New Public Management And Public Administration In Canada

The demands associated with good governance and good public management are at an all-time high. Yet the discipline of Canadian public administration is in flux, and the time is ripe for an open and frank analysis of its state and possibilities. Canadian Public Administration in the 21st Century brings together emerging voices in Canadian public administration to consider current and future prospects in the discipline. A new wave of scholars has brought new energy, ambition, and perspectives to the field. In this book they take stock and build on established traditions and current trends, focusing on emerging, or reemerging, issues and challenges. The book identifies and analyzes the emergent research agenda in public administration, focusing on Canada to illustrate key concepts, frameworks, and issues. It consists of three thematically organized sections, exploring processes, structures, and principles of Canadian public administration. It addresses the broad, emergent trend in processes of service delivery or policy implementation generally referred to as the new public governance. It then critically examines the structural and institutional dimensions of Canadian public administration in light of recent directions in the field. A complete exploration of new principles, methods, values, and ethics in Canadian public administration research and practice rounds out the coverage. Bringing together emerging scholars, the book bridges the gap between established analytical traditions and novel theoretical and methodological approaches in the field. It proposes a new, more interdisciplinary public administration increasingly focused on governance and not solely on management.

In the face of the need to make choices between programs that governments consider essential to administer themselves and programs that may be discontinued or transferred to other organizations, a new vision of government functioning has emerged, notably with greater emphasis on performance and results. This book analyzes the impact of an increasingly influential paradigm called new public management on the public services of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Major challenges common to these countries include powerful bureaucracies, restrictive organizational designs, and rigid rules and procedures blocking change. The book reviews various reform initiatives launched in response to those challenges in the areas of career public service, statecraft, administrative fragmentation and centralization, consolidation and devolution of authority, moving beyond bureaucracy, enhancing performance, and securing accountability. The book concludes with an agenda for public management.

How policymakers should guide, manage, and oversee public bureaucracies is a question that lies at the heart of contemporary debates about government and public administration. This text calls for public management to become a vibrant field of public policy.

Numerous administrative reforms during the past several decades, referred to as the "New Public Management," have altered government in a number of fundamental ways. These changes have, in turn, produced the need for even greater change if the public sector is to be capable of governing efficiently and responsibly. The challenges now facing government are numerous, including the need to recruit capable and committed young public servants, adapt to new information technology, manage changing intergovernmental relations, and, perhaps most important, hold the reformed administrative structures accountable to both political demands and legal standards. Some countries have already initiated new rounds of reform while others are still attempting to understand and absorb the consequences of changes motivated by new public management ideas. In Governance in the twenty-first century international experts recognise both the difficulty of making predictions and the need to consider the future in order to prepare the public sector for new challenges. The authors' predictions and recommendations are anchored in a thorough understanding of contemporary public administration. They point out that not only have previous reforms made yet more change necessary and inevitable but that the purpose of these reforms is to attempt to return government to the position of respect and competence it enjoyed in the past. B. Guy Peters is Maurice Falk Professor of American Government, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh. Donald J. Savoie holds the Clément-Cormier Chair in Economic Development at the Université de Moncton, where he also teaches public administration.

A festchrift in honour of Peter C. Aucoin, professor emeritus of political science and public administration.