Archive for the ‘Ten years ago’ Category
Aucoin: How NPM went wrong
In an influential 1990 Governance article, Peter Aucoin argued that New Public Management wrestled with a tension between empowering public servants and tightening political control over them. In the current issue of Governance, Aucoin argues that in many cases the drive for political control has won out, producing what he calls the New Political Governance (NPG). NPG has four features: the harnessing of administration to a “continuous campaign” for reelection; the rise of political staff as a “third force” in governance; the politicization of senior administrative appointments; and an expectation of public service loyalty to the government of the day. Open access to the article.
Peter Aucoin passed away in July 2011. This article was in the final stages of review at Governance at the time. The editors are pleased to publish it in recognition of Professor Aucoin’s service to the journal and the field of public administration.
The current issue also includes two comments on Aucoin’s article. Jonathan Boston of Victoria University of Wellington asks how many of the elements of NPG are really new. And J.R. Nethercote of Australian Catholic University acknowledges the pressure of accelerated news cycles and continuous campaigns, but suggests that Westminster systems do correct themselves after excesses of politicization. Read the commentaries.
From the Governance archives: What shapes national responses to changes in global capital markets?
Ten years ago in Governance (13.2, April 2000), Richard Deeg and Sofia Perez examined the effect of growing capital mobility on the character of corporate finance and corporate governance in major European states. Deeg and Perez challenged the widespread view that liberalization of capital markets would lead to convergence in national policies, arguing that domestic institutional arrangements, and incentives facing state elites, play a critical role in determining each nation’s response. Read more.
Ten years ago in Governance: Eric Patashnik on the “fiscalization of policy debate”
In the April 1999 issue of Governance, Eric Patashnik — now Associate Director of the University of Virginia’s Public Policy Program — wrote on a subject that is timely once again: the political and institutional challenges of budget control. “The policy debate in the United States has been ‘fiscalized,” Patashnik wrote in 1999, “Programs are routinely debated not in terms of their substantive merits but rather of their budgetary impact.” Concern about budget discipline receded at the end of the 1990s, as the US government went briefly into surplus. But the fiscal effects of the financial crisis, recession, and demographic change give Patashnik’s article renewed relevance. Get the full article — Ideas, Inheritances, and the Dynamics of Budgetary Change (12.2, pages 147-174) — from the Governance archives.
