Learning from the experience of a number of other countries, and especially those representing Western democracies in the last decade, suggests a number of observations based on the series of NPM managerial challenges. It seems that the main patterns of the required change char- acteristics and their expected trends can be discerned mainly from the experience of several Western societies such as the United States, Britain and the European continent, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. How- ever, studies from the developing world are also of great interest and advantage. A major study by Gerald Caiden and Naomi Caiden (2002) exemplifies the use of such comparative tools for the understanding of NPM impacts in various nations. In the next subsections we use their study as a major source for this comparison.
The United States: Measuring Performance
The main contribution of the United States to the development of NPM came from the improvement of performance and process measures. The basic assumption was that without an ordered decision upon measures and methods to evaluate performance, both the administrative process and the democratic process of the public’s supervision on the govern- ment’s performances were being compromised. Federal government in the United States especially stressed this in the“Government Performance and Results Act” (GPRA), which was approved by the Congress in 1993.
Governmental organizations and agencies were requested to develop detailed measuring strategies for their products by identifying goals and purposes, studying the possible influences upon them, and tightening the tie between performances and long-term goals. As part of this process, all governmental agencies were obliged to consult Congress and other stakeholders when needed.
This development switched the focus of discussion to issues of perform- ance and results instead of wallowing in issues of processes and resources as had been previously accepted. This is how the term“performance budgeting”has also been viewed; that is, as the means to improve decision-making processes as an aspiration to boost performance. On the other hand, a number of difficulties have also been revealed in the process, and these stemmed mostly from the need to achieve ambitious and long-term goals, which have not always been under the aegis of governmental authorities. In a great number of cases, the initiative, control, and supervision over government’s activities lie with the
states or the local government, while the federal government has had only indirect responsibility and involvement. Nevertheless, the main achievement of this focus on performance evaluation has been the implementation of a methodical and ordered process of studying policy products and evaluating their meaning in terms of outputs and outcomes. Nonetheless, as Lynne Weikart (2001) suggests, performance measurement in American-style NPM was but one major wheel in a vehicle of managerialism. It had to work simultaneously with additional components such as the ideas of down- sizing government, decentralization, privatization, and de-bureaucratization, of the federal, state, and local American machineries.
Britain: Who Comes First, the Public or the Nation?
The roots of the reform processes in British public management were planted back at the time of the Labor government at the end of the 1970s, but gained momentum with the rise of the Conservative Party headed by Margaret Thatcher. Throughout these years, public policy known as
“Thatcherism”included a dramatic reduction in the central government’s involvement in the provision of direct services to the citizens. This policy included growing privatization infields such as transportation and media and, thus, increased market competition and reduced the size of bureauc- racies, while introducing an economic logic into the activities of public agencies. However, since the 1990s, the British government has acted mainly to allow political, managerial, and mostly budget decentralization in areas such as Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In many respects, the purpose of this activity was to bring the government closer to the citizens and to reduce the“remote control”approach.
Besides the managerial benefits, it contributed to the political stability of the United Kingdom. Both the mutuality and exchange between the different areas increased, but most important, they achieved the status of a managerial autonomy, which was characterized by a greater democracy and freedom of choice for citizens. Thus, British public management became more sensitive toward the citizens while increasing the level of responsive- ness through the “Citizens’ Charter.” In March 1999, the government published the next expected steps for the continuation of the reforms as part of the“White Paper.”These steps were named“Modernizing Govern- ment”and stress the new role of the government.
The emphasis was on the fact that the government does not exist for its employees, but rather for the people and the individuals as citizens and
clients. It claims that civil servants should be appreciated, nurtured, and promoted, but at the same time suggests that demands for better perform- ance, cooperative work, sensitivity, and consideration toward the individual should be part and parcel of any public servant’s activity. Therefore, the government’s plan has been based uponfive main components: planning of long-term public policy, encouraging a responsive public service, emphasiz- ing technological improvement, stressing information availability, and improving the public service’s image.
The European Continent: Cultural Gaps beyond a Few Generic Similarities Theflow of NPM-oriented thinking throughout Europe started in the late 1970s and is still under way today. It reflects a tremendous change in the theory and practice of Western European public service compared with the pre-Second World War period (Barker, 1944). Recent comparative studies are only a few examples of the ongoing debate about the decreasing likelihood offinding a generic model of NPM that is equally effective and useful for all Western democracies such as Italy, France, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and even Germany and the Netherlands (Ongaro, 2009; Barzelay and Gallego, 2010; and Pollitt and Dan, 2011). Public management reforms and modernization are implemented differently, as the policy cycles of every nation take a different shape throughout the years.
For example, Edoardo Ongaro (2009) turns to major differences between the studied nations such as the politico-administrative context and the influence of Europeanization on public management reform. He points to some countries’higher compatibility to global paradigms of NPM reforms (for instance, Italy and Spain) compared with other countries with a much lower level. He points to the centrality of the“Napoleonic tradition”
and its uniqueness compared with the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Ongarofinds major differences in the way political reforms and administrative reforms interact, and embedded in a specific (organizational and national) culture that shapes the type of reform. The differences between the studied countries are wide, in terms of public servant recruitment and training, in the way services are delivered to citizens, the perception of citizens as customers, the budgetary process, and the watchdogs of reforms and change such as the auditing and judiciary systems.
