As such, the New Public Management is clearly linked to the public choice perspective in public administration. In its simplest fonn, public choice views the government from the standpoint of markets and customers. Public choice not only affords an elegant and, to some, compel-ling model of government, it also serves as a kind of intellectual road map for practical efforts to reduce government and make it less costly. And it does so unabashedly.
John Kamensky, one of the architects of the National Performance Review, comments that the New Public Management is clearly related to the public choice movement, the central tenet of which is that “all human behavior is dominated by self-interest” (1996, 251).