Between New Public Management and New Public Governance: The Case of Mexican Municipalities

Authors

  • Enrique Cabrero

Abstract

In recent years, the academic debate on the real and symbolic effects of New Public Management (NPM) has been intense. Some maintain that we are facing a new paradigm (Barzelay, 1992). Others question its significance and insist that it is only a revision of old approaches concerned with the technical qualities of public administration (Hood, 1991; Arellano, 2002). In this respect, there are those who believe that the results have been fundamentally positive, (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992) those who argue that the effects of this government reform trend are not yet clear (Lynn, 1996a, Kettl, 1999) and even that they might be questionable (Pollit, Birchall and Putnam, 1998). In this article, I intend to stimulate this discussion by arguing that the NPM is neither a positive or negative strategy by itself. It is more an approach with both achievements and failures. From my point of view it is necessary to analyze the conditions in which the potential of these types of reforms would seem to be greater, as well as those situations in which they can be innocuous or even contradictory to reform processes of other natures.

Author Biography

Enrique Cabrero

Enrique Cabrero is Professor, Researcher and President of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)(Research and Teaching Center for Economics of Mexico).

 

 

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How to Cite

Cabrero, E. (2014). Between New Public Management and New Public Governance: The Case of Mexican Municipalities. International Public Management Review, 6(1), 76–99. Retrieved from https://ipmr.net/index.php/ipmr/article/view/160

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2005)

Section

Articles

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