From The New Public Management to Governing
Without Government Prof. Allan
Peachment, Associate Professor, Policy Sciences, Curtin University,
Perth, Australia, deliberated on the topic
of "From the New Public Management
to Governing without Government." A
summary of his discourse is given below.
 |
| Prof. Allan Peachment |
"The
oldest profession in the world is not that which is frequently quoted. The oldest
profession, at 5,200 years, is government.
Yet, in global terms it
is the last century that has produced the most dramatic changes.... I put it
to you that what changes our everyday world is not the decisions of politicians,
the theories of economists or the guns of revolutionaries.
It is ideas.... J M Keynes
said in 1936 that '...the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both
when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.
Madmen in authority, who
hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler
of a few years back. ...Sooner or later, it is ideas, not vested interests which
are dangerous for good and evil.'
All these suggests that
in our search for policy directions we have the very difficult task of deciding
which ideas to adopt and why.
In other words, which economists
or political philosopher should we favour, and how can we tell whether their
ideas are right or wrong?
The term New Public Management
(NPM) and the revolutionary changes this has imposed on public bureaucracies
around the globe in the past two decades has been described as one of the most
striking international trends in public administration.
Certainly, twenty years
ago public bureaucracies were somewhat bloated, usually they were not
interested in management issues and gave more emphasis to process rather than
the direction or attainment of government policy outcomes.
While modern government
continues to rely extensively on public bureaucracies to do the work of government,
the application of NPM has introduced a new agenda.
The public sector is now
expected to be more entrepreneurial and less risk averse.
At a deeper level
however, the new relationship is between government and markets.
But, the main flaw is in
the lack of relevance between any of these factors and policy development, policy
analysis and policy cycle generally.
They tell us very little
about the policy agenda, policy formulation, policy implementation, policy evaluation
or assessment.
Given that government seeks
to 'reinvent' itself and to 'steer' instead of 'row', and given that markets
are self-organising and that networks too are, by definition, beyond the control
of government, it would appear to me that a totally new understanding of 'government'
is emerging.
This new concept has been
termed "The New Governance" or "Governing without government." It is noteworthy
that the individuals who first wrote about the concepts that today dominate
the 'governing without government' school of thinking did so decades ago.
Concepts such as self-steering,
self-organising, feedback, homeostasis, cybernetics, mutual adjustments and
others, while widely understood today were then a new language to describe new
concepts.
The world is becoming more
complex and difficult to understand. In addition, change is occurring at a faster
rate.
Developing policy in such
a dynamic environment might suggest to some that what we need is more experts.
Experts we do need, of course.
But more than that, we need officials who can comprehend the moving tapestry
of the wider picture.
Their mentality should make
them among the first to draw society's attention to emerging problems and to
pose fresh questions as well as to enable us to transcend what has been termed
the 'chaos of thought.'
|
