The Programme and the Record
New public management (NPM) ran public bodies more like private firms. Britain, New Zealand, and Australia went furthest. Continental Europe adopted it selectively.
What worked, or worked sometimes.
- Cost transparency improved.
- Measurable service standards improved when measured honestly.
- Some agencies benefited from managerial freedom.
What went wrong.
- Gaming. Targets get manipulated. Reclassifying lists beats cutting waits.
- Fragmentation. Single-purpose bodies left nobody managing the whole user journey.
- Transaction costs. Contracting, monitoring, and enforcing ate up expected savings.
- Accountability confusion. Multi-actor delivery obscures ministerial responsibility.
Public services have multiple, contested, hard-to-measure objectives. Any metric captures only part of a goal, pulling effort away from unmeasured duties.
Governance
Governance means policy delivered through networks of public, private, and voluntary bodies. The state shifts to steering, funding, and setting frameworks.
Multi-level governance adds the vertical dimension. Policy is shaped across municipal, regional, national, and supranational levels at once.
Where It Stands
The modern agenda is post-NPM. It focuses on:
- Reintegrating fragmented services
- Digital government around citizen needs
- Rebuilding in-house capability eroded by outsourcing
Common pitfall: treating the failures of new public management as proof that measurement is worthless. Measurement changes behaviour. Indicators must be chosen carefully and expected to be gamed.