Taking an even wider European perspective, Christopher Pollitt and Sorin Dan (2011) discuss the impacts of NPM across Europe and observe a paradoxical situation. They suggest that “on the one hand there have been endless publications by academics and practitioners concerned with
NPM-like programs and techniques. Yet, on the other hand, our solid, scientific knowledge of the generaloutcomesof all this thinking and activity is very limited. Claims and counterclaims outnumber hard, carefully collected evidence by a substantial margin. That was the case in the mid-1990s, and it remains the case today. A summarizing graphic metaphor might be that there is an ocean of studies of the application of NPM ideas within the European Union (EU), but only a modest sea of works that offer direct empirical analysis ofoutputs,and no more than a small pond that convincingly connect specific reforms to particularoutcomes.”(Pollitt, 1995, pp. 32–33).
Accordingly, and based on a vast database of 26 countries (including EU and non-EU countries such as Switzerland, Norway, and Croatia) they suggest the following summary (Pollitt and Dan, 2011, pp. 33–34):
1. Performance-related pay requires a long list of supportive local condi- tions before it stands a good chance of working as intended. In particular it tends not to work well where (a) political patronage determines most senior appointments, (b) the bonuses available are only a very small percentage of the total remuneration, and (c) the work is hard to measure in an objective and widely accepted way.
2. Performance targets can definitely have a significant impact on per- formance, but usually only where backed up by significant penalties/
incentives.
3. Contracting out often fails to yield significant savings, particularly in the medium and long term. Necessary supports include (a) the possession of contract design and management skills by the staff of the parent public sector organization, (b) the presence of real competition (which may exist atfirst but then disappear because of private sector mergers and takeovers), and (c) that the activity being contracted is one that can be specified in fairlyfirm detail.
4. Use of market-type mechanisms (MTMs) may work better in simpler, more standardized services than in complex, unstandardized, profes- sionalized human services.
5. The politico-administrative culture is mentioned as a significant factor shaping reform impacts in many countries—especially in Eastern and Central Europe, but also in the West.
Australia: The Administrative Responsibility Approach
The NPM approach permeated the Australian public management mostly toward the end of the 1980s. The government sector and structure, which
had been used to centrality, “heavy activity,” and systematic ineptness, received the change initiative with enthusiasm. The change included a drastic cutback of governmental standards. Stress was on organizational products, a division between purchasing/maintenance and the provision of product roles, development of contractual mechanisms of accountability, and abandonment of the tenure-based employment method in the public sector (Hood, 1991).
However, the main characteristic of change in Australian public man- agement was “Administrative Responsibility and Accountability,” which stands for the increase in direct responsibility of civil servants for their actions and views managers as directly responsible for their decisions in addition to the direct political responsibility that those elected by the public have toward the citizens. Changes occurred across the board in Australian administrative law and a legal framework has been set up to enforce this responsibility. This means that managers are required to account for their decisions, their implementation, and even for their decisions for not acting or executing.
Clearly, this process was accompanied by the extension of the public complaints offices’mechanisms at the federal and the national level. The Australian public auditing office was extended, and a major change in the public’s attitude toward public administration systems and their responsi- bility for the individual took place. In addition to the Administrative Review Committee, which had been set up in 1976, various other bodies were established. These include the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Immigra- tion Review Tribunal, Industry Commission, The Refugee Review Tribunal, Social Security Tribunal, and the Veterans’Review Board. This process also included comprehensive legislation on the issues of freedom of informa- tion, access to archives, and law protecting the privacy of citizens.
Canada: Collaboration in Research and the Shaping of Public Policy
The changes and reforms in Canada have arrived from different directions (Peters and Savoie, 1998), but are all based on a limited number of basic assumptions: (1) maintaining a strong government is essential for the protection of the state; (2) evaluating the government’s role in the future is important; (3) a well-performing public sector is highly related to a modern policy of providing services to the citizens; (4) nurturing profes- sional civil servants and those who have an independent way of thinking;
and (5) encouraging wise governmental and administrative leadership, which gives direction and backing to those who deal with public service roles (Caiden and Caiden, 2002).
At the beginning of the 1990s, Canada suffered a budget crisis, which badly influenced its investment in development and research and also damaged the implementation of advanced public policy processes. The main criticism against the federal government has been that coordination and direction are missing in the work of governmental agencies, and that public policy in various fields is wanting since knowledge, tools, and experience are not being transferred from one field to the other. As a result, it has been claimed that public money is being wasted and not efficiently managed, and that a horizontal coordinative and integrative action between the different bodies is required. In 1995, the Task Force on the Management of Horizontal Policy was established. Its role has been to centralize the policy issues, which involve more than one office, and to manage the respective activities a little better.
