Abstract
From three theoretical perspectives – instrumental, cultural and mythical – this article analyses the reasons for the worldwide emergence of post-New Public Management reforms and summarizes the typical features of those measures. In particular, it explores the link between post-New Public Management and public-sector reforms in China and argues that the ongoing reforms in China, including the super-ministry reform, the regulation of industry, the affordable housing policy, social and healthcare reforms, and the anti-corruption campaign, have shed light on various aspects of post-New Public Management measures. However, because China’s complex public administrative systems are more centralized than they are in many Western countries, it faces big challenges in deciding on and implementing reforms.
Points for practitioners
The examined administrative reforms demonstrate that China is imitating post-New Public Management reforms and adapting them to Chinese cultural traditions. China’s case reveals that the public sector is a complicated combination of elements from New Public Management and post-New Public Management reforms in a process where new reform elements are continuously added to old ones. China’s reforms are still ongoing; in the past years, China focused more on economic reform, decentralization and efficiency, but today its reforms are turning to social stability, political order and central control.
Keywords
Introduction
The New Public Management (NPM) reform wave emerged in Anglo-Saxon countries in the early 1980s as a response to public administration defects, economic crises, the lack of trust between political and administrative leaders, and a more ideologically oriented neoliberal economic policy (Aberbach and Christensen, 2001; Boston et al., 1996). It became a dominant administrative reform paradigm for many Western countries; even in China, its economic and administrative reforms in the past three decades have also shown NPM’s features (Christensen et al., 2008). Actually, China shares distinct similarities and parallels with the West in its patterns and styles of reforms. Although NPM was seen as a universal panacea for public-sector diseases, a new reform wave known as post-NPM emerged in the late 1990s in many of the same countries in which NPM had established itself (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Post-NPM is seen as a direct response to the problems that NPM faced in delivering coordinated services and dealing with the global challenges of ‘wicked issues’ for many countries, including China. This does not mean that NPM has disappeared; in fact, it remains relatively important and has merged with and been partly modified by post-NPM (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007; Park and Joaquin, 2012). There have been many studies of the dynamics between NPM and post-NPM in Western political-administrative systems. However, we still know little about such dynamics in rapidly developing countries, not least China, where numerous public-sector reforms are under way. On account of its rapid economic growth over a short period, its mounting social and environmental problems, and its one-party state system, China is a fascinating case study for analysing the paradigm of public-sector reforms.
Thus, this article selects representative reforms in China to show how post-NPM, if at all, manifests itself to examine how the Chinese reforms of its administrative paradigm reflect public administration reforms worldwide and to show the relevance of a theoretical framework for understanding these features. Specifically, it addresses the following questions:
How relevant is post-NPM for understanding the public-sector reforms in China? In what policy areas are there signs of the influence of post-NPM? What comparisons can be drawn between China and major Western countries based on our analyses of China’s reforms? What are the similarities and the differences? How can we interpret the administrative reform measures in China using organization theory?
In this article, we first lay out our theoretical foundation by briefly presenting three analytical perspectives from organization theory and then we summarize the main content and features of the global post-NPM reform measures. Relevant post-NPM cases in China are afterwards addressed within our theoretical framework, which is followed by a comparative discussion. Finally, we conclude with theoretical implications.
Analytical perspectives
Our analyses of the post-NPM-oriented public-sector reforms in China are based on three perspectives from organization theory: instrumental-structural, cultural-institutional and mythical (Christensen et al., 2007). These perspectives, which focus on different aspects of the reforms, highlight major analytical ideas that have been developed in Scandinavian public-reform studies in close collaboration with leading scholars in the US (Czarniawska and Sevon, 2003; March and Olsen, 1983, 1989; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2013). 1
The instrumental-structural perspective argues that political and administrative leaders have significant control over reform processes, score high on rational organizational thinking and, by and large, can achieve what they want to by deliberately changing the structure and culture (Dahl and Lindblom, 1953; March and Olsen, 1983). The major tool they use to achieve their goals is structural redesign: that is, they reorganize the public apparatus in order to attain ever-changing goals (Egeberg, 2012; Gulick, 1937; Simon, 1957). In reality, major challenges to these instrumental ideals are that leaders often disagree and rational calculation is inevitably difficult in a complex world.
