Transcript Challenging New Public Management

Challenging New Public Management
Neil Collins
University College Cork, Ireland
[email protected]
University College Cork
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).
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.
Traditional public
administration
• Discredited theoretically and practically
• New public management = new
paradigm in the public sector.
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
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.
New public management:
central doctrines
• No book but…
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–
–
–
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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.
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.
NPM: the mission
•
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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 community’s problems.
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/smiframework/index.asp
?lang=ENG&loc=79
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.
Citizens as Consumers
• Republic’s 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
Marketing and Modernisation
• “running
government
business”
• NPM advocates
like
– market-like models
– citizens as consumers.
– tools and techniques from marketing
a
Three
central
applications.
marketing
• rapid responses to consumer concerns
• extension of choice and customisation
• market research
Rapid responses (1)
• distinctive characteristics
– restraints, duties and opportunities
– transfers resources
– monopoly of violence.
• efficiency depends on consent
• broad assent of the governed.
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
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
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
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
Rapid response (6)
• NPM diffuses political accountability.
• new public managers: “authoritative
allocations of value”.
• Even if called customers, still citizens.
Extension of
customisation
choice
and
• 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.
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
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
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.
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
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 office…In local parlance the actions which
most strikingly demonstrate power…are 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 1987:82).
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
Modernisation: the project
• Peters: minor rule-bending, or irritating of
headquarters on the customer’s behalf,
downright heroic!
• Similar behaviour portrayed as anachronistic
and unhelpful.
• A good starting point is to recognise the cute
hoor as hero.