scholarly journals Analyzing the potentiality of the government budget in the framework of public accountability

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pina Puntillo

The main aim of this paper is to analyze how the yearly budget of public entities may be used as a tool of social accountability. The interest in researching this topic roots in a change in management style, from a bureaucratic kind, based on the formulation of rules and limitations, and on the more formal than substantial control of the civil servants’ compliance with the former, to a “post-bureaucratic” kind of management (Maroy, 2005), essentially founded on the evaluation of how efficiently resources are exploited. In this context, the term “accountability” refers to the set of techniques which may be used to measure and evaluate the results delivered by the administrative bodies, as well as the impacts on the community (Patton, 1992). The process of accountability confers to the subjects in question the legitimization of their own behaviour. After exploring the concept of social accountability, the paper will focus on the aspects of the public budget which make it a suitable tool of social accountability, showing how the shift from the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm to the Public Governance paradigm has strengthened and more clearly defined said role.

Author(s):  
Stavros Zouridis ◽  
Vera Leijtens

Abstract Recently, scholars have claimed that public management theory has too much ignored law. Consequently, the under-legalized conception of public management has produced a flawed understanding of public management theory as well as public management practices, threatening public institutions’ legitimacy. In this article, we argue that law never left public management theory. Rather, the link between government and law has been redefined twice. We refer to the assumptions that constitute this link as the law-government nexus. This nexus changed from lawfulness in a public administration paradigm, to legal instrumentalism in a (new) public management paradigm, and to a networked concept in the public governance (PG) paradigm. In order to prevent a faulty over-legalized conception of public management, bringing the law back in should be built on lessons from the past. This article elaborates on three strategies to reconnect law and public management. We map the strengths and weaknesses of each law-government nexus and illustrate these with the case of the Dutch tax agency. In our strategies that aim to reconceptualize the current law-government nexus, we incorporate the benefits of each paradigm for public management theory. The revised law-governance nexus enables the PG paradigm to correspond to contemporary issues without encountering old pathologies.


2011 ◽  
pp. 2159-2167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko

New public management and the more recent concept of new public governance have become the dominant management doctrines in the public sector. Public organizations have become increasingly network-like units with various governance relations with actors from the public, business, and voluntary sectors. Their organization is based more on networks than on traditional hierarchies, accompanied by a transition from the command-and-control type of management to initiate-and-coordinate type of governance.


2022 ◽  
pp. 22-44
Author(s):  
Feras Ali Qawasmeh

Public policy is classified as a major field in public administration. Therefore, to understand the context of public policy as a field, it is essential to explore its root developments in public administration from epistemological and chronological perspectives. This chapter is a review study referring to main scholarly works including books, academic articles, and studies. The chapter first helps researchers and students in comprehending the evolution of public administration in its four main stages including classical public administration, new public administration, new public management, and new public governance. Second, the chapter presents a general overview of the evolution of the public policy field with particular attention paid to the concepts of Harold Lasswell who is seen as the father of public policy. The chapter then discusses different definitions of public policy. Various classifications of public policy are also investigated. The chapter ends with a critical discussion of the stages model (heuristics).


Author(s):  
Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko

New public management and the more recent concept of new public governance have become the dominant management doctrines in the public sector. Public organizations have become increasingly network-like units with various governance relations with actors from the public, business, and voluntary sectors. Their organization is based more on networks than on traditional hierarchies, accompanied by a transition from the command-and-control type of management to initiate-and-coordinate type of governance.


Author(s):  
Vernon Bogdanor

‘Joined-up government’ has been a topic of important discussion in the early twenty-first century as much as it was in the end of the twentieth century. Reinventing government was a move towards the ‘new public management’ which revolved on the importance to stimulate a business situation in the government and to apply the disciplines of the market to the public sector. The joined-up government on the other hand advocated a more holistic approach. It not only sought to apply the logic of economics but also the insights of other social sciences such as sociology and cultural theory to reform and change public service. This book focuses on the joined-up government strategy of the UK government. This strategy sought not only to bring together the government departments and agencies but also a number of various private and voluntary bodies for a common goal. The chapters in this book discusses the various barriers to the joined-up government such as contrasting perspectives of the central and local government, the conflicting departmental interests, and the diverging interests of the professionals.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 1264-1284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Merkus ◽  
Marcel Veenswijk

