What’s in a Name? Grasping New Public Governance as a Political-Administrative System

Abstract

New participatory, interactive, and less direct forms of governing seem currently to be unfolding in many liberal democracies. Some scholars have tried to conceptualize these forms of governing by using the notion of new public governance (NPG). While promising, the notion remains conceptually underdeveloped. This article first aims to develop NPG from an empirical to an analytical concept that enables categorization and evaluation of new forms of governing. In order to gauge the full scope of the current transformations we draw on David Easton’s system theoretical model to identify the constitutive elements of NPG and show how they differ from those elements underpinning classical public administration and new public management. The second aim of the article is to delineate the main challenges that NPG poses for public management and policymaking in a complex and fragmented world. We conclude by reflecting on the need for metagovernance in order to handle the challenges and bring out the positive impact of NPG on normative performance goals such as efficiency, democracy, and innovation.