The cultural-institutional perspective emphasizes the importance of informal norms and values, cultural path dependency, and cultural compatibility. It argues that public organizations evolve gradually and incrementally in such a way that a particular cultural identity emerges through adaptation to internal and external pressure (Selznick, 1957). The normative context in which the organization is established will determine the cultural path; in other words, the cultural ‘roots’ or traditions will influence the subsequent ‘routes’ (March, 1994). The success of an implemented reform depends largely on the extent to which it is compatible with the cultural identity and traditions of a public institution or country (Brunsson and Olsen, 1993; March, 1994).
The point of departure of the mythical perspective is that the environment of an organization or institution can be seen as having two dimensions: technical and institutional (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). The institutional environment is based on the myths or taken-for-granted attitudes that have a strong influence on the public sector. Public organizations and their leaders adapt to rational and modern myths in order to increase their legitimacy and support base (Brunsson, 1989). Myths basically function as ‘window-dressing’; they have no instrumental effects and signify ‘front-stage’ rather than ‘back-stage’ activities (Goffman, 1959). Stone (2012) sees debates about facts and data in decision-making as masqueraded debates about norms and values, which alludes to the dynamics between the instrumental and symbolic aspects of reforms. A challenge for the public leadership in treating reforms as myths or symbols is that they may cause credibility issues because balancing myths and practical reality may prove difficult.
Main post-NPM features
The first major reason why many Anglo-Saxon countries introduced post-NPM reforms from the late 1990s was that NPM had failed to fulfil its central promise of efficiency (Boyne et al., 2003). Meanwhile, NPM also received criticisms for the lower quality of public services and increased social inequality (Fountain, 2001; Stephens, 1996).
Second, NPM undermined the hierarchical control of political leaders (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011) and basic foundation of public administration in democratic practice (Box et al., 2001), which resulted in the fragmentation of the public apparatus and put more pressure on top leaders to coordinate and build capacity. Zanetti and Adams (2000) also observe that in the scenario of NPM, the market becomes the new leviathan demanding absolute fealty; public administration’s vulnerability to the encroachment of administrative evil is increased.
Third, an increasingly insecure and unstable world has increased the need for control, which runs counter to the NPM philosophy; hence, decentralization, deregulation and delegation have been replaced by moves towards centralization, coordination and integration when times become harder and issues are ‘wicked’. When dealing with terrorism, economic crises, natural disasters or broader environmental issues, governments have implemented post-NPM measures by increasing their control over society, as evidenced by a number of studies (Hammond, 2007; Kettl, 2004, Ventriss, 2013).
Therefore, as a remedy for NPM, the core ideas of post-NPM are to strengthen the central political order through structural reintegration and by increasing capacity at the top (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007). At the same time, horizontal coordination between government agencies and sectors is important and control over coordination should be from the top. Increased coordination between sectors has been brought about not only through cross-sectoral programmes or ‘super-networks’ (Gregory, 2006), but also through more pragmatic ‘smart practice’, including cooperation between public institutions with the same users or client groups (Bardach, 1998).
Embodied in new labels for the old, familiar doctrines of control and coordination, post-NPM has different elements, including ‘whole-of-government’, used in Australia (Halligan, 2006), and ‘joined-up government’, a term coined by Tony Blair’s administration in the UK (Bogdanor, 2005), to indicate a third way of collaborating with non-profit organizations in service provision (Gregory, 2006). We use the term ‘post-NPM’ because it combines both the hierarchical structural and the horizontal integrative reforms and is able to better describe the empirical realities of public-sector reforms around the world.
