The last post flagged up what seems to have been a change in tone recently in the vast literature which has inundated us since the early 90s on public management reform.
But first a little potted history. A half-century ago, nothing seemed more boring than my chosen field of UK public administration. It was descriptive and drew mainly on public law – with a smattering of politics. But, in the late 1960s, local government and the civil service suddenly became subjects of immense interest. Critiqued for being behind the times and needing “modernisation”, they were investigated by prestigious Royal Commissions which, after several years of open inquiry, issued detailed reports declaring in ringing tones that they were not fit for purpose and needed radical change….
With the world abuzz with talk of people power, I was elected as a municipal councillor, in 1968, in a shipbuilding town and was soon active in community politics – using my new position to help stir local activists against local officialdom. The spirit of such campaigns is nicely captured in Norman Dennis’ People and Planning – the sociology of housing in Sunderland (1970)
The Civil
Service was a difficult nut to crack and the changes (which started on Ted
Heath’s arrival in power in 1970) proved to be a generational process –
starting with the introduction of managerial practices from the private sector
and, later, more dramatic restructuring.
The reorganisation of local government, when it eventually
came in 1975, was quite dramatic - with the number of councils in both England
and Scotland being literally decimated.
Thatcherism
produced in the 1980s not only privatisation but dramatic changes in the
structure of British government which, argued leading academics, was being
“hollowed out”. Indeed, by 1992, the talk – on both sides of the Atlantic – was
of the very reinvention of government.
This was the stage when a new academic
industry of reform got underway - it was Chris Hood who first gave the new wave
its designation (in 1991) of New
Public Management but it was a book called Reinventing Government (1992) by
a town manager and consultant (Ted Gaebler and David Osbourne) which opened the
academic floodgates and led to Vice-President Gore’s Commission
on Reinvention….
New Public Management (NPM)
|
No. |
Doctrine |
Meaning |
Typical Justification |
|
1 |
Hands-on
professional management of Public Organisations |
Visible management at the top; free to
manage |
Accountability requires clear
assignment of responsibility |
|
2. |
Explicit
standards and measures of performance |
Goals and targets defined and measured
as indicators of success |
Accountability means clearly stated
aims |
|
3. |
Greater
emphasis on output controls |
Resource allocation and rewards linked
to performance |
Need to stress results rather than
procedures |
|
4. |
Shift
to disaggregation of units |
Unbundle public sector into units
organised by products with devolved budgets |
Make units manageable; split provision
and production; use contracts |
|
5. |
Greater
competition |
Move to term contracts and tendering
procedures |
Rivalry as the key to lower costs and
better standards |
|
6 |
Stress
on private sector styles of management practice |
Move away from military- style ethic to
more flexible hiring, pay rules, etc |
Need to apply "proven"
private sector management tools |
|
7. |
Stress
on greater discipline and parsimony |
Cut direct costs; raise labour
discipline |
Need to check resource demands; do more
with less |
For the next two decades, books and
articles rolled from the academic world in increasing numbers about the new fad
of “competitive managerialism” – although often with a note of caution…
The Fourth Revolution –
the global race to reinvent the state by J Micklewait and A Wooldridge
(2014) - which I took to task a
couple of years ago - seems, ironically, to have been the high-point of that
wave……
Since then, the tone has changed – thanks largely, it seems, to Mark Moore the emphasis has turned to examples of what successful public managers and institutions are achieving. The Successful Public Governance website based in Utrecht is an excellent example….
I’ve listed below (in chronological
order) the other books which have come to my attention recently and which also
reflect the new tone
Understanding policy success –
rethinking public policy; Alan McConnell (2010)
Agents
of Change – strategy and tactics for social innovation ; S Cels,
Jorrit de Jong and F Nauta (2012)
Recognising
Public Value Mark Moore (2013)
Dealing with Dysfunction – problem
solving in the public sector; Jarrit de Jong (2014)
How to Run a Government so that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers don’t go Crazy ; Michael Barber (2015). A clearly written book about the approach taken by Tony Blair’s favourite consultant
The Barber Report (HMSO 2017) which he then summarised for a new government
Dismembered – the ideological attack on the state; Polly Toynbee and D
Walker (2017) a strong analysis of austerity by two british journalists
“The 21st century public manager –
challenges, people and strategies”; Z van der Wal (2017)
An interesting-looking book written by a Dutch academic and consultant who has
spent the past 7 years as a Prof at the
University of Singapore
Reclaiming Public Services – how cities and citizens are turning back privatisation; TNI (2017)
Radical Help – how we can remake the
relationships between us and Revolutionise the Welfare State; Hilary Cottam (2018) an
inspiring example of experimental work
Successful
Public Policy: Lessons from Australia and New Zealand (anu.edu.au); ed J
Luentjens, M Mintrom and P n’Hart (2019)
Public Value Management, governance and reform in Britain ; ed J Connolly (2021) Pity about the extensive academic references and exclusive focus on UK – no references to Netherlands eg de Jong
Guardians of Public Value – how public organization become and remain institutions (2021) ed A Boi, L Harty and P t’Hart
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