Post-New Public Management: reform ideas and their application in the field of social services

From New Public Management to post-New Public Management?

Public sector reforms used to be easier to understand in the past – or so it seems – especially during the heyday of New Public Management (NPM) from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Indeed, what Christopher Hood (1991) once called ‘New Public Management’ was a generalised reform programme that was implemented throughout the whole Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) world and beyond, at the supranational level as well as at the national and local levels. It was all about business-like changes in public sector organisations (e.g. corporatisation), including the replacement of hierarchical coordination by competition, the market mechanism as a possible modus operandi for improving the efficiency of public services, the introduction of a product culture intended to strengthen accountability and so on (Lindberg et al., 2015: 3).

Without doubt, the reality has always been much more complex than the NPM label suggested. NPM has been an umbrella concept covering various reform features. However, it was not until the early 2000s that a rising number of publications acknowledged the huge variety of reform paths at the national, regional and local levels, as well as across different service sectors. In this context, various authors also pointed to an increasing differentiation in public sector goals, particularly efficiency, quality and accountability, and to the contingency of reform measures. Scholars of public administration frequently use the rather vague term of ‘post-NPM’ (cf. Christensen and Laegreid, 2007; De Vries and Nemec, 2013) to describe the overall reform picture, which has since created a hybridisation of both the public sector as such and the organisations operating within it.

Like NPM, post-NPM is a ‘shopping basket’ (Christensen, 2012: 1) of selected reform elements. The post-NPM selection, however, differs decisively from the NPM selection. The post-NPM label embraces reforms seeking to improve coordination vertically between government and other actors and horizontally in terms of inter-agency coordination. Hence, post-NPM reforms pay attention to a holistic management style, boundary-spanning skills and joined-up targets. They aim to improve the steering capacity of the centre. However, civil servants are thought to be network managers and partnership leaders instead of being the pure business managers suggested by the NPM model (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007; Lodge and Gill, 2011).

Post-NPM in the social services sector in Europe: a research framework

This special issue is dedicated to the assessment of post-NPM as a reform trend in public administration, paying special attention to the introduction of post-NPM reforms in the social services sector. A systematic literature review (Reiter and Klenk, in this special issue) shows that while post-NPM reforms have been implemented in various sectors, for example, transport, infrastructure, health care and the care of the elderly, they appear to be particularly relevant to the social services sector. There is high congruence between the reform features emphasised by the post-NPM model – for example, professional standards, cooperation/coordination and values like user and stakeholder participation – and the features and values traditionally considered important in the social services sector (Wollmann et al., 2016). This might explain why the social services sector has been particularly prone to adopting post-NPM reforms as an alternative to the efficiency-driven NPM reform model.

The authors of this special issue analyse the dissemination and actual stage of implementing post-NPM ideas in the social services sector, and appraise whether and to what extent we can observe a shift away from the efficiency-oriented performance goals typical of the NPM reform paradigm. Contributing to this, the issue’s various articles concentrate on the external dimension of administrative reforms, that is, on reforms that are able to alter the way in which public administration works vis-a-vis society and fulfil its external service functions (cf. Hood, 1991; Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). Indeed, this was, and still is, the reform dimension that has raised a highly controversial debate among scholars in public administration. The focus on the external dimension of reforms directly relates to the performance goals formulated by proponents of NPM and brings the conflicting relationship between efficiency, quality and accountability of the NPM concept most clearly to light (De Vries and Nemec, 2013: 6–7, 10–13). Tying in with the scientific debate on post-NPM, the following research questions have guided our research on public administration reforms in the social services sector:

What differences or similarities can we observe regarding reforms in the social services sector in different European countries over the last two decades? Is hybridisation really the common denominator of recent reforms? Or, can we ‘discern a new trend’ (Lindberg et al., 2015: 4) that is distinct from NPM?

The first set of questions refers to the unresolved discussion concerning whether or not NPM is being followed by a new era (Lindberg et al., 2015). Two ‘camps’ stand vis-a-vis each other in this discussion: one suggesting the dissolution of NPM in the actual practice of public administrative reforms; the other seeing the establishment of a new post-NPM model of public administration (e.g. the neo-Weberian state, good governance and new digital-era governance; cf. De Vries and Nemec, 2013: 4–5; Dunleavy et al., 2005). The authors of this special issue tend to be rather sceptical of an establishment or even ‘consolidation’ of post-NPM as a new, self-contained era of reform following the NPM wave of public administrative reforms in Europe.

The second set of questions points to the still undecided issue: ‘What is the reason behind public administration reforms (be they NPM-driven reforms or other types of reform)?’ In this special issue, we argue that in order to tackle this topic, it is important to pay attention to various factors, such as the administrative level at which reforms have taken place, the timing of administrative restructuring, the specific problem structure of the social services in question and the institutional background of the different European countries. Compared with nationalised industries, local governments in Europe have proven to be more resistant to NPM reforms (Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2014) as they are most directly exposed to their citizens’ appraisal of reforms generally. This holds particularly for the social services sector, where citizens are most attentive to the reliability and the high quality of services. Thus, the social services sector can be described as an overall ‘latecomer’ with respect to NPM reforms. In addition, the various fields of social services provision were shaped by NPM reforms to a different extent. While we find, for example, the hospital sector being strongly affected by NPM reforms, this is not the case for early childcare services (cf. Klenk and Pavolini, 2015; Klenk and Reiter, 2012).