Cultural integration has also become more important under post-NPM. The aim of it is to foster collective cultural values and norms by stressing that people are in the ‘same cultural boat’ since they have a common cultural heritage and a common future. Moreover, there has been an increase in the use among political and administrative leaders of symbolic labels denoting increased control, capacity and coordination (Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson, 2006).
Post-NPM in China
The development of post-NPM and expectations vis-a-vis China
China’s NPM-featured economic and administrative reforms since the late 1970s, including marketization, privatization, deregulation, changing the structure of state-owned enterprises, decentralization and internal changes in civil services, have been well documented (Christensen and Lægreid, 2013; Lan, 2001; Ngok and Zhu, 2007; Yang, 2004). However, understanding the nature of the reforms of a country needs to take the context of its history of reform into consideration. If the reform measures in China are examined, it can be seen that they have been waged without giving up or modifying the strong control of the Communist system, which puts control and devolution issues into a different perspective from what is customary in the West. In fact, China has similar reasons to embrace post-NPM-featured reforms. For example, its society is sensitive to the challenges of both economic efficiency and social equality; as a one-party state, its national political leadership is eager to exercise control; it also faces severe environmental and societal security problems. If the three analytical perspectives are used to explain the emergence of post-NPM in China, there could be the following expectations.
First, the structural-instrumental perspective is related to how the political-administrative system fundamentally exercises control over reform processes through structural and other formal instruments. That is why Anglo-Saxon countries that have a Westminster system of government and a ‘winner-takes-all’ electoral system or ‘elective dictatorship’ have tended to be front-runners in most public-sector reforms (Hood, 1996; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Thus, it could be expected that in a one-party state, post-NPM reforms in China would be easy to implement, even though structural complexity poses various challenges to the eventual outcome.
Second, the structural-instrumental perspective helps to understand the top leadership’s concerns about challenges to political control. NPM increased the gap between the political executive, on the one hand, and administrative leaders at the various levels, on the other. This has undermined the power of the political executive and increased the influence of administrative leaders (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). Thus, the preoccupation of the political leadership in China to preserve political control is the main thrust of post-NPM reforms.
Third, the cultural-institutional perspective explains how the implementation of post-NPM reforms varies from country to country around the world (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Acceptance and implementation of those reforms have depended largely on cultural compatibility between the traditional cultural norms in a given country and the values espoused through the reforms (Brunsson and Olsen, 1993). As regards China, the cultural values of post-NPM, in particular, those related to accepting hierarchical leadership, seem to be compatible with traditional Chinese culture, even though the implementation of core elements of NPM has eroded that basis.
Fourth, another typical feature of post-NPM viewed from the cultural perspective is the focus on collective values, including an increased emphasis on ethical standards (March, 1994). Therefore, post-NPM reforms in China could be seen as compatible with the country’s focus on collective and ethical values, not least in policy areas such as health-care and social services, environmental policy, societal security, and corruption.
Expectations about the furthering of post-NPM reforms in China
In the following subsections, various reforms in China will be examined and whether they have post-NPM features will be discussed. Although there is no pool of post-NPM examples from which we can choose systematically, each case has been selected because it is well documented and representative of the overall reforms; most of the reforms can be seen as a direct reaction to NPM reforms. While the data are primarily secondary, they are taken from authoritative public documents and have been subjected to scientific scrutiny.
Super-ministry reforms: a response to the fragmented administration
Since the late 1970s, China has significantly tried to ‘streamline’ the government apparatus in a bid to overcome its fragmented structure (Christensen et al., 2008). Historically, these efforts were largely unsuccessful. The Second Plenary Session of the Communist Party’s 17th Central Committee approved a plan on institutional restructuring in February 2008, which was submitted to the National People’s Congress in March 2008 and subsequently endorsed. Five new ministries were set up by merging existing departments: the Ministry of Industry and Information, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural Construction, and the Ministry of Transportation.
At the same time, other measures were adopted to strengthen central coordination, streamline the central government apparatus and improve essential public services delivery. The merging of ministries and agencies at the central level – to create the so-called ‘super-ministries’ – can be seen as an instrumental post-NPM effort for its using of an old structural solution in a new NPM-generated fragmented and complex context (Christensen et al., 2010).
