In advanced public administration scholarship itself then, particularly – but
not only – in Europe, advocates of NPM are now heavily on the defensive, if
NPM is proposed as a world view (i.e. an ideology), rather than as one of several
useful perspectives for public administration reform (i.e. part of the “tool
box”). What was an option fifteen years ago is simply not an option anymore
today. One could mark the following stages in public administration development: