The effects of new public management on the quality of public services

Victor Lapuente,Steven Van De Walle

doi:10.1111/gove.12502

Abstract

AbstractHave New Public Management (NPM) reforms in public organizations improved the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of public policies? NPM reforms, understood as a style of organizing public services towards the efficiency and efficacy of outputs, have been controversial. They have been accused of importing practices and norms from the private sector that could collide with core public values, such as impartiality or equity. Yet, with few exceptions, we lack systematic empirical tests of the actual effects that NPM reforms have had on the delivery of public services. In this introductory article, we summarize a special issue devoted to cover this gap. And, overall, we find that neither the catastrophic nor the balsamic effects of NPM reforms are confirmed, but the success (or failure) depends on the administrative, political and policy context those reforms take place.

Highlights

During the latest four decades the public sector in most countries has been re-shaped by reforms under the umbrella of New Public Management (NPM) (Hood 1991, Pollit and Dan 2011)
The survey of studies on the effects of NPM on the quality of the delivery of public policies collected in this Special Issue draws a more nuanced picture than the conventional anti- or pro-managerial rhetoric prevailing both in academic and practitioners’ debates
No matter the extent of specific NPM reforms, performance in the public sector is nowadays universally seen as output and outcome, instead of the previous view of performance as input and process (Andersen, Boesen and Pedersen 2016)

Summary

Introduction

During the latest four decades the public sector in most countries has been re-shaped by reforms under the umbrella of New Public Management (NPM) (Hood 1991, Pollit and Dan 2011). The conditions of success of NPM may depend on institutional preconditions, such as state capacity (e.g. the level of bureaucratic quality and impartiality?), accountability mechanisms (e.g. transparency rules?), or the characteristics of the public managers and employees (e.g. gender ratios, or previous experience in the private sector). The aim of this Special Issue is to empirically address these questions. We regard this heterodoxy of researchers, subjects, and methods, of study as positive in a pioneering evaluation of the effects of the highly controversial in theory – and highly unknown in practice – NPM reforms

What is New Public Management?

Findings

Conclusions