No abstract

No abstract

This essay argues that there are (at least) three paradigms of governance and especially public administration: Chinese, Western, and Islamic-paradigms understood here as potentiality and theory rather than reality and practice as observed today. It then discusses classical Chinese, i.e. Confucian, and Islamic, specifically Ottoman, public administration, from this perspective. The guiding question is whether we arrive more easily at good public administration if we realize that there are different contexts and thus, potentially at least, different ways thither, as well as legitimately different goals.

The essay traces the rise and demise of New Public Management (NPM) during the last quarter of a century, as well as the emergence of a new public administration phenomenon, tentatively called the Neo-Weberian State (NWS), which is argued to be more suitable for coping with the current crisis and its aftermath as well. The essay then focuses on the optimal public administration system for South East Europe, for which the experience of the new Member States of the European Union is used for lesson-drawing. Here, too, it is argued that NPM is definitely not suited for the region, especially in current conditions but also generally. The NWS, in spite of several problems including those of context, remains the current concept of choice in the development of public administration in Europe, and as such can also be utilized in various ways in South East Europe.