“New Public Management, Selectivity and Discourse”

Panel Chairs:

Barbara Dickhaus,  Kassel University, barbara.dickhaus@uni-kassel.de

Abstract:

New public management reforms in public sectors such as education and health services have been introduced in a number of countries around the world in recent years. These policies reflect a fundamental shift in the understanding of the role of the state, the dualism of state versus market is therefore blurred and called into question.

The issue of public sector reform and new public management has been analysed from a variety of theoretical perspectives. This panel invites contributions which explore the policy formation and translation processes in public sector reforms from different theoretical perspectives and investigate possible links between different theoretical strands.

A crucial challenge in these analysis is to establish 'how change comes about' in public policy making. How can we account for the factors which influence policy formulation processes and reform outcomes, and how can we establish causality and provide explanatory power with specific theoretical approaches? A key issue to investigate here is the role of and interaction between structure and agency. This is being accounted for very differently in the various theoretical approaches (e.g. Neo-Gramscian, Strategic-Relational, Discourse Analytical, Historical or Discursive Institutionalist). Taking the critical-realist idea of 'selectivity' in the process of policy formulation as a starting point and organizing metaphor, the discussion in the panel should therefore aim to address this complex relationship between agency and structure by linking different theoretical perspectives or concepts in order to explain how structural and agency-related factors shape the process of policy formulation.

This panel seeks to investigate the policy formation and translation process of new public governance mechanisms on different scales, thus the interaction of global and local dynamics in this process. Case studies of interest are studies which offer new theoretical insights (e.g. how to combine different theoretical approaches, how to conceptualize the relationship between structure and agency) and insights into particular policy issue arenas.