New Public Management in the UK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

New Public Management in the UK - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that the traditional model ÃŽ ¿f public administration is based on the bureaucracy theory. It is characterized as "an administration under the formal control ÃŽ ¿f the political leadership, based on a strictly hierarchical model ÃŽ ¿f bureaucracy, staffed by permanent, neutral and anonymous officials, motivated only by the public interest, serving any governing party equally, and not contributing to policy but merely administrating those policies decided by the politicians." The traditional model ÃŽ ¿f administration was an improvement compared to the earlier one, which was regarded as the replacement ÃŽ ¿f personal administration with an impersonal system based on rules. Indeed these were central concerns ÃŽ ¿f philosophers such as Aristotle in ancient Greece, Confucius in ancient China, and Machiavelli in medieval Italy. But the conception ÃŽ ¿f the activist, bureaucratic state, despite its earlier parallels, is in practice an essentially twentieth century phenomenon. The characteristics ÃŽ ¿f this bureaucratic state were set out most clearly by the German sociologist Max Weber in 1920, with strong echoes ÃŽ ¿f earlier writings by the American Woodrow Wilson: "There should be a clear separation between politics and administration, and therefore distinct roles for political leaders (normally elected) and state officials (normally appointed)."Administration should be continuous and predictable, operating on the basis ÃŽ ¿f written, unambiguous rules.... These principles were easily adapted to bureaucratic structures. A final addition to the traditional model was the application f the insights f social psychology, in a 'human relations' approach which is often contrasted with the scientific management approach, but in practice sought to achieve greater efficiency f performance too, though by paying attention to the need to motivate workers rather than merely control and direct them (Hughes, 1998, 35-6). Unfortunately, the ideal bureaucracy model had never happened in the real life. The critique f the traditional model is based in a comparison f the 'ideal' model f bureaucracy with what happens in real systems f public administration. Due to the limitations, the practice f traditional model resulted in the overlarge government constitution and inefficient political operation in the late 1970's in most developed countries such as UK and USA. Associated with the new development f economic and organizational theories, the idea f New Public Management" (NPM) became more and more popular. Those theories are coherent challenging with the problem f traditional model. The first challenge comes from the market economic aspect, which is concerned with the public choice. The public choice theory argues who is able to make the best choice, the government or the individual Public choice advocates the maximisation f choice by individuals for both individual freedom and efficiency reasons. Dunleavy (1986) describes people are "rational actors" because they always seek the biggest possible benefits and the least costs in their decisions. Meanwhile the bureaucrats in the traditional model will attempt to