Changing Conceptions of Public ‘Management’ and Public Sector Reform in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s political transition to democratic rule was the catalyst for ambitious \npublic sector reform efforts, which sought to restructure the organisational and personnel \nprofile of the state. A key aim of this process was to enhance the state’s management \ncapacity to steer a far-reaching socio-economic policy agenda, which drew on the principles \nand tools of comparative public management practice as it had evolved globally \nand intellectually. This article examines how South Africa’s policy commitment to management \nreform can be characterised in comparative terms, and twenty years on, assess \nif and how this commitment has materialised in practice. I will argue that the South \nAfrican case exhibits a confusing and directionless mix of traditional management control \nand unconsummated NPM advocacy. Although this is generally consistent with \nNPM practice in developing countries, I will propose that there are at least three specific \nelements that lend texture to the South African case, namely, capacity, commitment \nand capture.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 17 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.