The environmental protection issue is a case in point. While China’s environment has improved somewhat in some ways, there has been significant deterioration in others in recent years. The fragmented administrative structure has been unable to stop that deterioration because the system itself was defective – as manifested in inadequate legislation, immature management institutions, a lack of administrative capacity and poor policy implementation, all of which have led to frequent environmental accidents in China. Furthermore, China’s poor environmental record has caused regional unrest and is the main driving force behind the environmental ministry reform.
The results of the ‘super-ministry’ reform are evident. First, the new Ministry of Environmental Protection is covered by the Organizational Law of the State Council, which endows it with more institutional stability within the national environmental protection framework and more capacity for instrumental coordination than it had previously. Second, the ministry’s status has been upgraded from that of semi-ministerial agency to fully fledged ministerial department with voting rights in the cabinet (Qiu and Li, 2009). Its political power has thus been considerably increased. In China, environmental protection is more than just an environmental problem; it is a political problem, which means that it can only be solved by political means. Third, the creation of the new ministry demonstrates the Chinese government’s resolution to improve environmental protection and ensure that more civil servants familiar with environmental issues are involved in national decision-making. The administrative upgrade is not simply a formal change of status; it also gives the new ministry access to more resources, meaning that both human capital and functional structures can be improved and a larger budget earmarked for the enforcement of environmental protection laws (Qiu and Li, 2009).
This case shows that the reorganization of China’s central government involves both vertically and horizontally instrumental changes related to post-NPM. To increase resources and upgrade the importance of the policy area, such reorganization was necessary. It remains to be seen whether the effort is successful or not; however, the strong political support has made the reform’s precondition better off than before.
Combating air pollution: the regulation of industry
The relevance of post-NPM in China over the past 10 years is evident from various policies labelled as ‘compensatory measures’, which means constructing new structures and making new regulations to cope with societal problems. Indeed, the national leadership has realized that significant steps must be taken to counteract the effects of too closely following an NPM-based path of development or, to translate the Chinese term used in this context, ‘GNP growth-related development’. The latest such measure to be introduced is the stricter regulation of industry in order to curb pollution. According to Economy (2004), half of the environmental challenge in China is the enforcement of previously passed laws. As revealed in her study, barely 10% of China’s environmental laws and regulations are enforced.
The recent wave of severe air pollution incidents in large areas of China highlighted the need for stronger environmental regulation in the country and prompted the government to push ahead with a number of new environmental policies and legislative initiatives. The Ministry of Environmental Protection has relaunched the process of amending national regulations on air pollution prevention. At the same time, it plans to adopt more stringent emission control limits for heavy polluting industries, such as thermal power plants, petrochemicals, cement and the iron and steel industries. 2
As one of the biggest cities in China and one of the most vulnerable to air pollution, the Chinese capital, Beijing, also introduced stricter measures to curb severe air pollution in the city. A ban on the construction of new, heavy polluting industrial plants and the expansion of existing ones came into force in Beijing in early 2014 in what was the first local clean air act in mainland China aimed at tackling smog. In addition, regulators will set caps on coal consumption and the emissions of major air pollutants, while all plants powered by fossil fuels will have to switch to clean energy. Those that exceed emissions limits will be subject to much stiffer penalties than previously. 3
From a post-NPM point of view, China’s efforts to combat air pollution also have their cultural implications. As economic growth since the early 1990s has signified a cultural break with the past, a new balance must be found between this new path, on the one hand, and environmental norms and values, on the other. It is often said that China has both the worst polluting industry in the world and the most promising new environmental technology. The country has realized that if it does not address the serious environmental problems well, it will also be facing social conflicts. All measures taken to tackle air pollution and smog can also be seen as symbolizing environmental consciousness. Thus, publicizing such measures in a positive way may deflect attention from the problems of implementation.
