Governance as the New Public Management 229
and empirically addressed the governance of public policies and contributed to
improving their creation, implementation, and administration. Th at research
program has already attracted scholars to its standard (Lynn et al. 2000). For ex-
ample, recent work on the response to Hurricane Katrina employs a governance
framework based on network analysis that is similar to the multilevel model pre-
sented by Lynn et al. (Koliba, Mills, and Zia 2011).
Governance as the New Public Management
Th e largest criticism of Lynn et al.’s approach is that it is predicated on a defi -
nition of governance so broad and inclusive that it loses specifi c meaning. An
alternate approach sets fi rmer conceptual boundaries by equating governance
with New Public Management (NPM), sometimes referred to as the “new man-
agerialism.” NPM characterizes a global public management reform movement
that has redefi ned the relationships between government and society.
Although this management reform movement has numerous variations
across and even within nation-states, it has several universal themes. In a wide-
ranging overview of this reform movement, Donald Kettl (2000, 1–2) argues that
it is predicated on six core issues. (1) Productivity: Th e reform eff ort is a serious
attempt to assess how governments can do “more with less” by sustaining, or
even expanding, public services with lower resource investments. (2) Marketi-
zation: Th e reform movement is predicated on government leveraging market
mechanisms to overcome the pathologies of traditional bureaucracy. (3) Service
orientation: One of the common objects of reforms is to better connect govern-
ment with citizens and to improve customer satisfaction with public services. (4)
Decentralization: Th is is not just a mindless devolution of decisionmaking power
to lower levels in the political or bureaucratic hierarchy but also a conscious eff ort
to put those who make policy decisions as close as possible to the people who are
going to be aff ected by those decisions. Th e goal is to put government closer to
citizens and make it more sensitive and responsive to their preferences. (5) Pol-
icy: Th e reform movement seeks to improve government’s capacities to create,
to implement, and to administer public policy. (6) Accountability: Th e reform
movement is an eff ort to make government deliver on what it promises.
Kettl contends that at its heart, the management reform movement represents
a debate about governance: “What should government do? How can it best ac-
complish these goals? What capacity does it need to do it well? . . . Th e manage-
ment reform movement builds on the notion that good governance—a sorting
out of mission, role, capacity, and relationships—is a necessary (if insuffi cient)
condition for economic prosperity and social stability” (2000, 5–6). Governance
in the management reform context thus refers to the “core issues of the relation-
ship between government and society,” and the reevaluation and reformation of
this relationship at the core of NPM represent a fundamental shift in the politics
of the administrative state (36).