Forgoing New Public Management and Adopting Post‐New Public Management Principles: The On‐Going Civil Service Reform in Israel
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1751 |
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Nissim Cohen |
FORGOING NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND ADOPTING POST-NEW
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES: THE ON-GOING CIVIL SERVICE
REFORM IN ISRAEL
NISSIM COHEN*
The University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
SUMMARY
Since the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM reforms have dominated attempts to improve public admin-
istration. The literature suggests several reasons for the latter approach. However, these explanations seem to be less relevant to
the ongoing civil service reforms in Israel. The Israeli experience is an example where NPM reforms did not occur, but post-
NPM reforms were adopted enthusiastically decades later. Our findings demonstrate how under the structural conditions of both
non-governability and bureaucratic centralization, post-NPM reforms may provide an attractive layering strategy, offering the
option of changing certain features of the system without requiring a drastic, comprehensive overhaul of it. Once Israeli decision
makers decided that there was a real public demand for reform, and long-term learning and diffusion processes convinced them
that change was needed, the characteristics of the post-NPM approach made it much easier politically for them to adopt. Copy-
right © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—administrative reform; post-new public management; civil service reform; new public management; Israel
INTRODUCTION
Administrative reform is one of the most intractable yet important challenges for governments today (Repucci,
2014). Since the 1980s, two waves of public administration reforms have dominated many developed societies
around the world: New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM reforms. Most NPM reforms focused on im-
proving efficiency, horizontal specialization in public apparatuses, contracting out, marketization and privatization,
adopting private-sector management methods, performance management and an outcome-based orientation. Very
quickly, this wave dominated many administrative systems all over the world (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). How-
ever, in the late 1990s, a second wave of reform spread in many public administrations around the world: post-
NPM (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007a, 2007b).
The post-NPM reforms focused on the problems that arose as a result of the increased vertical and horizontal
specialization in NPM (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007a). Usually, this term refers to changes in the processes
of bureaucracies. The core ideas and measures of post-NPM are designed to strengthen the central political and ad-
ministrative level through structural reintegration and by increasing capacity at the top. However, horizontal coor-
dination between units and sectors is also deemed important, with the control of this coordination coming from the
top level (Christensen, 2012).
The literature suggests several important reasons for the move to post-NPM ideas. These explanations contrib-
ute to our understanding of why many Western societies, characterized by decentralization and sufficient
governability capabilities, adopted the second wave of reforms. However, these explanations seem to be less rele-
vant in cases in which the NPM reforms did not occur in the first place, but the post-NPM reforms were adopted
very enthusiastically more than two decades later.
*Correspondence to: N. Cohen, The University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel. E-mail: NissimCohen@poli.haifa.ac.il
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 36,20–34 (2016)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1751
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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