emergencias 2014;2:226-231
Original Article
Transition from Traditional Public
Administration to Network Governance
via New Public Management; with an
Emphasis on the Role of Public
Nader Ganji
M.A. in Public Policy, School of Law and Social Sciences, The University of Nottingham
Abstract
Traditional Public Administration (TPA), New Public
Management (NPM) and Network Governance (NG)
put different levels of emphasis on sovereignty of
citizens. It focuses on the way citizens’ relationship
to the state is conceptualized. It examines the
approaches through which public organizations will
produce outputs more in line with what citizens want
as well as the extent to which public are involved in
decision-making in government through such
models. It will discuss whether every of these
models, in implementation, does work and also their
broader implications for democratic governance,
particularly the impacts on political and
administrative leadership and the accountability of
leaders.
Keyword Citizens, Traditional Public
Administration, New Public Management,
Network Governance, participation,
accountability, power
Introduction
The public sector has a huge impact on people's lives
(Lane, 2000). Over the recent decades, the public
sectors of the Western countries have implemented
considerable reforms in response to the challenges of
technological progress as well as to regional and
global changes. These wide-ranging public sector
reforms represent a paradigm shift from the
Traditional model of Public Administration (TPA), to
the New Public Management (NPM). In other words,
there have been numerous attempts to replace the
huge massive bureaucracies based on hierarchical
forms with market-based economic theories built on
consumer-driven managerialism. Whilst power was
centralised in TPA, NPM decentralised power
distribution to the businesses. However,
shortcomings of both contractual relationships
between firms and competitive market regulations
gave rise to the Network Governance (NG) model.
226
The NG includes taking into consideration the
voluntary, private and public sectors, national,
regional and international institutions in the
performance of different functions of governance. In
such models, people face various roles. People are
considered passive recipients of the services in TPA,
active customer of the services in NPM, and active
citizens in decision-making processes in NG.
However, what happens in practice seems to be
different from the intended goals (Powell, 1990, p.
296; Hughes, 2003).
The aim of this paper is to examine the strengths and
weaknesses of the mentioned models of public
administration with emphasis on the role of public.
This paper has been divided into three parts. In each
part, one of the public administration models will be
critically reviewed. This paper concludes that NPM
cannot replace a part of qualities such as
predictability, stability and due process in TPA with
its elements. It depicts, nevertheless, more
empowered and less accountable citizens to the
systems than TPA. However, it can have negative
effects on low-income class of the society since it
largely relies on market regulations. But on the other
hand, NG can be the most desirable form of
administration as citizens are accountable and
responsible in the networks. Nonetheless, there are
doubts about the ability of political leadership to
guarantee the accountability of this model.
Public in Traditional Public Administration
The TPA model derived from Weber, Wilson and
Taylor (Hughes, 2003). TPA is rooted in German
administrative traditions and especially Weber’s
assumptions of bureaucracy (Pfiffner, 2004). Weber’s

(1946, p. 95) concept of bureaucracy is associated
with a monocratic hierarchical form of government
with a top to bottom control system. However, this
view has been under much discussion. Indeed,
Weber’s (1946) views indicate a system where
policies are set at the top and technically qualified
bureaucrats are strictly subordinate to the political
superior. This perception of bureaucracy developed
in Germany over the next decades as there was a
parallel development of bureaucracy in the other
countries. Wilson (1887) makes a distinction between
administration and sphere of politics. He argues that
although politicians set the tasks for administration,
there should be a politics-administration dichotomy.
Nonetheless, this idea is widely criticized since it fails
to take impact of numerous high-level civil servants
on policies into account (Heclo, 1987). Thence,
Taylor (1911) emphasised on the bound control of
work processes, prudent planning by managers and
domination. These concepts may not necessarily
imply exploitation of the workers. Thereupon, the
TPA model expanded in the industrialised world and
resulted in the relative breakthroughs of modern
economies (Pfiffner, 2004).
Peters (2001, pp. 3-12) summarises fundamentals of
TPA in the following major features: non-political
civil service, hierarchical form, unpermissive internal
regulations and rules, permanency and stability,
institutional services and internal and external
equality. This model led to the formation of
overloaded governments in practice, such as the
welfare state era of the 1950s to 1970s. These
governments were bound by abounding
responsibilities and demands, many of which they
were unable competently to meet (King, 1975). The
inadequacies of TPA gradually became apparent in
the 1970s and 1980s. Government involvement in
numerous activities as well as the restrictions’
principals of TPA for economic growth and freedom
caused following financial cuts by the governments
of the European countries and decline in Keynesian
economic thought. These reforms were not only
implemented in the UK, but also in traditionally large
systems such as Spain, Italy, Germany and Sweden.
