There is much talk about a new global paradigm in public administration. However, many claims surrounding the existence of this new paradigm remain largely unsubstantiated. This article reviews some of these claims by attempting to explain how new public management (NPM) could be said to be globalised. The article then questions whether or not we are talking about policy convergence rather than globalisation in the case of NPM. Policy transfer analysis is then introduced as an explanatory concept for the appearance of different NPM techniques around the world. The article argues that because of the weaknesses of the new paradigm, its globalisation is extremely questionable and the convergence argument does little to advance its cause. Instead, policy transfer activity appears to be on the increase but this is confined to piece‐meal copying and adaptation, or even imposition. The article concludes by declaring globalisation a misnomer for the scattering of management techniques around the world.
States in the Middle East tend to be overlooked by researchers in comparative public administration. However, these states offer potentially useful insights into the nature of administrative change as they defy standard assumptions about pressures for reform. The aim of the article is to provide an account of reform by analysing important contextual factors in Bahrain and Oman. Given the large gap in the literature regarding the Gulf States, this article is supplemented by observations and evidence gathered on regular visits to both countries by the researcher. The analysis reveals systems of public administration highly resistant to international reform trends. Many of these factors are situational; including highly centralized political systems, tradition and strong national and administrative cultures. It is concluded that while reform processes are emerging in these countries, they are slow and evolutionary and are more adapted to the domestic rather than the international context. Points for practitioners The article may be of interest for practitioners working for international consultants, not only in Bahrain and Oman, but also in the wider Gulf Region (Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have similar political and social contexts to those of Bahrain and Oman). In addition to providing contextual information, the article discusses the institutional and cultural barriers to reform in terms of providing Western-style administrative solutions. The article also alludes to the different time horizons in the Gulf States, and the slow (by Western standards) and evolutionary nature of the reform process.
New Public Management (NPM) is considered by many scholars to be the new global paradigm for public administration. Although NPM is a highly contestable term, it appears that the methods and techniques that constitute NPM are being adopted by governments the world over. To challenge the apparent globalisation of NPM, this thesis analyses administrative change in three Southeast Asian countries: Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. This is achieved by employing an integrated multi-level framework, which is systematically applied to each country. At the macro-level, a model of administrative change is presented to identify the pressures for change both outside and within a particular administrative system. At the meso-level, policy transfer analysis is used as a mode of inquiry to establish whether the globalisation of NPM is the consequence of decision-making elites actively searching for policy solutions from the international environment. At the micro-level, a model of NPM is developed to analyse the extent to which administrative change in an individual country is coterminous with NPM. In addition, the thesis provides a critical evaluation of the policy processes of individual countries with the aim of assessing whether standard accounts of policy formulation need to be recast so that policy transfer is regarded as an increasingly integral part of the policy process. The empirical research found that the implementation of NPM in each of the three case-study countries was uneven and could not simply be explained by policy transfer activity alone. In fact, strong countervailing tendencies exist that served to mitigate against the introduction of NPM. Moreover, the distinctiveness of the appeal of NPM lies in its rhetorical value, which serves a number of political and social purposes, rather than its capacity to deliver meaningful and lasting administrative reforms. I wish to extend my profound gratitude to Dr. Mark Evans for his calm and assured supervision of my dissertation. I was fortunate to have him guide me through the course of the last five years, and I greatly appreciate the time and effort he put into ensuring my dissertation was complete and ready for examination. It was a pleasure to work with him. In addition, my old friend Norman Flynn made some useful and provocative remarks about the development of both the theoretical
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