In general, the task force was requested to create a cooperative culture of policy making and implementation, and to form a commitment amongst governmental agencies to coordinate work while constantly and rapidly transferring ideas, information, and learning mutually from past experi- ence. In 1996, the Policy Research Committee was established, whose aim was to assist the government in preparing for cooperative work among public organizations and to implement coordinated public policy by 2005.
This committee produced two main reports, which focused on the means to increase the collaboration and coordination between the different market sectors at the national and international levels. The activity of this commit- tee was thefirst step in a process called“The Policy Research Initiative.”As a part of this framework, a Secretariat for Policy Research was established in the federal government. Moreover, the proclaimed intention of this process was also to export the conceptual-cultural change in the format of the all- inclusive policy approach to other countries.
New Zealand: The Reshaping of Welfare Policy
In the last decades or so, an urgent need to cut back the size of the bureaucratic apparatus has arisen. For this purpose, accelerated processes of privatization, governmental decentralization, reduction in the number of public sector employees, and increase in the collaboration with private bodies (which would perform activities that have been hitherto in the domain of the government, also called outsourcing) has begun. Govern- ment initiated a comprehensive plan, which has greatly reduced the rate of national expenditure for the purposes of welfare. It has introduced com- ponents that encourage internal and external competition in the public
sector’s environment, attempt to lower the taxes, and maintain fairness in the distribution of national resources. The plan has also encouraged reliance on the country’s own resources. It aims at increasing the emphasis upon the public sector’s efficiency, citizens’freedom of choice, and mutual relations between service providers and clients as opposed to the former pattern according to which the citizen is dependent upon the government and its institutes (Boston and others, 1999).
According to Caiden and Caiden (2002) the switch to harsh budgetary restraint has indeed managed to rescue the country and its public sector from the crisis it had fallen into. Yet the harsh recuperation process has left its signs among different social groups, which now have to get accustomed to much weaker support from the government. The gap between the rich and the poor has grown, and at the end of the decade many people in New Zealand are yet to taste the influence of the new management reforms in their lives.
Israel: Decentralization and Privatization
Certain motives of the NPM approach have entered Israel in the last three decades. The main changes in the Israeli public sector since the 1970s are based on two main components: a real revolution in the field of decentralization (for example, the transfer of managerial authorities from central to local government and the awarding of greater freedom to act in terms of budgetary management in different government offices), and growing privatization since the mid-1980s. At the same time, there is a strengthening of processes such as raising the transparency regarding governmental activity, nurturing managers and institutes’ accountability to the public, and involving the public auditing system infields it had not dealt with in the past (Friedberg, 1999). However, it seems that in other fields such as the reduction of bureaucracy and the promotion of structural changes in public organizations, the introduction of a new managerial culture, especially in thefield of performance evaluation of public organi- zations, the steps are smaller and slower and therefore the challenge for change remains great.
Israel was born as a welfare country with a market and society managed in a highly centralized way (Mizrahi and others, 2009, 2010), and which were characterized by three main sectors: the public and the private sectors and the Employees’ Federation, the Histadrut. The country’s values as a welfare state included the aspiration to provide social security, maintain quality of life, and reduce inequality (Doron, 1985). In order to achieve
these goals, the intersectoral power structure during the country’sfirst years had clearly leaned toward the public sector and theHistadrut.These have usually acted in a cooperative and coordinated way (a corporatist model) and stopped the introduction of reforms and changes, which have threat- ened social values. This power structure has changed completely since the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s when, on the one hand, the dominance of the Histadrutgreatly deteriorated and, on the other hand, global trends with greater efficiency and focus on business management in the public sector increased.
Even though the governmental and public committees have been able to keep the issue of change and reform on the Israeli public agenda, close study would show that the public management changes focus on only the organi- zational, structural, andfinancial dimensions of the government’s branches.
They all lack a systematic approach to the introduction of a new managerial culture into the government, and there is insufficient focus on the develop- ment of appropriate tools for the behavioral performance evaluation of the public sector. As a result, most of the knowledge we have today centers on the attitude toward changes and reforms on the formal aspects of the public system’s structure and organization or, alternatively, on its activities and performances from an economic perspective. The latter deals with the functioning of the budget or with the other issues of resource allocation, and does not make use of tools from the social sciencesfield, whose efficiency and contribution to the improvement of public service is proven.
The experience of countries such as Canada and the United States shows that performance evaluation can be done using systematic and prolonged studies of citizens’approaches and their status as the public sector’s clients, as well as interorganizational studies that focus on public sector employees.
Israel is getting gradually integrated in this trend as part of a new international project, the National Assessment Project of Public Administration (NAPPA), whose aim is to comparatively evaluate the functioning of public organiza- tions in Europe and Israel through tools that require the integration of a perceptional/behavioral evaluation with a classic economic and technical evaluation (Vigoda-Gadot and Mizrahi, 2001–2013).