Nevertheless, TPA indicates an almost undemocratic
system which lacks freedom of employees especially
in the areas such as innovation and limits choice of
citizens. In the propounded model, only key decision-
making centres are visible and citizens are considered
passive community of recipients and inactive voters.
There is also a contradiction between a massive
bureaucracy where there is a distinct elite acting
secretively and a democracy. Bureaucracies can
abrogate the power of both citizens and politicians
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emergencias 2014;2:226-231
and thus make political accountability problematic
(Skelcher, 2000; Hughes, 2003). Noticeably, from a
Fatalist perspective, controllability of human
interaction is not as accessible as what advocates of
TPA point out. Also, egalitarians criticise this model
as it centralises power in the hands of high-ranking
policy makers whereas individualists oppose TPA
since they claim that this model imposes external
interference upon individual's own interests
(Dunleavy & Hood, 1994). Also, a strict separation
between politicians and administrators or between
policy and administration may not be logical in the
real world. For instance, the 1980s reform
movements in the United States were not able to
separate these two parts (Hughes, 2003, pp. 32-35).
Moreover, the TPA model suffers from inadequacy of
political control. Given that the decisions are
arbitrarily, there can be a technical inefficiency
within this model as well. However, the model of
one-best-way thinking can be problematic in its
nature. Also, in TPA, public services are delivered
with more deficiency and delay than the market-
based systems because of the presence of red tape
and rigid conformity of bureaucrats to the formal
rules. Also, the bureaucracy provides public goods
and delivers services as the direct provider whilst the
government can engage in providing services
indirectly through subsidies, regulation and contracts.
Public in New Public Management
Inflexible bureaucratic model of administration
became discredited both theoretically and practically
in the 1970s and 1980s. Accordingly,
Implementation of public management reform
programmes changed the relationship between
government and citizens. There have been two major
claims to reject TPA. Firstly, the bureaucracy of the
old model restricts the freedom of the individuals and
secondly, TPA’s notion of power should be replaced
with choice (Hughes, 2003). In other words, instead
of forcing people to perform their affairs through the
bureaucracy, people can do them in a market-based
system with freedom and right of choice which
should be replaced with being the “serfdom” of
government (Hayek, 1944; Friedman & Friedman,
1980). However, as Dunleavy (1991) believes, the
notion of “choice” in NPM has been introduced
furtively and left under-specified.
NPM includes efforts to decelerate or reverse
government growth in overt public expenditure and
employees, shift towards privatization and quasi-
privatization with emphasis on subsidiary companies
 Transition from Traditional Public Administration to Network Governance via New Public Management; with an Emphasis on the Role of Public
in service provision, the deployment of automation,
production and distribution of public services
(Dunleavy, 1985; Dunsire & Hood, 1989). The design
of NPM is built on alliance of new institutional
economics such as the public choice, transactions
cost and principal-agent theories, and successive
waves of business-type 'managerialism' in the public
sector. NPM focuses on hands-on management,
active, visible and discretionary control, explicit
standards and measurement of performance that
results in accountability and transparency. Within
NPM, there is also an emphasis on output control
rather than procedures, disaggregation of public
sectors’ unit, shift towards a greater competition,
private sectors’ patterns of management and
parsimony in resource use. Such principals are
considered doctrinal components of NPM (Hood,
1991). Additionally, contracting is the central idea to
NPM. The aim of contracting is to make the system
more efficient and responsive (Fortin & Hassel,
2000). The Gore report (1993) specifies the following
goals to change the American culture towards NPM
in the United States: cutting red tape or shift from
systems in which people are accountable for
following rules to systems, attention to customers,
empowering employees and hollowing out the
government. In general, NPM is based on the two
main ideas of private-sector management and the
separation of policy formulation and operations.
Privatization, contracting, partnerships,
decentralisation, customer orientation and
management by result and merit pay are best known
techniques which are rooted in philosophical roots of
pragmatism (Osborne, 2002).
