1. From New Public Management to Coordination
Joonatan Virtanen
Doctoral Candidate
Faculty of Social Sciences
Political Science
22/03/2018

2. AGENDA An overview of administrative policy trends, NPM and after
Some discussions on their relations to other contemporary (European) political & societal phenomena
Approach: comparativist, institutionalist, intellectual historical
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3. ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY TRENDS
policy diffusion / isomorphism
policy / reform / political / intellectual movements
policy ideas / ideologies / discourses / models / doctrines
Administrative policy
public administration, public management, public organizations, public sector, government, public / state / institutions, bureaucracy... in an inclusive sense
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4. EUROPEAN POLITICS?
”States and governments should be more internally unified for influence within the EU / Europe.”
”Politics is broken. We need stronger leadership and political majorities / unity to fix it.”
”Policy-making should be more based on scientific research and knowledge.”
“Governments should be more effective in solving big contemporary problems.”
”Solving problem X should be the objective of many / all policy fields.”
“Technological change will transform society towards X, whether we want it or not.”
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5. NPM: Hood’s ALL SEASONS 1991
Hood, Christopher 1991: A Public Management for All Seasons? Public Administration 69:1
NPM linked with ”four other administrative ‘megatrends’”:
attempts slow or reverse government growth in public spending and staffing
shift to privatization and quasi-privatization and away from core government institutions; renewed emphasis on 'subsidiarity' in service provision
development of automation, particularly information technology, in production and distribution of public services
development of a more international administrative policy agenda on top of the older individual country specialisms
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6. NPM: Hood’s ALL SEASONS 1991
NPM: seven doctrinal components
‘Hands-on professional management’; active individual managers ‘free to manage’; manager responsibility and accountability
Explicit standards and measures of performance; definition of goals, targets, indicators – preferably quantitative
Greater emphasis on output controls; resource allocation and rewards linked to measured performance; stress on results rather than procedures
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7. NPM: Hood’s ALL SEASONS 1991
Shift to disaggregation of units in public sector; break-up of ‘monolithic’ structures into corporatized, ‘manageable’ units around products; separation of provision and production interests; contract arrangements inside & outside public sector
Shift to greater competition in public sector; term contracts; rivalry as the key to lower costs and better standards
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8. NPM: Hood’s ALL SEASONS 1991
Stress of private-sector styles of management practice; away from military-style ‘public service ethic’, greater flexibility in hiring and rewards; greater use of public relations techniques; need to use ‘proven’ private management tools in the public sector
Stress on greater discipline in resource use; cutting costs, raising labour discipline, resisting union demands; need to check resource demands of public sector and ’do more with less'
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9. NPM: SOME CONTEXT
Hood: NPM’s intellectual background a ‘marriage’ of 1960s-70s ‘new institutional economics’ and its theory of bureaucracy, and ‘business-type’ ’managerialism’ stressing ‘professional management’
Related post-WWII intellectual trends and movements: neoliberalism, rational choice / public choice / social choice / positive political theory
The global political transformations of the 1980s-1990s: hegemonization of neoliberalism, third way socialism
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10. NPM: SOME CONTEXT
Universality, general applicability, political neutrality (!), ”a science of administration”: classical modern Public Administration, late 1800s – early 1900s
Stress on objectives, flexibility, outputs, change, solving specific problems: the New Public Administration of the 1960s-70s
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11. BEYOND NPM: Kolltveit 2015
A trend of strengthening executive centres and their coordination capacities over administrative systems and public policy
More political appointees for increasing horizontal coordination and political control of cabinet policy
More ”strategic” planning and audtiting capabilities for increasing vertical coordination
Empowering prime ministers, cabinet ”cores” and their (political appointee and permanent) staffs and organizations
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12. BEYOND NPM: Kolltveit 2015
Countering NPM vs. responding to societal changes and issues in cabinet politics?
Internationalization, EU integration, multi-level governance
Mediatization
Growth and complexification of issues within public administration and policy
Rivalries between ministries and cabinet coalition partners
Rivalries between different cabinet and coalition types
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13. BEYOND NPM: some other PERSPECTIVES
Strengthening the centre (executive centre, centre of government / governance, core executive, centralization, presidentialization…)
Post- New Public Management: ”joined-up-government”, “whole-of-government”; various coordination and integration efforts to counter fragmentation and “siloization”; varyingly shifts from NPM principles to ”multi-fielded” or “comprehensive” approaches; a ”second generation” of reforms “layered” on top of NPM features
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14. BEYOND NPM: Some other perspectives
Governance (New Public Governance (NPG), meta-governance, networked governance, hybrid governance…): from direct and hierarchical ”government” towards indirect and non-hierarchical ”governance”; networks and ”hybridization” between public, private and civil society organizations; ”self-organization” within ”complex systems”; flexibility
Digital government (E-Government, Digital-Era Governance, digitalization in public administration and policy…): governance, coordination, flexibilization, etc. enabled by and growing out of digital technologies
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15. DISCUSSION Intergovernmentalism & executivization
Intra-state coordination and integration
Centre(s) of coordination in the EU system
Depoliticization & technocracy
Various ideas and instruments for depoliticization
…but also for (re)politicization
Populism, anti-populism & anti-politics
”common sense” and modernization
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16. literature
Bouckaert, Peters & Verhoest 2010: The Coordination of Public Sector Organizations. Shifting Patterns of Public Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Christensen, Tom & Lægreid, Per (eds.) 2007: Transcending New Public Management. The Transformation of Public Sector Reforms. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing
Dahlström, Peters & Pierre (eds.) 2011: Steering from the Centre. Strengthening Political Control in Western Democracies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Hammerschmidt, Gerhard; Van de Walle, Steven; Andrews, Rhys & Bezes, Philippe (eds.) 2016: Public Administration Reforms in Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Hood, Christopher 1991: A Public Management for All Seasons? Public Administration 69: Spring pp. 3-19
Kolltveit, Kristoffer 2015: Strengthening the Executive Centre: Looking Beyond NPM as the Explanation for Change. International Review of Administrative Sciences 81:1 pp
Lægreid, Per; Sarapuu, Külli; Rykkja, Lise H. & Randma-Liiv, Tiina (eds.) 2014: Organizing for Coordination in the Public Sector. Practices and Lessons from 12 European Countries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Margetts, Helen & Dunleavy, Peter 2013 :The second wave of digital-era governance: a quasi-paradigm for government on the Web. Phil Trans R Soc A 371:
Overeem, Patrick & Sager, Fritz (eds.) 2015: The European Public Servant: A Shared Administrative Identity? Colchester: ECPR Press
Palumbo, Antonino 2015: Situating Governance. Context, Content, Critique. Colchester: ECPR Press
Pollitt, Christopher & Bouckaert, Geert 2017: Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis – Into the Age of Austerity. Fourth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press
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