Background
As it is used here, the “New Public Management" refers to a cluster of ideas and practices (including reinvention and neomanagerialism) that seek, at their core. to use private-sector and business approaches in the public sector. While there have long been calls to “run government like a business," the contemporary version of this debate in this country was sparked in the 1990s by President Clinton’s and Vice President Gore’s initiative to “make government work better and cost less.” Modeled after concepts and ideas promoted in Osborne and Gaebler’s 1992 book Reinventing Government (as Well as managerialist efforts in a variety of other countries, especially Great Britain and New Zealand), the Clinton administration championed a variety of reforms and projects under the mantle of the National Performance Review. In part, what has distinguished these reforms and similar efforts at the state and local level, from older versions of the run-government like-a-business movement is that they involve more than just using the techniques of business. Rather, the New Public Management has become a normative model, one signaling a profound shift in how we think about the role of public administrators. the nature of the profession. and how and Why we do what we do.