CIAO DATE: 11/2008
September 2004
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
This paper builds on a presentation to the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition by Professor Ahmed Shafiqul Huque in November 2003. Professor Huque was a visiting professor at the Institute from the City University of Hong Kong during the 2003-2004 academic year. In this paper, Professor Huque reviews some of the thinking and of the evolution of ‘New Public Management’. In the field of Public Administration, NPM became an area of high emphasis, particularly under neo-liberal governments during the 1980s and 1990s. The idea behind this approach was that public bureaucracies had become inefficient, unresponsive and bloated. These deficiencies could be addressed by introducing ‘market forces’ more systematically into the ‘delivery’ of public services, whether through privatization, replacing unionized public sector workers with private sector firms working on contract, or ‘partnerships’ between governments and the more lean and efficient companies in the private sector. The results of this approach in the wealthier OECD countries have been decidedly mixed.
Professor Huque observes that these ideas associated with ‘New Public Management’ were themselves globalized over the same period. Global institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, working on mandates to encourage ‘structural adjustment’ in developing countries, encouraged these countries to consider privatizations, contracting out to private sector firms rather than using unionized public sector workers, and ‘partnerships’ with the private sector. Similar to earlier ideas like ‘development’ and ‘modernization’ imposed on developing countries, these new public management approaches did not fit very well the circumstances and the needs of developing countries. If anything, they made bad situations even worse according to Professor Huque. He builds this argument drawing on his extensive knowledge of public administration practices and theories in developing countries.
Resource link: Competition, Contracts and Privatization: Globalization and Public Administration in Developing Countries [PDF] - 161K