Within the literature of governance and policy making in the context of planning, the notion of performativity is specifically conceptualized as the self-fulfilling property of performances – such as story-telling – that shape public reality. One specific stream of performativity researchers – dominant in the realm of organization studies – focuses on the enactment of academic theory into reality. We contribute to this idea of bringing theory into being by conceptualizing purposive performative agents who strive to enact a specific theory in reality. Our paper demonstrates through which mechanisms the theory of New Public Management has shaped the reality of public governance at the will of one powerful performative agent. Using a perspective based on performative struggle, our interpretative case study – focused on a large policy process – exhibits how New Public Management doctrine gains influence at the expense of other public management theories. In conclusion, we claim that our findings offer a potential perspective for understanding through which dynamics certain agents aim to shape the public realm in alignment with their preferred theoretical propositions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095207672110150
Author(s):  
Mette Sønderskov ◽  
Rolf Rønning ◽  
Siv Magnussen

Innovation has been highlighted as a magic formula that can solve deep-seated, emerging complex social and economic problems in the public service sector. However, public innovation efforts face both drivers and barriers. Innovation depends on context, and currently different competing governance paradigms’ influence has attracted growing academic and political interest regarding the potential of public service innovation. Today, new public governance (NPG) has been suggested as an alternative paradigm to classic public administration (CPA) and new public management (NPM), as the focus of attention has shifted from traditional hierarchical forms of government and market-based competition strategies to interactive- and collaborative-based governance. In this paper, we discuss how elements from different governance paradigms interact, support and undermine one another in terms of innovation in hybrid organisations. Although hybridisation has been described in extant studies on administrative welfare reforms, it barely has been examined in the public innovation literature. This is a theoretical paper based on a scoping review; however, we use the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) as an illustrative case to explain how hybridisation may lead to both stimulations and perversions regarding the development, implementation and spread of public service innovation. Finally, the paper reflects on how public leaders can handle hybridity within their organisational units.


2008 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillermo M. Cejudo

The Mexican public sector has undergone significant transformations in recent decades. This article argues against the view that these changes are the result of New Public Management-style reforms. Even though the Mexican government has applied some of the tools associated with this paradigm, the essential NPM doctrines — granting more autonomy to public agencies and government officials, and using market mechanisms to promote competition in the public sector — have been absent from the agenda. The Mexican experience exposes two erroneous assumptions in the international debate about NPM: that there is a global trend of similar national reforms and that every change in the public sector is part of this new paradigm. Instead, the changes in the Mexican public sector are the result of incremental adjustments to two broader domestic processes: economic liberalization and political democratization — which have led to a smaller and relatively more accountable administration. Points for practitioners This article suggests that not all reforms are the result of New Public Management initiatives. It points towards alternative explanations for change in the Mexican public sector and identifies political democratization and economic liberalization as the main sources of change. This view challenges existing accounts of public sector change in developing countries and suggests a more complex process of reform. The main lesson for practitioners is that, when analysing reform experiences, they should look at the underlying causal processes rather than at the official rhetoric. Moreover, the article reminds practitioners that NPM is only one among several sources of doctrines for changing the public administration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 576-596
Author(s):  
Panagiota Xanthopoulou ◽  
Iosif Plimakis

The current paper presents some aspects and criticisms from the theoretical literature concerning the New Public Management (NPM). The article also critically examines whether the NPM model is appropriate and the drivers that affected its efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector especially in Greece, during the current pandemic. The research concluded that the process of managerial reform and the specific criteria in order to evaluate NPM’s effectiveness are not completed yet and that there are some key barriers such as the statist perception of citizens and politicians, the corruption of public, the fragmented organizational structures, the resistance to change that hinder the success of change and of NPM’s effective implementation in public sector. However, Covid-19 was a situation that helped many aspects of NPM such as digitalization, digital transformation, e-governance etc. to effectively be introduced and implemented in public governance of Greek organisations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
M. Rizki Pratama

This study explains the trajectory of public administration (PA) time to time. Public Administration has experienced many significant developments since the writing of the study of administration  by Wilson in 1887. Starting from the identity crisis, the re-recognition of the study of public administration to the emergence of new public administration was increasingly growing when the new public management was introduced. The journey of PA has found its own way as a science that must be interpreted as a science that cannot stand alone but has its own character, especially how to look at the affairs of the public sector or everything related to the public in general. PA is not a science that has no clear boundaries or has a high degree of blurring. As long as the criticism shows the dynamics that actually employs PA studies instead of shutting down PA studies themselves. PA experiences patterns from the past to the future can be conceptualized into an PA trajectory. This trajectory certainly cannot be considered full and absolute effect, of course there are several loopholes and really in need to be criticized. The development and change of the PA study has reached an encouraging stage when in the current era the PA study has been considered as a tool to achieve a better society and country life, if the government is considered bad government then the PA is used as a guide to reform as well as being used to review current government performance  through various kinds of PA theories that already exist.


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