Is Public Management Neglecting the State?

Abstract

Public management is a domain of research that is now roughly three decades old. Researchers in this area have made important advances in understanding about the performance of public organizations. But questions have been raised about the scope and methods of public management research (PMR). Does it neglect important questions about the development of major institutions of the modern state? Has it focused unduly on problems of the advanced democracies? Has it made itself irrelevant to public debates about the role and design of government, and the capacity of public institutions to deal with emerging challenges? This set of eight short essays were prepared for a roundtable held at the research conference of the PMR Association at the University of Aarhus in June 2016. Contributors were asked to consider the question: Is PMR neglecting the state?

Governing for sustainability: How research on large and complex systems can inform governance and institutional theory

“…This, more specifically, entails recognizing the fundamental and inherently political nature of governance as well as the potential contributions to be made from incorporating more of institutional theory in governance research. In fact, the authors argue explicitly that the failure to address those difficult, albeit fundamental, questions about the capacity and the purpose of the state makes the research field incomplete (Milward et al, 2016). This roundtable concludes that although administrative and managerial issues of governance and public administration have been dealt with in-depth, the field tends to overlook more important questions related to, for example, political power, state capacity, and legitimacy.…”

“…However, as spelled out by Migdal (1988, p. 277 Peters & Pierre, 2005). In addition, this field can also be criticized for an excessive focus on service delivery, where the notion of governance by and large is equated with the capacity to deliver services (Milward et al, 2016). Yet, although making substantial progress in this regard, this field of research tends to focus almost exclusively on the developments in the industrialized parts of the world, with little or no ambition to speak to issues related to political development in general.…”

“…This roundtable concludes that although administrative and managerial issues of governance and public administration have been dealt with in-depth, the field tends to overlook more important questions related to, for example, political power, state capacity, and legitimacy. In fact, the authors argue explicitly that the failure to address those difficult, albeit fundamental, questions about the capacity and the purpose of the state makes the research field incomplete (Milward et al, 2016). In a similar vein, Fukuyama (2016) develops a critique of governance research in which he highlights that the downplaying of state authority in favor of new nonhierarchical steering brings considerable risks in terms of reduced accountability and transparency in the political system.…”

“…Another strand of literature in turn tends to focus exclusively on the managerial, technical, and administrative dimension of governance (Andrews, 2008;Milward et al, 2016). This focus, however, potentially brings a number of problems.…”

Are Existing Administrative Paradigms Capable of Producing the Tools to Resolve the Contemporary Administrative Crisis?

“…In addition, it is a deep conviction of many researchers that to improve governance, one must change the political and cultural context, not the internal administrative mechanisms, which are secondary and dependent of the context. Th e signifi cance of the external context for the improvement of governance is expressed clearly by V. Junjan and R. Torenvleid (Junjan & Torenvleid, 2016). Th ey stressed that "Public management reforms (but also public management research on reforms) have put too much emphasis on government control and not enough emphasis on democratic responsiveness.…”