Dissimilar Public Management Paradigms, Similar Adoption: Finding an Approach Contingent on Policy Goals

Abstract

Several management paradigms—traditional public administration, new public administration, new public management (NPM), and networked governance—have been leaders in practice and in the academic world of public administration at different time periods. However all these management paradigms have a negative aspect in common—a one-size-fits-all approach to government reforms. This study tries to overcome this approach, utilizing a contingent method. Each of the four paradigms has been suggested for adoption in one or two areas of different policy types based on a two-by-two table with the dimensions of high and low with respect to market mechanisms and high and low on the explicitness of the politics-administration dichotomy. The study proposes that traditional public administration would be the appropriate choice in the areas of redistributive and constituent policy. New public administration would work well for regulatory policy, whereas networked governance and NPM (customeroriented practices) would be the right choice in the arena of distributive policy.