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Research On New Public Management

Posted on:2006-11-06Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z H XuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360182456950Subject:Political Theory
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
In the late 20th century, globalization, informatization, the international increased competition,the management and the trust crisis which governments face made the governments of western countries encounter the unprecedented challenge. The voice of requiring government to reform rose one after another. According to the theories such as public choice, principal-agent and governance,many developed countries in the west have raised the tide of government reform since the eighties of the 20th century. Though the differences exist in scope, depth and effect in the reforms of various countries, the reforms have been the fundamental changes related to public management model, namely the form of manifestation was the negation to the traditional public administration model. The purposes of the reforms have all been to seek the government administration patterns instead of bureaucratic organizations, and the basic tendencies of them have entirely been the marketization of governmental function. The tide of government reforms is usually referred to as "new public management"movement. New public management movement of the western countries has involved every respect of administrative systems and government activities. But the basic clue of the reform was to define the relation between government and market again. The content of it was mainly about reorienting government function, transiting the measures that the government offered public services, reforming the government's internal management system, and introducing the administrative skill of private sectors into the government etc. The measures of the reform included: Optimizing government function through relaxing the regulations about economic activities and privatizing state-owned enterprises; broking the long-term government monopoly to public services through contracts renting, cooperating with private sectors, user's paying and voucher system to implement the marketization of the public service, in the hope of lightening the finance pressure of governments, improving the public service level; adjusting the internal management mechanism of the government through relaxing the excessive regulation to public servants, transforming lifelong hire ,desalinizing political neutrality and discentralization reform; strengthening the respond to the public and improving the performance of governments through introducing the management methods such as customer orientation and performance measurement to the government. New public management has changed the research range, theme, method, discipline system, and theoretical foundation and practical model of the traditional public administration. It has been the theoretical summary in the management practices of contemporary western public sectors and has been the guidelines of public sector management reform. "New public management"has already become a kind of new paradigm different from the traditional public administration patterns.However, though new public management movement put forward the slogan "banishing bureaucracy"and launched the fierce criticism to the organization structure and the inhumanity characteristic of the rational bureaucracy, the results of the reform have proved that, as a kind of new public management paradigm, its essence is not to banish the traditional bureaucracy entirely but an improvement to it with operation marketization model and the management methods from private sectors, along with the change of the administrative ecological environment. "Banishing bureaucracy"is only a radical slogan which aims at the drawbacks that the excessively developing bureaucracy brings. New public management movement is the revolution of government management in developed countries in order to meet the challenges of the post-industrial society and economic globalization. Its mission is to explore the government administration patterns in the future fit for post-industrial society and global competition. It is an important enlightenment to the present administrative reform of our country. On one hand, new public management has a guiding function on the administrative reform of our country. First, new public management contributes to expanding the vision of the administrative reform of our country. New public management uses multi-disciplinary theories and methods to study the problems of public management synthetically; it expands the entities of public management to various kinds of NGOs besides government, various kinds of public organizations even private sectors; it utilizes directly a lot of theories and methods of private sectors to carry on the profound reform of public sectors management. These have gone beyond the category that thetraditional public administration studies and have expanded the vision of government reform. Second, our country faces the challenge of globalization to the governmental capacity too. Third, our country faces similarly the challenge of diversified societies to the public administration. Fourth, our country has the same tasks of reforming the supply mechanism of public services in order to raise the level of it. Fifth, both relaxing government control and marketization tendency of new public management are consistency with the economic system reform of our country. Sixth, there is a great referential function on our country to introduce the management methods of private sectors into the field of public administration. On the other hand, the differences of national conditions determine our country can't totally imitate new public management. First, the basic economic system of our country is different from western countries. The socialist public ownership of means of production determines our country shouldn't go on privatizing state-owned enterprises as like as western capitalist countries. Second, at present, dissimilar from western developed countries which have stepped into "post-industrial society"in succession in the late 20th century, the social modernization process of our country is generally shown as the transition from the traditional agricultural society to the modern industrial society. Third, the development level of public servants system in our country is different from western countries. The western countries have already made the public servants system developed for more than 100 years on the basis of the national bureaucracy. Despite the public servants system of our country has made much progress in institutional construction as operating for more than ten years, there are a lot of places not perfect in the practical work, for example,the rational spirit in the field of the public administration is wanting, the consciousness governed by law is indifferent, the supervision and restraint mechanism is not insufficient, specialization level is not enough etc. Fourth, the development degree of market economy of our country is distinct from western countries. The western countries to pursue new public management all belong to the ripe market economy country, but our country is still in the course of the transition from planning economy system to market economy system, not in high development degree of market economy. Fifth, NGOs'development degree of our country is unlike western countries. NGOs of the western countries are very ripe either on quality or on quantity, while ours are just at the beginning of development. On the basis of the analysis above, we realized that the administrative reform of our country should keep consistency with the world trend in the general direction, and at the same time, we should consider adequately our fundamental realities of our country and the periodical development of our reform. That is to say, under the prerequisite of the basically unanimous in general goal and direction, the roads, the tactics and the policies chosen for the reform would be different, even reverse in some policies at a certain stage. Particularly, the new round administrative reform of our country should focus on the followings: First, reform government regulation and promote the development of market economy. In reality, there are "offside"and "omission"phenomena in our country. So, in the economic transition period our government regulation reform should adhere to the principle of combining looseness with tightness, namely attaching importance to relaxing as well as strengthening. On onehand, relax the economic control left for us in the original planning economic system period progressively, strengthen indirect and social regulation step by step to meet the needs of socialist market economic system on the other hand. In addition, we should also intensify the control on the entities of regulation. Second , strengthen the government guidance and promote the marketization of public services. With the deepening of political and economical system conversion of our country , the exploration in marketization reform of public services has carried on actively in recent years and has been made much progress. In the future, we should also strengthen the legality construction on the marketization of public services, cultivate the market system, develop the NGOs actively and make bold experiments in sectional region to propel the marketization reform of public services further and further. Third, stick to humanism and build service-government. Banish the administration idea of "material-centric"and "government-centric"and establish the idea of "humanism"and "letting people be themselves". Build the service-government based on the humanism idea by means of strengthening basic public services function and amplifying responding mechanism of government. Fourth, consolidate regulation and construct the rule-of-law government. The rule-of-law government is the government to exercise power in the charge of the rules of law. It does not only emphasize safeguarding and carrying out the law in order, but also lay stress on the priority and the supremacy of law to government power. At present, if we want to build the rule-of-law government, we must go on strengthening the legal regulation to theestablishment of the administrative entities, the enactment of the scope of their power and administration process. Fifth, carry out government performance measurement and improve government efficiency. It is the government performance measurement in our country that will be good to improve government performance, distribution efficiency of resource and the relation between the government and the public. So we should adopt measures such as propelling the legalization of the performance measurement, cultivating pluralistic assessment entities and setting up reasonable criteria system to make the government performance measurement system more routine, systematized and standardized.
Keywords/Search Tags:new public management, rational bureaucracy, government regulation, public service, humanism, performance measurement.
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