Affordable housing: addressing social concern
Housing policy is another important focus of China’s ‘compensatory measures’. When the NPM-generated housing market was opened up in 1998, the traditional social housing policy was abandoned. Since then, housing development has exploded, leading to the construction of many apartments in which very few residents can afford to live. In response, the central political leadership recently promised, as a form of compensation, to implement the programme on the construction of affordable homes. That programme is, in fact, part of a bigger plan to cool down China’s overheated market. Cities such as Beijing have rolled out new taxes and anti-speculation measures, such as raising the level of down payments, increasing mortgage rates and limiting the number of homes that a single investor can buy. China began accelerating the construction of public housing units in 2008 and intended to build or renovate 10 million units in 2011. If the government meets its target of building or renovating 36 million units in 2015, social housing will be available to 20% of urban households, compared with about 7% in 2013. 4
The programme’s target is to be achieved through a combination of direct and indirect government subsidies, new regulatory controls on housing provision, and increased redevelopment efforts. However, public housing initiatives almost invariably run into funding difficulties. In general, the central government sets policies and issues mandates with respect to affordable housing while the sub-national governments – in particular, the municipalities – are responsible for the construction, financing and management of such housing. However, the central government does not provide financial support for affordable housing from the budget or through intergovernmental transfers, making many local governments lack the means to finance social housing projects (Man, 2011).
Although the policy results of the affordable housing programmes are controversial and unclear, they testify to post-NPM instrumental efforts and have wider implications for social equality. In the past, it was not only the traditional State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) that provided employees with affordable housing; villages, too, had a strong socially oriented attitude towards such housing. However, by 1998, the introduction of market-oriented housing policy constituted a sharp break with cultural tradition. It remains doubtful whether the current government will be able to reverse the trend in the housing market through its ‘compensatory measures’, but those measures are of politically symbolic value at the very least.
New health-care reforms: a way of rebuilding social equality
Perhaps the most important aspect of post-NPM reform in China is that the political leadership, for both economic and social justice reasons, is increasingly concerned about the social inequality generated by NPM measures. In the social and health-care sectors, this has led to ‘compensatory measures’, such as increasing social benefits and health-care insurance coverage for vulnerable groups, including peasants, the urban working class, the elderly and the disabled.
China unveiled its health-care reform plan in 2009. The national government clearly stated that the goal of the reform was to ensure that every citizen would have equal access to affordable basic health care by 2012 (Chen, 2009; Former MOH, 2009). The policy as announced explicitly defines the government’s role as ensuring such equality and providing the necessary public services, while, at the same time, encouraging the exploration of market mechanisms such as procurement and competition to improve quality and efficiency. Indeed, China’s implied policy is to seek the right mix of government and market – a fundamental issue that many countries around the world are still struggling to address.
In 2009, the Chinese government announced that it would spend an additional RMB850 billion (USD125 billion) to subsidize the impoverished urban and rural residents, increase government spending on public health services especially in lower-income regions, establish primary-care facilities that will serve as gatekeepers in the long run, reform the pharmaceutical market and pilot-test public hospital reforms (Former MOH, 2009). By focusing on achieving universal health insurance coverage, China is showing that it is serious about tackling not only the fundamental problem of unequal and unaffordable access to health care, but also the major financial risk to individuals posed by uncovered medical expenditure (Chen, 2009). Expanded health insurance coverage should allow individuals to overcome the financial barriers to access. However, another root cause of lack of access and impoverishment due to medical expenditure is the rapid growth in health expenditure owing to systemic waste and inefficiency (Yip and Hsiao, 2009).
The health-care reforms can be seen as post-NPM features in that the political leaders take national actions to restructure the services and to rebalance economic growth and resources allocation. They also demonstrate a cultural feature because they are targeted at increasing social equality and use symbols of protecting universal rights.
