INTRODUCTION
There is a global trend where
governments are focused on providing better services to the public. They have
been constantly looking for better ways to increase the quality of the services
provided and at the same time minimize the cost or the expenditure of the
government. With the aim of improvement in the service delivery by the public
service providers, governments took some steps which are known as ‘New Public
Management’ (NPM). Most contemporary processes of government reform are
inspired by the ideas, techniques, and methodologies postulated by the New
Public Management trend. This wave of government reforms that has recently
dominated the international scene, is based on the conviction that governments
evaluated on results, that work on quasimarket situations, that are agile in
performance, able to adopt private sector administrative techniques, and
focused on client-citizen, are capable of obtaining better results and greater
legitimacy (Cabrero, 2005).
Many countries in west like Britain,
Canada, Australia, and others have adopted the concept of NPM and has been a
success on achieving effective and efficient service delivery. The successful
experience of adopting the concept of NPM has certainly influenced other
countries in the world. Developing and under developing countries seems to be
aspired and adopt the concept to find a faster and more effective path to build
less expensive and more efficient governments. However, in recent years, with
the experience of NPM and changes to it has contributed to the concept of New
Public Governance.
In this article, I
intend to discuss the article entitled “New Public Management and New Public
Governance: Finding the Balance” by Peter Aucoin where I will be explaining the emergence of NPM based
on the article and will not be arguing if NPM is better in itself. In order to
understand the concept of NPM, it is important to understand the context that
led to the emergence of NPM and the question of what was before NPM has to be
answered. I will use the examples of few countries to relate to the cases in
the same manner as the writer has used in his article. Later on I will also
attempt to relate the concept of NPM to the current scenario of Nepal.
1.
Emergence
The emergence of NPM can be traced back
between 1960s to 1970s when the postwar ambitions coincided with the post war
affluence. During this period, in countries like Australia, Britain, Canada,
and New Zealand the Westminster model of poor management face an expanding
number and range of public services as state intervention in the socioeconomic
order increased significantly. Hence, increasing number of the diversified
public services, with growing annual government deficits and mounting national
debt was the result.
This problem had to be managed and
someone had to lead it. In 1970s Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in
Britain led the concept of “Rolling back the state” which meant:
· Privatizing state enterprises,
· Contracting out to the private sector
the task of delivering those public services that had not been privatized,
· Eliminating some public services, and
· Reducing government spending (or at
least slowing down the rate of its growth) through greater economies and
efficiencies.
1.1 Privatizing
Under the concept of privatization, the
public services provided by the state bureaucracies were transformed into
private services under private ownership and provided in the market place.
There were two grounds to justify privatization and contracting out: first, it
would reduce budgetary requirements; and second, it would improve national
economic productivity.
1.2 Contracting
Contracting introduced
the idea the ‘market’ which provided a space for competition between competing
potential providers (public sector and/or private sector providers) over
contracts to deliver public services. Excerices of tender can be an example. The
free and fair competition between the potential service providers reduced or
eliminated the monopoly of the public service providers. The philosophy behind
the concept of contracting is that, competition between potential providers is
what spurs improvements in economy and efficiency; it is not the public or
private status of the providers. Hence,
as long the public service provider does not have monopoly control over a
service, and thus must compete periodically against private sector providers to
maintain a contract, it should have every incentive to achieve all possible
economies and efficiencies.
However, there were still other areas
left to manage which were not privatized and contracted out. That means, NPM
had to involve improving the management of those services which the public
service would continue to provide directly.
1.3 Eliminating some public services and reducing government
spending
These two concept can be discussed
together with the examples of four different countries; Britain, New Zealand,
Australia, and Canada. I will be looking at the steps or the approaches taken
by these governments to reform.
1.3.1 British approach
The British approach
to reform initially stressed achieving greater economies and efficiencies by
conducting wide ranging ‘efficiency scrutinies’ to search out those areas where
efficiencies could be achieved and then by taking the necessary decision to
realize them. Streamlining of central corporate management regulation and
decentralization of financial and human resources administrative authorities
were done. They also separated the ministerial departments from ‘executive
agencies’ which were the division or branches of ministerial departments.
Before the separation of the executive agencies they used to manage and deliver
the public service. However, after the separation the only delivered public
service.
1.3.2 New Zealanders approach
New Zealand introduced the idea of
Agency theory as a tool to reform. Agency
theory is directed at the ubiquitous agency relationship, in which one party
(the principal) delegates work to another (the agent), who performs that work (Eisenhardt,
1989). The theory focuses on the relationship between employee and principal,
in this context chief ministers are the employee and ministers are the
employee. Hence, New Zealand focused on restructuring of the relationship
between minister and their chief executives. Chief executives were now regarded
as professional managers. The managers had the authority, discretion, and
flexibility to deploy and manage the resources that were provided to them by
their ministers for the production (output) of public services in the most
economical and efficient manner. The British terminology of ‘executive
agencies’ was not used, but the organizational design was similar.
1.3.3 Australian approach
Australia streamlined the number of
ministerial department and made the capacity for ministerial direction even
more important in the context of reform. They focused on managing ‘inputs’ to
produce ‘outputs’ as economically and efficiently as possible but also
achieving effective outcomes at the same time. Policy design was critical: no
matter how good the management of programs, if the policy design was faulty
then the intended effects would not be realized. Australian reformers criticized
British and New Zealanders saying that they were focused first and foremost on
economy and efficiency with too little attention paid to effectiveness.
