Contemporary public management: a new global paradigm?
| Date | 01 June 1995 |
| DOI | 10.1177/095207679501000208 |
| Author | Christopher Hood |
| Published date | 01 June 1995 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
104
Contemporary
public
management:
a
new
global
paradigm?
Christopher
Hood
London
School
of
Economics
and
Political
Science
Abstract
This
paper
takes
another
look
at
the
much-canvassed
idea
of
a
’new
global
paradigm’
emerging
in
contemporary
public
management.
It
argues
that,
linguistic
usage
apart,
the
’globality’
and
monoparadigmatic
character
of
contemporary
public
management
change
seems
to
be
exaggerated.
Three
interrelated
objections
are
advanced
against
the
claim
of
an
emerging
new
global paradigm.
First,
it
is
argued
that
contemporary
reform
ideas,
particularly
those
advanced
by
Osborne
and
Gaebler,
are
culturally
plural
rather
than
homogenous.
Second,
it
is
argued
that
there
are
substantial
biases
towards
exaggerating
international
similarity
in
public
management
reforms,
but
that
the
similarity
weakens
when
we
go
beyond
semantic
packaging
to
examine
the
specific
content
of
reform
initiatives.
Third,
it
is
claimed
that
there
are
also
built-
in
biases
for
overstressing
the
continuity
of
contemporary
public
management
reforms,
but
that
in
fact
there
are
major
obstacles
to
the
emergence
of
a
stable
new
paradigm
in
public
management.
One
is
the
underlying
mutual
repulsion
of
the
multiple
reform
paradigms
today,
and
the
other
is
the
frequency of
self-
disequilibrating
processes
in
public
management
reform
associated
with
the
production
of
unintended
side-effects
and
reverse
effects.
1.
The
Claim
of
a
New
Global
Paradigm
in
Public
Management
It
has
become
commonplace
to
assert
that
an
unstoppable
new
’global’
model
is
developing
in
contemporary
public
management.
The
claim
is
made
explicitly
by
David
Osborne
and
Ted
Gaebler,
in
their
1992
best-seller
Reinventing
Government.
They
say
that
the
world-wide
ascendancy
of
a
new
’global
paradigm’
in
public
administration
is
historically
as
inevitable
as
the
rise
of
’progressive’
public
management
ideas
in
the
USA
in
the
late
nineteenth
and
early
twentieth
century
(Osborne
and
Gaebler
1992:
325
and
328).
Those
progressive-era
ideas
embraced
a
faith
in
institutionalized
science
and
public
service
professionalism,
allied
with
general
process
rules
to
limit
malfeasance
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