The transformation of governance paradigms and modalities insights into the marketization of the public service in response to globalization

Abstract

In the 1990s and into the next millennium it is the radical changes in the morphology and dynamics of cross-border activity, as reflected in globalization, that will pose the greatest contemporary public policy challenge for the bureaucracies of the industrialized and developing countries. This is the case because while many free trade economists, policy-makers and academicians, who subscribe to the 'new orthodoxy', speak of the tremendous opportunities born of globalization, globalization also has the effect of constraining the capacity of governments to engage in the business of servicing the public's entitlements. The article argues that the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm has been embraced by governments of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries as 'the' panacea for addressing the inefficiencies of government and as a means to enable their governance practices to be congruent with the principal ideological constructs of globalization. This trend is evidenced by the precipitate proliferation of NPM principles and practices throughout the Western democracies. However, even more importantly, the NPM appears to be perceived as a means by which these governments can mitigate the threats, posed by globalization, to their governance roles, by helping to carve and secure a niche for themselves in an environment where their regulatory authorities and mandates are increasingly becoming irrelevant. Such strategic manoeuvres, on the part of these bureaucracies, have tremendous

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