1.3.4 Canadian approach
Canadian reformers initiated ‘program
review’ headed by the deputy prime minister and assisted by the teams with
equal number of public servants and private sector manager. The result was
supposed to be a major streamlining of government services and operations. This
effort was a failure in contrast to the British ‘efficiency scrutinies’. The
consequence was cuts to the government administrative budgets but no major
program reduction.
By mid-1990s, however, NPM had begun to
give ground to reforms or initiatives that were not inspired primarily, or at
all, by the theoretical or ideological underpinnings of NPM. At the same time,
several initiatives that drew inspiration from traditional public services
ideals or at last a mix of the new and traditional began to make their mark in
late 1990s into 21st century. The three general initiatives; citizen
centered service delivery, result based management, and horizontal
collaboration emerged in a period of significant public management reform.
These initiatives did not contradict NPM reform; indeed, in several respects
they assumed that public service managers had sufficient authority to realize
these new initiatives.
2.
New Public Management in Nepal
Under the chairmanship of the then
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala after the restoration of democratic political
regime, the government formed a high level Administrative Reform Commission
(ARC) who recommended reform measures mainly in the areas of redefining the
role of government, privatization, effectiveness of public service delivery,
re-structuring public organizations, reduction of overstaffing and right sizing
bureaucracy, decentralization/delegation of power and authority to the line
agencies, and others which among these in large number are similar to NPM
ideas. (Gautam, 2008)
There has been number of reform
policies produced in the context of Nepal. However, the major problem seems to
be in the implementation part. No matter how effective the policies might be,
if it not implemented properly the expected result cannot be achieved.
|
Major Proposed Reforms
|
Main Focus of the Reforms
|
Implementation Status
|
|
|
1. Reviewing the role of government
|
Transfer of government
activities to the non-government sectors.
|
The
concept is partly implemented
|
|
|
2.
Restructuring public organizations
|
Merging Ministries,
Departments and reducing the number of public organizations.
|
All
most not-implemented
|
|
|
3.
Rightsizing the number of employees
|
Reduction of number of
employees working at the public sector.
|
Partly
implemented in Civil Service but not in other sectors
|
|
|
4.
Improving Public service delivery
|
Effective service delivery and prompt response to
the public needs
|
Not
implemented
|
|
|
5.
Procedural simplification
|
Reduction of decision making layers and paper
works
|
Very
few implemented
|
|
|
6.
Managerial decentralization
|
Devolution and delegation of managerial authority
to the line agencies
|
Not
implemented
|
|
|
7.
Human resource development
|
Increasing capacity of public employees and
making them more efficient
|
Not-implemented
|
|
|
8. Privatization
|
Privatization
of Public Enterprises
|
Partly
implemented, 30 out 63
|
|
|
9.
Developing internal capacity leading reform institution
|
To improve management structure of leading reform
institutions and their monitoring capacity
|
Partly implemented
(Only structures)
|
|
|
10.
Improving efficiency of the civil service
|
To enhance performance of public employees.
|
Not-implemented
|
|
|
11. Enhancing over all competence
|
To increase motivation and improve skills of civil
servants through modern human resource management
|
Not implemented
|
|
|
12.
Improving governance and reduce corruption in government
|
To strength legal framework for combating
corruption, Special Court for dealing cases of corruption
|
Partly-implemented
|
|
|
13. Iimproving
performance of the Ministries
|
To deliver better services to citizens based on NPM
work culture- performance based management.
|
Not-implemented
|
|
|
14. Performance
Contract
|
To make employees accountable to their jobs and make
the performance of employees result oriented
|
Not- -implemented
|
|
|
15.
Application of Citizens’ Charter
|
To provide public services promptly and smoothly to
the citizens
|
Citizens’Charter boards are there but its spirit is not
followed
|
|
Source: Report of the Administrative Reform
Commission-1992, Policy Documents of Governance Reform Program, 2001-2005 and
Its Road Map-2004, Report of the Vision Paper for Civil Service-2007, Civil
Service Act and Rules-2007, and Economic Survey, 2006-7. (Gautam,
2008)
The above table shows that Nepal has
not been able to implement its policies and those which are implemented are not
implemented in a proper way. Improper or ineffective implementation of NPM
reforms might not allow Nepal’s public sector to improve. It is important to
look at the factors that are effecting the implementation of the reform
policies. Nepal as a country in a situation of post conflict has its own
limitation. There is a continuous challenge for the politician and bureaucrats
in the situation when the country is going through the Constitution drafting
process. However, the political instability is not only the problem that is
hindering the implementation of policies related to the reforms in the public
sector. Political, Bureaucratic, Policy process, Institutional and Economic
factors are the most important factor for making application of NPM
related reforms effective (Gautam, 2008).
REFERENCE
Cabrero, Enrique (2005) “Between New
Public Management and New Public Governance: The Case of Mexican Municipalities”,
in International Public Management Review,
Vol. 6, Issue 1
http://www1.imp.unisg.ch/org/idt/ipmr.nsf/ac4c1079924cf935c1256c76004ba1a6/fa3281d83e1d2b25c1256fc50033725b/$FILE/IPMR_6_1_2005_CABRERO%20FINAL.pdf
accessed on 29.01.204
Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. (1989) “Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review”, in The
Academy of Management Review, Vol. 1, No.1, pp 57-74
http://www.jstor.org/stable/258191
accessed on 02.01.2014
Gautam, Bharat (2008) Factors Affecting
Application of New Public Management Oriented Reforms in Nepal, presented at the international conference on Challenges of Governance in
South Asia, Kathmandu, Nepal
