Administrative philosophies in the discourse and decisions of the New Zealand public service: is post-New Public Management still a myth?
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221101727 |
| Author | Rodney J Scott,Flavia Donadelli,Eleanor RK Merton |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Administrative
philosophies in the
discourse and decisions of
the New Zealand public
service: is post-New Public
Management still a myth?
Rodney J Scott
University of New South Wales, Australia
Flavia Donadelli
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Eleanor RK Merton
Public Service Commission, New Zealand
Abstract
New Zealand is frequently cited as the archetypical example of New Public Management
(NPM), having gone ‘further and faster’than other jurisdictions in radically reforming
their public service in the late 1980s. These reforms have been credited with significant
gains in efficiency and responsiveness, while introducing new challenges. Successive
reforms over the past 30 years tinkered with the model without fundamentally altering
the underlying paradigm, such that authors refer to the ‘myth of post-NPM in New
Zealand’. In 2020, New Zealand repealed and replaced its main public service legislation.
By textually analysing government documents, this article explores the different theor-
etical roots of New Zealand’s ongoing administrative reforms and debates the extent of
their theoretical coherence. The Act directly dialogues with and draws inspiration from
recent academic debates, drawing from a range of sources (such as New Public
Governance, Digital Era Governance, and the New Public Ser vice).
Corresponding author:
Rodney J Scott, University of New South Wales, Northcott Dr, Campbell, ACT 2612, Australia.
Email: r.scott@adfa.edu.au
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(4) 941–957
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523221101727
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Points for practitioners
•New Zealand has long been regarded as the purest example of New Public
Management (NPM).
•Legislation passed in 2020 saw New Zealand adopt a range of reforms described in the
literature as ‘post-NPM’, while also reaffirming features associated with Traditional
Public Administration (TPA).
•While New Zealand has moved away from a pure NPM model and adopted features
associated with Post-NPM, Post-NPM is not a coherent doctrine and it may only be
possible to identify administrative doctrines retrospectively.
•We may be entering a period of ‘New Public Complexity’, where administrative doc-
trines are blended and layered.
Keywords
digital era governance, legislation, new public governance, new public management, new
public service, New Zealand, post-NPM, public sector reform
Introduction
Governments around the world continually reform the way they operate their machiner-
ies. Attached to these reforms, there usually are extensive justifications pointing to and
accounting for the direction of travel. How this direction is ultimately determined is
still a largely uncharted territory, but observers have shown that consistencies do exist,
if not in practice, at least in the justifications given for change. Public administration lit-
erature describes a series of relatively coherent ‘administrative philosophies’that have
been adopted by several countries in their justifications for administrative change:
notably Traditional Public Administration (TPA), New Public Management (NPM),
and post-NPM have been frequently mentioned as widespread inspirational models.
New Zealand has acquired a reputation for closely aligning its justifications for internal
reforms with international trends (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). These ideas can be
mapped onto successive iterations of the public service’s foundational legislation, starting
with the TPA of the Public Service Act 1912. In 2011, Lodge and Gill asked whether
post-NPM in New Zealand was a myth, following on from Chapman and Duncan
(2007), who asked whether the famous ‘New Zealand model’had been replaced with
a‘new New Zealand model’. In both cases the authors concluded that, while changes
had occurred, New Zealand still largely retained practices consistent with the NPM phil-
osophy for which it was known.
The recent Public Service Act 2020 was heralded as the most significant change to the
public service in over 30 years. Given New Zealand’s reputation and history, this article
examines the basis for this latest reform to determine the extent to which it aligns to
post-NPM ideas. In other words, it tests the level of consistency of justifications for
942 International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(4)
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