New Public Management Paradigm Analysis

Paradigm shift from New Public Administration to New Public

Management: theory and practice in Africa

S VYAS-DOORGAPERSAD

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Abstract

The African continent is facing a number of administrative crises. The recent decline of public administration on the continent has forced some African countries to re-assess their governance systems. Their public service reforms are evidence of the emergence of

New Public Management (NPM) for improved public sector administrative structures and operations. This article discusses the paradigm shifts from New Public

Administration to New Public Management, as a means of meeting public administration challenges in Africa. At a contextual level, the paper examines the practical implementation by some African countries

The notion of a paradigm in the social sciences was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in his classic work entitled Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) that raised scholarly debate in intellectual circles. The understanding of Kuhn’s paradigms can assist scholars to discuss the paradigms of Public Administration. This article therefore builds on the theoretical/philosophical aspects of PA and NPM, whereby it can be debated that it does not matter whether or not NPM is a paradigm. For one thing, its use as a rhetorical device gives it stronger intellectual credentials … rather than being opposite paradigms, one of which must defeat the other, they appear to represent incommensurable ways of looking at their subject, each having its contribution to make

(Gow and Dufour 2000: 590).

Through this theoretical understanding, the paper aims to explore the implementation and practise of NPM as a new paradigm (hypothetical) and the outcomes of NPM-led reforms introduced on the African continent.

Paradigms of Public Administration

In his article on public administration, Henry (1975) traced the evolution of the field by identifying a number of paradigms that he organized around three themes: focus, or what

Vincent Ostrom in his book entitled The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration

(1973) moreover suggested a “democratic administration” (Otenyo 2006: 2) paradigm urging the need for “diverse democratic decision-making structures, popular participation in administration and dispersed administrative authority based upon structures overlapping jurisdiction and fragmented organisation” (Nasrullah 2005: 201).

Thus a paradigm is something the scientists of a discipline agree upon and that guides their research. A mature science is characterised by its paradigm and as long as the so called normal science continues, researchers work within their paradigm to solve the riddles of their discipline. According to Kuhn when the researchers find facts that don’t fit into their paradigm and which cannot be explained by it he labels these facts ‘anomalies’; he explains that in such situations, researchers begin to search for solutions outside their paradigm until new laws, definitions, orientation hypotheses, values and exemplary solutions are found which can then be used to explain the anomaly and have the power to convince fellow scientists.