How Useful Is New Public Management as a Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Public Administration - Research Paper Example

There are primarily two views that are discussed here concerning the significance of NPM as a framework, the argument that there is now a global movement that has resulted in transformed structural changes across the international community and that of adaptive changes across individual nation-states, each with a degree of variance depending on cultural and historical traditions and values. In discussing this second view this paper concentrates on the debate surrounding the convergence of NPM across the western capitalized states and does not draw on the models that are emerging throughout the developing nations.

Comparison of the adoption of NPM within the UK and German Public Sector is put forward to illustrate the extent and variation of changes that have occurred and help to illustrate the usefulness of the framework in the field of comparative analysis. Over the past two decades, there has been a considerable shift towards the traditional model of public administration towards what has been termed 'new public management'. The supposed failure of the 'traditional administration' has contributed to the emergence and support of new thinking.

Traditional public administration was based around the framework of bureaucracy. Hughes (2003: 1) provides a useful definition of the characteristics of the traditional model of public administration: Firstly, it was completely linked to Weber's theory of bureaucracy, which advocated the principle of hierarchical and bureaucratic systems. Secondly, administrators followed a one way, best way approach that was provided in detailed instruction and did not provide any personal responsibility for results.