Government Rebuilding: A Review of the Western New Public Management Movement: Western

Author: Chen Zhenming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Government (political organization) and market (economic organization) are the two basic forms of social organization and also the two powerful forces driving, controlling, and influencing social development. Practices in various countries have shown that a democratic, flexible, efficient, and clean government plays a crucial role in the socio-economic development of a country or region. In the contemporary era, government capacity constitutes a core or dominant aspect of a country's or region's competitiveness. To adapt to changing socio-economic environments and effectively fulfill its functions, governments themselves are always undergoing continuous reform and transformation. In other words, in the world of modern public management, change is the norm. In the more than two decades following the 20th century, to meet the challenges of globalization, informatization, and the knowledge economy, as well as to escape fiscal difficulties and enhance international competitiveness and government efficiency, governments in Western countries successively launched waves of government reform or government renewal. This book reviews the contemporary Western government reform (New Public Management) movement, particularly the reforms in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Japan. The basic content includes: strategies and tactics for public sector reform; pioneers of New Public Management reform; creating a government that spends less and achieves more; models of New Public Management reform; competition, performance, transparency; decentralization, democracy, and good governance; moving toward a self-managing model; marketization, privatization, and liberalization. It also analyzes the Chinese context, offering significant reference value for China's administrative reform practices.