how do relations between politics and administration shift when performance-improving reforms are introduced? As always, there is more than one way of interpreting the question, and of trying to answer. There are also strong normative aspects – for example, who should lead performance reforms, politicians or administrators? I will address this complexity by offering a number of different perspectives on performance management, and by making copius references to relevant work by scholars in many countries. Thus, for example, I will look at what we know of past performance-oriented reforms; at why a particular reform may work well in one context but not in another; at how relations between politicians and administrators have been shifting over the past few decades, and at what impacts current conditions of austerity may be having on these key relationships. Throughout I will also be emphasizing a paradox – that we have a huge literature on these issues, and yet this mountain of words leaves us without any clear or sure general answer. I attempt to show why generalisations are so difficult, and what kind of answers we may be able to develope once we abandon the perenially seductive idea that there is, if only we can find it, ’one best way’
The magic of good governance
__Abstract__
Governance is a widely used concept, in both the study and practice of public administration. Particularly in conjunction with the adjective good it serves as a normative standard against which the actual situation in countries across the world is claimed to be measured. In analytical terms, however, the concept shows shortcomings. It is, for instance, broad, and seems to imply or suggest consensus and uniformity. Yet these characteristics hardly seem to hinder an almost universal appeal and a widespread usage. Governance appears to function as a ‘magic concept’. Therefore, before it can be used in theory and research, considerable specification and elaboration are needed. At the same time its ‘magic’ character does make it useful, particularly in a rhetorical sense
NPM Can Work: An optimistic review of the impact of New Public Management reforms in central and eastern Europe
This article reviews the New Public Management (NPM) literature in central and eastern Europe (CEE) with the aim of assessing whether reforms have 'worked'. Increasingly, academics have tended to argue against the suitability of NPM instruments in this region. To understand the impact of this much-debated policy, we first propose a classification of the impacts of NPM geared to the realities of central and eastern European states. Then, we use this classification to carefully review empirical studies across the region over the past 10 years. Unlike much of the recent academic literature, we suggest that NPM can work. NPM policy has not always been successful to the extent expected and promoted, but there is enough evidence to show that some of the central ideas in NPM have led to improvements in public service organization or provision across different organizational settings. An adequate degree of administrative capacity, sustained reform over time and a 'fitting context' are the main factors that can tip the scale for the success of these management instruments. The article provides a fresh and transparent assessment of a major administrative development in a growing region with implications for other parts of the world that experience similar challenges and opportunities
New Public Management in Europe
New Public Management (NPM) is the label which many academics have given to a series of reforms
from the 1980s onwards, to improve the efficiency and performance of western governments
and/or public sector organizations. Examples are the development of performance indicators
and benchmarking, personnel reforms aimed at ‘normalising’ public sector employment on
private sector models, placing executive bodies at arms’ length from ministries, establishing public
private partnerships and introducing new management techniques and instruments. Continental
European governments have adapted and re-interpreted many of the Anglo-American
ideas underpinning the NPM, to adjust them to their own national politico-administrative contexts.
As a consequence, reforms of the public sector may have the same labels in different
countries but need not be the same in practice or in meaning; there is both convergence and divergence
Agentschappen en de verzelfstandigingsparadox
Verzelfstandiging van overheidsorganisaties leidt tot een paradox. Enerzijds krijgen de organisaties meer zelfstandi
Effects of privatization and agencification on citizens and citizenship: an international comparison
This study has been compiled as an internationally comparative contribution to the
parliamentary inquiry by the Dutch Senate into the effects of privatization and agencification
on the relationship between citizens and the (national) government. Knowledge on this topic
is scarce and scattered across different sources. Therefore, this paper consists of three
different sections. Each section deals with a different question and uses different sources. In
this overview we summarize the main findings of the three sections
The Impacts Of The New Public Management In Europe: A Metaanalysis (Working Paper 3)
Abstract
The purpose of this working paper is to rehearse the approach, methods and preliminary
findings of the first stage of the EU Seventh Framework programme project Co-ordinating for
Cohesion in the Public Sector of the Future (hereafter COCOPS – see www.cocops.eu). This
first stage (Work Package 1) was tasked to produce a meta-analysis of the impacts of New
Public Management (NPM) reforms across the EU. In this paper, therefore, we will first set
out what we mean by (respectively) NPM, impacts and meta-analysis, and then go on to
review the substance of our findings thus far. The database currently has over 500
documents, including academic articles and books, government reports and consultancy
studies. It covers 23 EU member states, plus Norway, Switzerland and Croatia, plus the
European Commission itself. Its contents are not yet absolutely finalised, but our collection,
coding and quality checking have reached the point where we do not expect the broad
conclusions to change very much. This is therefore an appropriate time to issue a Working
Paper