Challenging New Public Management

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Challenging New Public Management

• Neil Collins
• University College Cork, Ireland
• n.collins_at_ucc.ie

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University College Cork
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(No Transcript)
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Why bother?

• And one should bear in mind that there is nothing
  more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of
  success, nor more dangerous to administer than to
  introduce a new order of things for he who
  introduces it has all those who profit from the
  old order as his enemies, and he has only
  lukewarm allies in all those who might profit
  from the new (Machiavelli 1998 21).

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An Era of Change

• Late l980s and early 1990s transformation in
  public sectors
• Rigid, hierarchical, bureaucratic form changing
  to flexible, market-based form
• Change role of government in society
• Change in relationship between government and
  citizenry.

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Traditional public administration

• Discredited theoretically and practically
• New public management new paradigm in the
  public sector.

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The Changes

• Hierarchical, bureaucratic principles
• far more diligently, far longer in the public
  sector.
• Direct provision
• standard operating procedure.
• Political and administrative separate
• policy or strategy the preserve of political
  leadership.
• Professional bureaucracy
• employed for life, serve any political master
  equally
• New paradigm challenges fundamental principles of
  public administration

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Verities challenged

• Delivery by bureaucracy is not the only way to
  provide government goods and services.
• Flexible management systems pioneered by the
  private sector are being adopted by governments.
• Governments can operate indirectly.
• Political and administrative matters intertwined
• Public demands better accountability
• Case for unusual employment conditions weaker.

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New public management central doctrines

• No book but
• focus on management, not policy
• performance appraisal and efficiency
• disaggregation of public bureaucracies
• user-pay relationships
• use of quasi-markets and contracting out to
  foster competition
• cost-cutting output targets limited-term
  contracts monetary incentives freedom to
  manage.

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NPM implies

• focus inside the organisation
• substantial changes for personnel
• Osborne and Gaebler
• government needs to be reinvented
• bureaucracy neither necessary nor efficient
• other means should be used.
• entrepreneurial governments promote competition
  between service providers.
• pushing control into the community
• measure performance by outcomes.

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NPM the mission

• Redefine clients as customers
• Offer choices
• Prevent problems before they emerge
• Earning money, not simply spending it
• Decentralise authority
• Participatory management
• Preference for market mechanisms
• Energising all sectors public, private and
  voluntary to solve their communitys problems.

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SMI Framework

• Delivering Better Government (1996)
• Public Service Management Act (1997)
• new management structure
• to enhance the management, effectiveness and
  transparency
• mechanism for increased accountability of civil
  servants.
• Delivery driven by Implementation Group of
  Secretaries General
• 2002, PA Consulting
• Progress of SMI in the Civil Service. 
• Vision Statement, Strategy and Action Programme
  to 2007
• http//www.bettergov.ie/thematic_areas/smiframewor
  k/index.asp?langENGloc79

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SMI

• Strategic approach
• better planning and management
• schedule of change
• strategy statements
• searching self-analysis
• external evaluations
• departmental performance indicators and other
  forms of assessment.
• Many civil servants enthusiastic many reluctant.

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Citizens as Consumers

• Republics political system as other lib dem.
• facilitates translation needs into political
  action
• material, ideological, social, spiritual
  dimensions.
• Neat sequential processing model
• recognises peoples needs
• provides alternative ways of meeting them
• chooses between options
• sets up mechanisms to implement the solution.
• Politics as a system injustice to complexity
• NPM citizens as customers

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Marketing and Modernisation

• running government like a business
• NPM advocates
• market-like models
• citizens as consumers.
• tools and techniques from marketing

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Three central marketing applications.

• rapid responses to consumer concerns
• extension of choice and customisation
• market research

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Rapid responses (1)

• distinctive characteristics
• restraints, duties and opportunities
• transfers resources
• monopoly of violence.
• efficiency depends on consent
• broad assent of the governed.

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Rapid responses (2)

• NPM - clear distinction between political and
  administrative matters
• central dichotomy - unsupported by evidence
• politicians concerned about implementation
• public servants, non-partisans, rarely neutral

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Rapid responses (3)

• Time-based competition - profound strategy issue
  in business
• underpins business process re-engineering
  literature and practice of the past decade.
• NPM mirrors emphasis on speed of response

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Rapid responses (4)

• Osborne and Gaebler (1992) Bureaucracy designed
  earlier in the century simply do not function
  well in the rapidly changing, information rich,
  knowledge intensive society and economy of the
  1990s.
• In public service delivery
• IT applications proliferated
• hierarchies flattening
• response times shorter

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Rapid responses (5)

• information provided at whatever speed is not
  disinterested
• private sector
• influence purchasing, consuming, investing
• political system
• affect the behaviour of citizens
• representative system of democracy
• more measured and deliberate reaction

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Rapid response (6)

• NPM diffuses political accountability.
• new public managers authoritative allocations
  of value.
• Even if called customers, still citizens.

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Extension of choice and customisation

• polar opposites standardised vs. tailored
• today customised at mass production prices
• public sector products customised but scarce
  and free at point of consumption.
• political system rationing function
• Putman enable individuals to retreat from
  society result in a reduction in social capital
  through a narrowing and fragmenting perspective.

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Market research

• Surveys, opinion polls, focus group interviews
  commonplace
• IT offers lower costs, larger samples, the
  ability to focus on small subpopulations, routine
  use of visuals and easy access to low-incidence
  samples but
• traditional means of political participation
• can challenge the deliberative and accountable
  mechanisms of the democratic process by its
  immediacy and claims to scientific validity.
• Your representative owes you, not his industry
  only, but his judgment and he betrays instead of
  serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
  Burke 1774

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Modernisation the project

• clientelism moderated service delivery
• demise is associated with modernisation or
  democratic maturity
• influenced Irish political science greatly in the
  1960s
• Democracies undergo a transition from clientelist
  to programmatic politics

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Modernisation the project

• In a modern state, as understood by modernisation
  theorists, clientelism has no place
• Form of political immaturity dampens collective
  action
• But, links between citizens and elites
  are? voluntary? connect people of unequal
  status? personal and face-to-face? long lasting.

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Modernisation the project

• Neither party is forced to take part both feel
  some sense of obligation it may be a response to
  impersonal or alienating bureaucratic structures.
  
• modernisation theorists confounded by predictive
  failure

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Modernisation the project

• to be successful in politics aspirants to office
  have to be able to show they have power. Those
  who can deliver material favours are said to have
  'pull'an ability to 'deliver' more than other
  competitors for political officeIn local
  parlance the actions which most strikingly
  demonstrate powerare termed 'strokes'. The
  perpetrator of a stroke is called a 'cute hoor',
  a term which denotes a certain admiration for the
  way in which he outmanoeuvres his competitors (O
  Carroll 198782).

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Modernisation the project

• the cute hoors serve a useful function
• in marketing terms, as market research, market
  testing, complaint management, refining
  implementation procedures and the like.
• self-interest of politicians of appearing
  influential could be harnessed

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Modernisation the project

• Peters minor rule-bending, or irritating of
  headquarters on the customers behalf, downright
  heroic!
• Similar behaviour portrayed as anachronistic and
  unhelpful.
• A good starting point is to recognise the cute
  hoor as hero.