Towards a New Public Governance?

Abstract

There is a growing frustration with New Public Management in many western countries and the search for new ways of governing has intensified. New participatory and collaborative governing practices are unfolding at all levels of government. Some scholars have tried to capture these new trends with the notion of New Public Governance. Whereas New Public Management tends to view public monopolies as the key problem and enhanced competition as the preferred solution, New Public Governance tends to see complexity and fragmentation as the key challenge and the formation of interactive forms of collaborative governance that cuts across organizational and institutional boundaries as the way. New Public Governance replaces the intraorganizational view and the input and output focus of New Public Management with an interorganizational approach to governance and a focus on processes and outcomes. As such, it offers a new paradigm for studying how a plurality of interdependent public and private actors, who are operating in a complex and fragmented world, engage in collaborative processes and produce innovative solutions that lead to desired outcomes. This panel aims to critically explore the background, content and implications of New Public Governance. As such, it aims to answer questions like: What is New Public Governance? How prevalent and significant are the features of New Public Governance? What are the driving forces behind its emergence? Will it replace, transform, or co-exist with New Public Management? What are the implications of the new governance practices for efficiency, democracy and public innovation? We welcome conceptual and theoretical papers as well as empirical ones.

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