Anti-corruption campaign: Seeking more political control
The new top leadership’s campaign against corruption can be seen as a way for national leaders to regain political control over the government as a whole. A series of what the Chinese government calls ‘self-disciplinary regulations’ has been introduced to fight corruption. To date, the central government has made some progress on the anti-corruption front. Official newspapers are full of stories and statistics on how many public leaders are under investigation or have been sent to prison. Figures released by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the central government’s anti-corruption agency, show that more than 182,000 party members, including 31 high-ranking officials at the level of deputy prime minister and above, were penalized for various misdeeds in 2013. 5
The ruling party’s ability to uncover criminal acts perpetrated by local officials has been enhanced in two ways. First, it can dispatch peripatetic inspection groups to the provinces and large SOEs. They report directly to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. They sniff around for evidence of corruption by interviewing local officials in private in order to gather information about misconduct by their colleagues. As Pei (2014) observes, it has become much harder for local officials to cover up crimes or protect one another because some of their colleagues may well, out of fear or spite, denounce them to the inspection teams. Second, any corruption investigation carried out in a certain jurisdiction must be reported to a higher-level anti-corruption agency. In the past, local officials could cover up the wrongdoings of their colleagues with relative ease because they did not have to report such investigations to their superiors (Pei, 2014). Now, owing to this new reporting requirement, it is much more difficult to do so.
However, the most challenging issue confronting the Chinese top leadership is how to sustain the campaign. So far, it has been waged from the top down in a typically centralized manner. Continuing the campaign will become increasingly demanding as local officials quickly learn how to circumvent the new regulations; thus, the results of the campaign will be negatively affected.
From an instrumental perspective, the question arises as to whether such an anti-corruption campaign can be of any use or whether it is masquerade about norms and values, as Stone (2012) argues. The campaign may have the symbolic or ‘window-dressing’ effect (Brunsson, 1989) of increasing the legitimacy of the central leadership, but it is questionable whether it can solve the instrumental problem of corruption because of China’s unique cultural path dependency, which is the result of its deeply rooted bureaucratic hierarchy and special privileges mentality.
Discussion
The analyses of selected public reforms in China have shown several features of post-NPM reforms, which are more or less related to reactions to NPM reforms. The cases display a variety of structural, cultural and symbolic features in different combinations. First, the super-ministry reform primarily focusing on the politically controlled rebuilding of government is a response to the urgent need for coordinated actions to deal with the challenges of economic growth.
Second, in the case of combating pollution, regulations of industry are representative ‘compensatory measures’ with stricter regulations as instruments. Culturally speaking, this is an attempt to obtain balance between the economic-growth mentality and the values of environmental sustainability. Third, the affordable housing policies show that NPM’s market principles in the housing field have gone wrong, and show the need for instrumental actions as countermeasures. Since China had a history of welfare housing, the instrumental actions can be seen as a cultural attempt at returning to a traditional path with politically symbolic values.
Fourth, the health-care reforms have a purpose of increasing resources to social services and making new regulations in favour of needy residents in order to resolve social inequality, which is a deep concern for top leaders. These reform measures also demonstrate features of a collective cultural path and symbols of wide and universal coverage.
Fifth, the anti-corruption campaign displays the active involvement of the top political leaders, who are trying to regain their central control. It definitely also alludes to an attempt to change the cultural attitudes of public servants and officials; these strong symbols are sent through constantly publishing the results of the campaign.
From a comparative perspective, many post-NPM measures in both China and the West constitute a response to NPM policies that have had a negative impact or side effects. This is especially the case in environmental policy, housing policy and health-care policy. The main difference between China and the West is the context in which the reforms have taken place, namely, China’s economy has made a giant leap, achieving in 30 years what Western countries took 100 years to achieve, but this also means that China faces bigger challenges in terms of both issue structures and implementing its reforms.
Similar to many Western countries, China is encountering the problem of balancing the structural design of centralization and coordination with the autonomy of lower levels of government and other institutions. Owing to its very size, China is experiencing structural fragmentation to a much greater degree than is the case in the West; therefore, structural rationalization is more important. However, the ability of the central government, even in the one-party state, to implement policies at lower levels of government is more challenged than that of Western countries. In this respect, China is probably more similar to the US than to the Anglo-Saxon countries, in which it is easier to make reform decisions and implement them.