Although many public sectors’ professionals consider
NPM a threat to their autonomy and authority, they
would not reject it. This is because of the public
claim that it improves the services to them. Thus,
they may accept to implement NPM and attempt to
find the ways to ameliorate its effects and escape
from the lack of independency. Public sector
professionals may use “reconfiguration” to retain
their control, “de-coupling‟ by downplaying NPM in
the real work and emphasising on its formal
requirements, as well as “colonisation‟ to claim their
professional rights. Managers in NPM might feel that
they are under “iron cage‟ of accountability and
audits (Dent et al., 2004, pp. 2-4). Regarding such
reforms, the notion of citizens turns to active
customers instead of passive recipients. However,
people are still considered recipients of services in
NPM (Skelcher, 2000). Nonetheless, as Carroll
(1995) states, this change provides customers with
insignificant responsibility to the community. Also,
the advocates of NPM attempt to employ the
techniques from business sectors, whereas NPM is
228
different as it is public. In addition, public
management has a political dimension which makes
it distinct from business models. To some extent, it
can be argued that people in NPM can exercise
power through the economic firms. Nevertheless,
they cannot involve the whole public including
people with different working areas and financial
capacities. Public are more alike consumers than
those who get involved in decision-making
processes.
Moreover, there can be a clash between democratic
values and business values. NPM contains the core
concepts of competition, value-for-money and
partnership. Since this model propagates business
values, it may weaken public interests and collective
decision- making. Also, NPM undermines policy
formulation since it emphasises policy enforcement
rather than public policy. Likewise, NPM fails to
establish a clear-cut relationship between citizens and
political representatives whilst it seems that in the
first model political executives are more accountable
to the public. Furthermore, in absence of a definite
concept of accountability, instead of being
accountable to public with the purpose of social
values, public governance will be increasingly
accountable for maximising profits, accelerating
economic growth and ascertaining cost-effectiveness.
Thus, the accountability for competition, profit
maximising and market-based system does not
necessarily result in accountability for equality,
representation, welfare, justice, and citizens’ rights.
Also, due to the redefinition of the concept of citizen
as clients or customers who receive public services,
NPM can reduce social rights. In other words, due to
the new definition of citizenship, public governance
may become only accountable for the customers who
pay whilst it may be indifferent towards low-income
citizens without appropriate financial capacity
(Pardeep & Vayunandan, 2010; Kaboolian, 1998).
Public in Network Governance
Interest in deploying “governance‟ is traced back to
the “corporate governance‟ movements which
emerged in the late 1980s as well as the “local
governance‟ reforms that expanded from the early
1980s. NG includes social inclusion, equality of
opportunities, democratic decision-making, citizen
and stakeholder engagement, fair and honest
treatment towards citizens, free and fair elections,
openness and responsiveness of government, and
accountability and transparency (Bovaird, 2005).
Governance implies a change in the concept of
government towards employment of new methods by
which the society is governed. Notably, global

changes, emergence of regional institutions, and
increase in transnational economic activities resulted
in first wave of network governance (Rhodes, 2012).
The core notion within the NG model is participation
of stakeholders who are independent in terms of
resources in governing. Functionally, NG is a shift
from whether the unicentric form of TPA or the
multicentric marked-based system of NPM towards a
system of pluricentric governance (Kersbergen &
Waarden, 2004). Hierarchical system and state rule
are two inseparable parts of TPA. NPM is based on
competition with market regulations. However, NG
involves interaction of a huge number of
interdependent actors in policy-making. Peters (1997,
p. 57) defines NG as a “system which provides
direction to society”. Indeed, NG evokes a world
where the state power is scattered among
functionally distinct networks including public,
private and voluntary (Rhodes, 2012). Whilst power
is centralised in hierarchies, it is decentralised in
networks. Also, power is determined by position in
TPA whilst in NG, it is settled by interactions with
other network actors (Freeman, 1979; Wachhaus,
2012). In NG, public can effectively affect policy-
making through NGOs and networks in the civil
society.
Moreover, network participation is neither driven by
stand-alone strategies nor is inherently competitive
(Wachhaus, 2012). This model provides actors with
involvement in the political process more effectively
than the TPA and NPM. Networks as informal
institutions help overcoming the problems of
collective action. Thus, they can result in
effectiveness of public policy (Kees & Waarden,
2004; Hardiman, 2006). Likewise, public
participation in NG can break traditional iron triangle
of administrators, organised interest groups, and
legislative staff (Bogason & Musso, 2006).
Customers in NG are also co-producers who engage
in a number of activities and have responsibilities for
their demands. This approach can lead to decrease in
government’s tasks. Notably, co-production may not
be only a division of service delivery, but also a part
of public service planning (Bovaird, 2007).
