Traditional Public Administration VS New Public Management

 

"Traditional public administration is inward looking while NPM is more outward-looking".

The development of the traditional model of administration is primarily attributable to the German administrative tradition and Max Weber's formulation of the guiding principles of the bureaucracy. The expansion of modern bureaucracy made the industrial revolution and the innovations of current economies possible. However, the old idea of public administration was challenged by what has been dubbed the "new public management" around the start of the 20th century.

The conventional approach to public administration is characterized by the idea that the state should actively establish and carry out public services in addition to those that it is required to carry out, such as justice and defense. The generally acknowledged bureaucratic concepts, such as rules and regulations, the division of labor, hierarchical command, impersonality, appointment based on merit, and supervision by the administration, make it simple to categorize bureaucracy. The bureaucratic model of public administration is the name given to this kind of system. The traditional method of public administration takes a three-pronged approach, focusing on the administrative, political, and legal aspects of the issue, respectively.

Governmental operations are handled similarly to those of a major corporation under the management approach to public administration. In general, the distinctions between public and private management are reduced. This tactic was first created to combat the political patronage hiring of government employees. Several reformers believe that civil servants shouldn't actively engage in politics. The length of a public administrator's tenure should be based on "efficiency" and "performance". Most reformers asserted that most public managers don't have the power to set policy. Woodrow Wilson once observed, "Administration stands outside the actual domain of politics," and Taylor, via his scientific management theory, likewise emphasized conventional administration. Efficiency, effectiveness, and economy were found to be the most desired outcomes of public administration. At the time, political appointees came under heavy fire for their corruption-promoting inefficiency. Bureaucracy is the ideal organizational system, in the management's eyes. The purpose of bureaucratic processes is to make the government more effective. Work is done logically by including written rules, specialization, hierarchy, and division of labor. Performance ability serves as the selection criterion. Color, gender, or political opinion shouldn't even be taken into account.

Wallace Sayre claims that the method of politics treats the issue of public administration as one of political philosophy. The responsibility for popular control is the central issue in a democracy, and a government that increasingly relies on the administrative agencies exercising discretionary power places a premium on the accountability and responsiveness of the administrative agencies and bureaucracies to elected officials. To sustain constitutional democracy, the political approach to public administration strongly emphasizes the values of representativeness, political responsiveness, and citizen accountability via elected officials.

From a legal standpoint, public administration is permeated by legal and adjudicatory issues. Its three primary precursors are administrative law, the judicialization movement, and constitutional law. Goodnow defines administrative law as,"That part of the law which fixes the organization and determines the competence of the authorities which execute the law, and indicates to the individual remedies for the violation of his rights."

The term "New Public Management" (NPM), which refers to this new paradigm, first appeared in the 1980s. The term NPM was first used to describe public sector reforms in the UK and New Zealand at the start of the 1990s as a conceptual framework designed to organize the discussion of changes in the structure and administration of government. NPM concepts often focus on production controls, desegregation of outdated bureaucratic structures, decentralization of management authority, adoption of the market and quasi-market processes, and customer-focused services. The majority of countries have made efforts to lessen the role of the state, including reducing bureaucracy, delegating authority, reducing costs, contracting out some of the operational responsibilities of government, developing and designing result-oriented appraisal systems, and commercializing and orienting government activities toward the market. Public management has fundamentally shifted from a strict, hierarchical, and bureaucratic kind to a flexible, market-based approach. To diminish the significance of regulation, NPM's core tenet is to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. In several affluent nations, including Britain, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, India, and Israel, the NPM experiment was carried out. The market is embraced by NPM as a paradigm of government, and its benefits are idealized. Public choice encourages maximal individual choice, optimization of the effect of market forces, and minimizing of the power of the government. In states with large public sectors, it encourages the privatization of some operations, while in smaller public sector governments, it encourages the employment of private businesses to provide public goods and services.

It has been said that the tension between accountability and efficiency distinguishes traditional public administration from creative public management. In the traditional paradigm, accountability is emphasized. The solution proposed by Max Weber tended to emphasize bureaucratic responsibility and strict hierarchical control at the top. Woodrow Wilson's reaction was the politics/administration dichotomy, in which municipal workers would use efficient procedures to carry out political policy choices. The new public management encourages reducing the limitations of the traditional paradigm to foster more efficiency and better customer service. Lower-level managers would be given greater latitude to act independently and based on their expertise. The fundamental tension between accountability and efficiency that has always characterized public administration is represented in the struggle between traditional public management and modern public administration, but the balance is changing. However, NPM does not take into account the true politics of government. The foundation of modern governance is respect for the law, not processes based on the market.


Md. Nahidul Islam is
Assistant Profesor, Department
of Public Administration, Comilla University and Mohammad Al-Amin is Student, Department of Public Administration, Comilla University.