# New Public Management and Governance Political Science I · Public Administration · https://tryals.app/learn/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance ## 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. ## Practice questions 8 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Managing to an indicator reallocates effort towards the measured part of the goal. Why is that a property of measurement rather than a fixable design error? A. Performance metrics inevitably suffer from statistical noise that grows over time and obscures delivery B. Frontline staff deliberately choose to subvert targets primarily to protect professional autonomy C. Public objectives are multiple and contested, so any indicator captures only part of them D. Centralised policy designers lack the operational expertise required to select robust indicators **Answer:** C. Public objectives are multiple and contested, so any indicator captures only part of them **Why:** Because the objective itself is **multiple and contested**. A hospital pursues speed, safety, dignity and cost at once; any indicator captures a subset, and managing to it moves effort towards that subset. A better indicator changes which part is favoured rather than removing the effect. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/managing-to-an-indicator-reallocates-effort-towards-the-measured-part ### 2. Which are defensible achievements of new public management? A. Measured service standards improved where the measures were reasonably honest B. Organisations found out what their services actually cost C. Some agencies genuinely benefited from managerial freedom D. Overall public spending fell substantially as a share of GDP **Answer:** A. Measured service standards improved where the measures were reasonably honest; B. Organisations found out what their services actually cost; C. Some agencies genuinely benefited from managerial freedom **Why:** The fourth is the claim the record does not support: spending as a share of GDP stayed near its level across the reform decades. What changed was the organisational form, which is why an honest assessment is about how services were delivered rather than about how much was spent. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/which-are-defensible-achievements-of-new-public-management ### 3. Sort each description by whether it belongs to NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT or to GOVERNANCE. **Answer:** - New public management: Disaggregate into units with clear objectives, Specify outputs and hold managers to targets, Introduce competition between providers - Governance: Coordinate networks nobody controls, The state as one actor among several, Steer indirectly through frameworks and funding **Why:** The columns are best read as cause and consequence. Disaggregation and contracting produced the landscape of interdependent organisations the governance literature describes, so governance is partly a theory of what new public management left behind rather than a rival programme. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/sort-each-description-by-whether-it-belongs-to-new-public-management ### 4. Complete the account of the reform record. **Answer:** Rhodes described the reformed landscape as governing without **government**. The tendency for what is measured to be manipulated is called **gaming**. The costs of specifying, monitoring and enforcing contracts are **transaction** costs. The current agenda, emphasising reintegration and digital delivery, is usually called **post**-NPM. **Why:** The transaction costs in the third blank are the most under-reported item in the record. Contracting is not free: specification, tendering, monitoring and enforcement consume real resources, and in several documented cases they consumed more than the savings the contract produced. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/complete-the-account-of-the-reform-record ### 5. How many recurring failures of new public management does this lesson identify? **Answer:** 4 **Why:** **Four.** They recur across countries and sectors, which is what makes them properties of the model rather than local implementation problems, and it is why the post-NPM agenda addresses all four at once rather than proposing better targets. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/how-many-recurring-failures-of-new-public-management-does-this-lesson ### 6. The shift from direct state provision to network governance alters how the centre steers policy. Why does this structural change fundamentally complicate traditional political accountability? A. Ministers retain legal control but lose formal authority to set policy frameworks B. Contracting out entirely eliminates the state's role in funding frontline bodies C. Multi-actor delivery obscures which organisation is liable for operational error D. Policy goals become singular and fully measurable across the disparate providers **Answer:** C. Multi-actor delivery obscures which organisation is liable for operational error **Why:** Network delivery diffuses operational duty across independent bodies, blunting ministerial scrutiny. However, the state still steers frameworks and provides funding, whilst the inherent complexity of public goals remains contested rather than simplified. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/the-shift-from-direct-state-provision-to-network-governance-alters ### 7. Arrange these stages of the reform record in order. **Answer:** 1. Large integrated bureaucracies deliver services directly 2. Functions are disaggregated and contracted out 3. Gaming, fragmentation and transaction costs are documented 4. Joined-up and whole-of-government agendas emerge 5. Digital government reorganises services around the citizen **Why:** The sequence is a reaction chain, and the final step is not a return to the first. Digital government reorganises around the citizen rather than around the organisation, which is a different principle from the integrated bureaucracy it superficially resembles. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/arrange-these-stages-of-the-reform-record-in-order ### 8. Arrange these phases of administrative reform in order. **Answer:** 1. Classical bureaucratic administration 2. New public management 3. Documented failures and the governance critique 4. Joined-up and whole-of-government reintegration 5. Digital-era governance **Why:** Reading the five as accumulation rather than replacement is the correction the lesson ends on. A European administration today runs all five layers at once in different parts of the same organisation, which is why officials experience reform as contradictory rather than progressive. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/new-public-management-and-governance/arrange-these-phases-of-administrative-reform-in-order