China’s post-NPM-featured reforms also reflect the nature of its heterogeneous, complex and hybrid system. Efforts to centralize, control and coordinate require a variety of instruments – from instrumental restructuring to diverse regulatory and incentive measures (Pollitt, 2013). It is self-evident that the hybridity of the Chinese system poses far more challenges than is the case in Western systems.
China’s vast and structurally complex system means that the cultural challenges of deciding on and implementing post-NPM reforms, in particular, accepting new cultural norms and values, are enormous. China’s strong economic growth from the early 1990s has led to a cultural break with the past and a new path is becoming popular. However, attempting to implement post-NPM as ‘compensatory measures’ or to modify economic development is more politically and culturally controversial. First, from an instrumental point of view, it may be the case that China has gone so far down the NPM path and there may be no turning back. Second, it involves addressing the issues of the limitations of one-party’s governance in the Communist system, the interests of the new business elites, the craving for transparency and freedom among the educated middle class, and pressure from the underprivileged in the countryside and big cities.
Third, the design of policy and structural changes may be at the core of the issue. From a cultural perspective, is it easy for a country with a long tradition of hierarchy and privileges to embark on a new cultural path? Symbolically, at least, there are deep conflicts between self-interest, individual efforts and economic success, and collective norms aimed at a more egalitarian and sustainable society. This could be culturally challenging and requires great efforts by the central political leadership to promote symbols rather than implementation.
Conclusion
The administrative reforms examined earlier demonstrate that China is at least imitating post-NPM reforms in the West and adapting them to Chinese cultural traditions. This has created growing tensions between NPM-related economic and administrative developments and post-NPM-related attempts to increase central control and coordinating capacity (Christensen et al., 2008). China’s case reveals that the public sector per se is a complex combination of elements from NPM and post-NPM in a ‘layered process’, where new reform elements are continuously added to old ones (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010).
Is it useful to analyse China in terms of the Western reform paradigm? It can be argued that, in reality, China is a ‘rational shopper’ (Westney, 1987), picking out reform elements from the West that it believes can benefit the country’s development, regardless of whether NPM or post-NPM. However, those elements will always have to be adapted to China’s cultural conditions and structural development. China ‘adopted’ NPM both later and more reluctantly than did the West, and it put more emphasis on economic growth than on sweeping reforms of the public apparatus or cultural changes. By the same token, China signed up to post-NPM later than did the West and has shown greater reluctance to proceed with various related reforms. It has approached post-NPM from a different starting point with a different focus in order to make ‘developmental leaps’.
It is crucial to underline that in both structural and cultural terms, China is more centralized than are many Western countries because of its one-party system. This means that both NPM and post-NPM reforms have been implemented in a context of a homogeneous political system. By implementing NPM measures, China has become more decentralized and fragmented than many Western countries. Now, China’s trajectory of public-sector reforms implies that, although developing the economy is still its top priority, it is balancing economic development against social needs in a controllable political order. There is also no guarantee that large-scale coordinating efforts will succeed because they are very dependent on resources and may encounter major structural and cultural resistance during the time-consuming implementation processes.
Finally, because of the nature of the Chinese system, it is difficult to conclude whether reforms and developmental features in China are de facto affected by any administrative paradigm in the West. China’s reforms are still ongoing; in the past 30 years, China has focused more on economic reform, decentralization and efficiency, but, today, its reforms are turning to social stability, welfare, political order and central control. This change is to redress the problems arising in the first 30 years of reform. That leaves the question of whether the controlling and centralizing measures are tightly coupled to post-NPM or whether they are just a reflection of the natural tendency of a one-party state to increase societal stability.
Footnotes
Funding
This study is funded by the comprehensive funding project to construct a top-notch university and discipline of Renmin University of China (15XNL001).