New Public Administration
New Public Administration (NPA) can be defined as a new and qualitatively different phase in
the growth of public administration infused with political values like equity, social justice,
change, and commitment. This new phase is often equated with the ‘crisis of identity’ of public
administration as a separate discipline.
NPA can be seen as the first serious attempt on the part of the practitioners of public
administration to give it a stable identity by re-emphasizing its core commitments towards the
society.
The origin of NPA can be traced back to a path-breaking conference in 1968 at the Minnow brook
Conference I site at Syracuse University, attended by a host of young intellectuals drawn from
different branches of the social sciences.
It was held in the backdrop of a turbulent time which was marked by a series of con- temporary
developments like social upheavals in the form of eth- nic skirmishes across the American cities,
campus clashes, Vietnam War and its repercussions in American society, and the like.
The Minnow brook Conference site at Syracuse University has been a household name for the
students of public administration, which has a unique distinction of hosting three consecutive
conferences pertaining to the development of public administration.
The centre has organized three consecutive conferences known as the First, Second, and Minnow
brook Conferences III, respectively. The Minnow brook Conference I was famous for bringing
about arguably a new era in public administration informed with relevance, equity, change, and
social justice.
Goals of New Public Administration
Now, if we have to talk about the goals of New Public Administration; the scholars
emphasised on five major goals naming, relevance, values, social equity, change and
client – orientation.
Relevance - Since the time from when the discipline evolved, efficiency and economy
were the two key concerns of the administration. That is why, the scholars at the
conference felt that there is a need to make the discipline relevant to the contemporary
issues and problems.
In order to accomplish the goal, they decided to eliminate the excessive management
orientation in the discipline and now the discipline had to deal with political and
administrative implications of administrative action.
All these changes took place in order to make the curriculum of the discipline more
relevant to the realities of public life.
Values - Earlier it was considered that the discipline or the realm of Public
Administration was value – neutral in orientation which has been vehemently criticised
and rejected.
The conference made a plea for a greater concern with the values, issues of justice,
freedom, equality and human ethics.
It was decided in the conference that the commitment to the values would enable the
discipline to promote the cause of the disadvantages sections in the society.
Social Equality - Keeping in mind the, then prevailing social unrest in the society.
strengthening of the belief that social equality needs to be the primary aspect of the
administration took place.
Due to this, the conference requested for the amendments such as distributive justice and
equality to be added as the basic concerns in the discipline of Public Administration.
Change – Earlier the discipline of generally considered to be status question oriented.
Hence, the conference attempted to make the discipline more relevant and social equity
oriented through change and innovation and the administrators were considered a change
agents. Hence there was a need for the discipline to be receptive to change
Participation - The conference advocated greater participation by all employees in an
organization in matters of public policy formulation implementation and revision.
Client orientation - It was the first Minnowbrook conference that had taken the lead in
identifying client orientation as a key goal of public administration and it called for a
change in the attitudes of bureaucrats to be people oriented
The Second Minnowbrook Conference
The second menu book conference was held after a gap of 20 years.
The conference held on September 4th, 1988 was attended by 68 scholars and
practitioners of public administration and other disciplines such as history economics
political science psychology and so on.
The conference was held against the backdrop of the changing role of the state and
government, in order to demand for more privatisation, contracting out and increasing
the role of non-state actors in the government process.
The first Minnowbrook conference was held in 1950 what is the period which was
characterised by the influence of public purpose, the Vietnam War, Urban rights and
campus unrest accompanied by growing cynicism towards the institutions specifically
the government
But the scenario in 1980s was entirely different, with the domination of the philosophy
of privatization and a concern for private interest.
The Minnowbrook 2nd aimed him to compare and correct charging areas of public
administration.
This was attempted through a comparison of theoretical and research perspectives of the
1960s with that of the 1980's and their respective influence on the conduct of
governmental and other public affairs.
The conference which you participate from diverse areas such as policy sciences
economics planning and urban studies and it attempted to deliberate upon wider themes
such as ethics social equity human relations and so on thereby ensuring continuity in
intellectual interests.
New Public Management
Today, NPM has become a standard prescription for the ailing pub- lic sector across the
globe. Stripped of all jargons, NPM can be defined as new set of experiments in public sector
management informed with the market principles of efficiency and economy to make ailing
public sector effective. It was basically a late 1990s development in the public sector
management that gathered much steam with the re-inventing movement and governance
discourse in 1990s.
Unlike the traditional Weberian and Wilsonian paradigm of public administration, NPM calls
for a paradigm shift in public sector management informed with three E’s—Efficiency,
Economy, and Effectiveness. Moreover, in order to resurrect the sagging credibility of the
public sector, NPM asks for liberal borrowings of mar- ket principles in public sector
management. It would be more ap- propriate to see it as an outgrowth of the initiatives of
public sector reform sweeping across the West since late 1980s. Mark Bevir, in an edited
volume, has endorsed the fact by designating NPM as ‘first wave of public sector
management’.
NPM is actually proposed to make a hostile inroad in the domain of ‘sheltered bureaucracy’
and substitute it by a more flexible, market-based pub- lic administration. Under NPM, a
whole set of new nomenclatures like managers, service providers, and customers are
manufactured to distinguish it from its predecessor. In sum, it portrays an image of a public
administration informed with minimum government, de-bureaucratization, decentralization,
market orientation of pub- lic services, contracting out, privatization, performance
measurement, and so on.
Christopher Hood has shown that the emergence of NPM was coincided with four ‘ad-
ministrative megatrends’:
1. Attempts to slow down or reverse government growth in terms of overt public
spending and staffing;
2. The shift towards privatization and quasi-privatization and away from core
government institutions, with renewed em- phasis on subsidiary in service provision;
3. The development of automation, particularly in IT, and in the production and
distribution of public services; and
4. the development of a more international agenda, increasing- ly focused on general
issues of public management, policy design, decision styles, and intergovernmental
cooperation, on top of the older tradition of individual country special- ism’s in
public administration (Hood 1991).
Virtually, a host of factors are held responsible for such a paradigm shift in public sector
management. For analytical convenience, we can identify those factors under four heads: (a)
receding credibility of state or the public sec- tor; (b) the emergence of New Right Approach;
(c) emergence of post-Weberian, post-Wilsonian bureaucracy; and (d) administrative
changes in advanced Western countries.
Receding Credibility of State
The state as a major dispenser of social justice has been increasingly questioned across the
globe since late 1970s.
The popular mood was against the state for its dismal performance in almost every sphere—
social, political, and economic.