Although the legal and administrative framework of
NG seems to provide safeguards for acceptable
citizen participation, the practice of democracy in
reality might be different from the proposed basic
standards of this model (Mathur & Skelcher, 2007, p.
229). Additionally, in NG, the problem of democratic
legitimation may arise. Given that some organisations
are more vocal than the others, a number of them
may not be given a voice and the stronger is more
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emergencias 2014;2:226-231
being paid attention than the weaker (Hardiman,
2006; Holliday, 2000). Also, high levels of
transparency or the information disclosure may cause
the same issue as privilege of certain vocal citizen
participants rather than responding to the public
interest (Baxandall & Magnuson, 2008).
Moreover, since NG involves low degree of
supervision by politicians due to its design, it
develops new spaces for democratic activity through
which the public and other stakeholders can shape
decision-making processes and affect implementation
of policies (Mathur & Skelcher, 2007). It can also
result in collaborative policy-making. However,
stakeholder engagement in governance can be very
costly and sometimes, may also cause substantial
delay in decision-making and implementation (Leat
et al., 2002). Likewise, there is a possibility that NG
causes fragmentation of accountability. This issue
“may allow stakeholders to exercise power without
appropriate checks and balances” (Bovaird, 2005, p.
70). Given than the most appropriate protective tool
for democratic accountability is political leadership,
accountability may “disappear in the interstices of
the webs of institutions that make up governance”
(Rhodes, 2000, p. 77). To Stoker (2006), the latter
problem of NG evokes a world where no one is in
charge. Furthermore, NG runs the risk of deformed
management when there is just all talk and no
action. However, management cannot be entirely
democratised in its nature (Stoker, 2006, p. 56).
Also, networks bring policy-making to the street
level. Thus, there is a danger of manipulation of the
public by interest groups and political insiders
(Bogason & Musso, 2006). In the real world, there
are numbers of examples which require technical
solutions, even small-scale issues such as the location
of a road. However, people who are involved in
decision-making may not accept a technical solution.
Therefore, imposing the solution would often be
undemocratic (Hughes, 2003).
Conclusion
In the past decades, there has been a shift from
hierarchy towards governance via market. Rapidly
changing in forms of governments brings risk, thus a
logical suggestion would be that the governments
should move towards collaborative policy-making
slowly in order to decrease the possible jeopardies.
Also, in developing countries where the hierarchical
bureaucracies are not replaced, it may be difficult to
meet preconditions of implementation of NPM or NG
(Batley & Larbi, 2004). Nonetheless, there are always
a number of potentials for tensions between
 Transition from Traditional Public Administration to Network Governance via New Public Management; with an Emphasis on the Role of Public
representatives of the older models whether
traditional representative government or
managerialism and those involved in NG (Bogason &
Musso, 2006, p. 16).
Regarding the proposed models, it seems that NPM
is not able to replace some qualities of TPA such as
predictability, stability and due process with its
elements (Batley & Larbi, 2004). Moreover, although
understanding the techniques of private sector can
help public sector mechanism, the concept of
citizenship can get diluted in NPM. Whilst NPM is
co-existence of citizens, businesses and government,
it may have negative effects on well-being of the
citizens especially with low-income. Whilst there are
still several advantages within the introduced models
of NPM and TPA, they are not able to efficiently deal
with the complexity associated with population
mobility, cultural diversity, and rapid technological
change (Bogason & Musso, 2006). Given that solving
the most contemporary urban issues requires a high
level of flexibility, experimentation, and collective
intelligence, it may not be competently realised
within government hierarchies or market-based
systems. On the other hand, governance networks
are able to deal with the current and upcoming issues
easier since they are innovative, self-organised and
integrated across subdivisions of society (Hughes,
2003).
Public in TPA are passive recipients of the services
and inactive voters when there is a representative
democracy. Due to the presence of business firms
and decentralised power in NPM, people are more
active in decision-making and providing services.
However, they are less accountable to the system
compared to TPA. NG has the potential bring about a
system where people are involved in policy-making
depending on its implementation and assimilation. To
sum up, NG is not only a way to solve the existing
problems in the other forms, but it also establishes
new networks amongst the players and increases
their knowledge of each other’s needs, the
capabilities and problems in the society (Innes &
Booher, 2003). Also, the interpretation of NG can be
also important in practice; NG can be governance in
the shadow of government or governance without
government which both will have different effects
and results from the intentioned primary standards.
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Corresponding Author: Nader Ganji
ISSN: 1137-6821
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