The third set of questions focuses on the discussion on reform outcomes – a neglected aspect in the intensive debate on NPM (Pollitt and Dan, 2011: 52). Not only has the issue of the outcomes of NPM reforms received little attention in the academic debate, but a serious discussion about viable indicators for performance outcomes is still lacking. One reason for the absence of a set of viable indicators is that the notion of ‘performance’ is strongly contested in public administration research, particularly when it comes to the relationship between performance and accountability (Christensen and Lægreid, 2015; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004; Pollitt and Dan, 2011). Interpretations vary depending on the reform model in question. Whereas scholars of NPM reforms tend to emphasise the efficiency, functional responsiveness and effectiveness of public administrations, post-NPM reformers instead stress the administrators’ (democratic) accountability or citizens’ control over public administration, as well as the tight coordination and integration of public services. In this special issue, we argue that both perspectives should be kept in mind when tackling the performance question. Accordingly, we refer to a performance concept that integrates these perspectives. Our analytical framework includes the following performance dimensions: (1) democratic control and (politico-administrative) accountability; (2) efficiency; (3) effectiveness; and (4) the vertical and horizontal coordination of local administrators, as well as administrators and other non-public local social services actors (Kuhlmann et al., 2011).

Structure of this special issue

The overall aim of this special issue is to assess the post-NPM trend from an empirical perspective. Therefore, we examine: first, how the post-NPM trend is perceived in the recent public administration literature; and, second, how it is perceived and implemented in different European countries and different fields of social service provision.

In ‘The manifold meanings of “post-New Public Management” – A systematic literature review’, Renate Reiter and Tanja Klenk develop an analytical framework to capture how scholars of public administration understand post-NPM and assess whether and how far post-NPM has become ‘institutionalised’, that is, has become a concept of public management reform that enjoys cognitive and normative legitimacy and is taken for granted (Powell and Bromley, 2015; Suchmann, 1995). In order to assess the career of the concept, they differentiate between: a low degree of institutionalisation characterised by a variety of meanings and implementation models; a middle degree of institutionalisation, where consolidation occurs; and a full degree of institutionalisation, where the concept has developed into a blueprint for reforms and is infused with value. Reiter and Klenk show that, so far, post-NPM has only reached a low to medium degree of institutionalisation. While academic work on post-NPM has contributed to delegitimising the NPM concept by highlighting its deficiencies, post-NPM is still far from being a blueprint for future reforms.

Following Reiter and Klenk’s systematic literature review, this special issue presents three case studies analysing the dissemination of post-NPM ideas and practices in different fields of social services provision in different countries (Poland, England, France, Finland and Sweden). The case studies conform to a similar, three-step structure. In the first step, an empirical description of external local public administrative reform activities in the field of social services provision under consideration is given (for a time period from the early 2000s to today), paying specific attention to the use of post-NPM-inspired reform ideas and goals. Second, an analysis of the driving forces behind the restructuring of social services provision is conducted (Are post-NPM reforms a reaction to NPM experiences?). Finally, the administrative performance goals are analysed.

In their study, ‘From marketization to recentralization: The health-care system reforms in Poland and the post-New Public Management concept’, Łukasz Mikuła and Urszula Kaczmarek argue that even though public administration in the Polish hospital sector has recently seen a recurrence of reform ideas that appear at first glance to be inspired by post-NPM (recentralisation, etc.), the reform measures implemented cannot be taken as a sign of the emergence of a new, comprehensive reform model. The authors refer to the specific Eastern European political, social and economic environment of public administration reforms since the end of the 1980s and the mistrust that many actors have of a strong state.

These factors can explain why recent reforms, which can certainly be described as ‘anti-NPM’, can by no means be considered as ‘post-NPM’. Instead, the authors interpret the reforms as a sign of the political aspiration of the PiS-party government to strengthen its capacity to control public administration in different sectors and fields of action. From this point of view, Mikuła and Kaczmarek sceptically conclude:

The programme of the de-marketization and de-agencification of health care shows many traces of the post-NPM concept but it can also be perceived as a politically driven action to strengthen the tight control of the ruling party over an important part of the public sector.

This special issue refines our understanding of the still rather vague notion of post-NPM. Furthermore, it stimulates academic debate on whether or not we are witnessing a significant transformation in public management reform. As for the three leading research questions – (1) ‘Is there a new trend?’; (2) ‘Can this new trend be described as anti-NPM?’; and (3) ‘How have performance goals developed: are we seeing the increasing importance of non-efficiency goals?’ – the articles in this special issue give rather sceptical or reluctant answers. However, they convincingly demonstrate the ongoing intense struggle for new models of public management reform. They remind us that when analysing this struggle, we need to be sensitive to the political dimension of public sector reform and to study the interplay between political interests, perceived economic constraints and suggested reform models.