The New Public Management(NPM) and Its Limitations

The New Public Management (NPM) - known as “running government like a business”- was popular world-wide in the 1990s. However, it is useful to acknowledge some pitfalls in the underlying assumptions of the reinvention movement. Thus, this paper mainly discusses flaws in the NPM's theoretical basis. Particularly, the NPM’s underlying assumption resembles the old politics-administration dichotomy observed by Frank Goodnow and Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century, and is problematic because under this system public officials are excluded from the political arena and are no longer accountable to the president but to the customer. In order to overcome the democratic accountability issue, this paper suggests that we consider reintroducing “politics” into “administration” as an alternative direction for the future. Also, a contingent approach to reform is suggested for the future research topic.