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The New Public Management and The New Public Management and Beyond: Towards a Whole-of-Beyond: Towards a Whole-of-

Government or a Neo-Weberian Government or a Neo-Weberian Model?Model?

Professor Per LægreidProfessor Per LægreidDepartment of Administration and Organization TheoryDepartment of Administration and Organization Theory

University of BergenUniversity of Bergen

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Outline

• What is New Public Management?

• What is Whole-of-Government?

–Arguments, dynamics and lessons

• Neo-Weberianism as a new trend

• Conclusion and implications

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Background

• Increasing complexity of public organizations, caused by generations of reforms

• Sedimentation of reforms• Not only what the reforms do with

the organization but also what the organizations do with the reforms

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What is NPM?

• Efficiency orientation

• The hybrid character of NPM– Economic organization theory

• Centralization, Contractualism• “Make the managers manage”

– Managerialism• Decentralization, Devolution• “Let the managers manage”

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Key elements of NPM

• Performance management• From ex ante control to ex post control• Deregulation, liberalization• Single-purpose organizations• Separation of policy and operations• Managerial autonomy • Contract, privatization, market-orientation• Customer choice

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What is Whole-of-Government?

• Holistic strategy, coordination, integration, collaboration, ”wicked” issues

• Opposite of departmentalism, tunnel vision, vertical silos

• Slogan – umbrella term• Horizontal and vertical coordination in order

to avoid that different policies undermine each other; better use of recourses, create synergy, offer seamless services

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Why whole of government?

• New Public Management could not deliver– ”Single purpose organizations” and

structural devolution has weakened political control, problems of fragmentation, capacity and coordination

– Not evident that the efficiency of services has improved

– Concern about the quality of public services and increasing social inequality

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NPM: Increased fragmentation

Vertical specialization

Horizontal specialization

LOW HIGH

LOW

HIGH

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The problem of horizontal coordination

• Problem of inter-sector and inter-ministerial coordination

• Strongly specialized ministries

• NPM has not addressed the problem of horizontal coordination

• Many policy problems traverse ministerial boarders and trigger the need for WOG reforms

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The autonomy-control dilemma

• How to balance political control and agency autonomy?

• Easier to change the power relations than the responsibility, produces legitimacy problems

• The slogan ”more steering in big issues and less steering in small issues” was difficult to fulfill

• The problem of moving from instructions to frame steering

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Driving forces behind WOG

• The insecurity argument

• The efficiency argument

• The consumerism argument

• The technology argument

• The political argument

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What is typical for the post-NPM reforms?

• Strengthening the central level

• Coordination in and between sectors

• Pro-active leadership roles

• Pragmatic cooperation among public organizations

• Value-based management is important

• Governance and networks

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Some lessons

• Misfit with performance management

• Silo mentalities exist for good reason

• The problem of accountability

• One size does not fit all

• The problem of contradictory forces

• The limitation of a top-down strategy

• WOG as a long term project

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Possible future developments

• Will the post-NPM reforms last for long?– Probably not – new demands for more devolution

and horizontal specialization – New reform concepts are coming up: quality

services and multi-level governance, good governance

• Governments are a complex combination of:– Old Public Administration– New Public Management– Post-NPM features

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Neo-Weberian Reforms

• Bringing the bureaucracy back in

• A strong and modernized state

• Classical Weberian principles (Rechtstaat) combined with – Result orientation– Citizen orientations, participation– Professionalization of public service

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The revival of Weberianism

• Precise and unambiguous rules, legality• Impartiality, due processes, ethical capital, public

ethos• Personnel that distinguish between their interests as

private citizens and their duties as civil servants• Institutional capacity• Merit based recruitment• A salary system which is sufficiently generous to

make public officials less susceptible to bribery• A transparent system of responsibility

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NPM and Neo-Weberianism

• NPM can only work when there is a strong Weberian ethos and trust relations

• Introducing NPM reforms in low trust countries is to ask for problems

• Weberianism is a good model when trust in public institutions and officials are low

• An alternative modernization strategy to market based reform in a low trust situation is to adopt a neo-Weberian model

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How to explain the layering and complexity?

• A transformative approach – executive leaders’ actions are constrained by a combination of:– Constitutional and structural polity

features– Political-administrative cultural features– Environmental factors – technical and

institutional

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Lessons

• The problem of generalizing in public management– The contextual influence

• Short of reliable and strong comparative evidence– Reform is more a matter of faith than of reason

• The international marketplace of reforms is crowded– The increase of ”experts” and consultants

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Conclusion

• Reform produces reform

• Reform as a layering and sedimentation process

• Post-NPM reforms are not replacing NPM reforms but supplements them

• The result is hybridization and increased complexity