CONCLUSION:
TOWARDS
THE NEO-WEBERIAN STATE?
PERHAPS,
BUT CERTAINLY ADIEU, NPM!
Wolfgang Drechsler and Rainer Kattel
Are we, or
so the question had been at the outset of the first Trans-European Dialogue, on
the way towards the Neo-Weberian State (NWS)? The answer, not exactly
surprising for a high-level conference of scholars, experts and professionals,
was: It depends. It depends on the definition of the NWS, on the nature – is it
a model, a matrix, a research agenda? –, on the countries or regions in
question, on the normative vs. empirical aspects, and of course on the
individual conception and the extent to which New Public Management (NPM) fits
into one’s own research agenda.
The idea of
TED was, as the name says, to bring together people from ‘East’ and ‘West’ and
indeed, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, it was clear that a larger majority of
participants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were in favour of the NWS
than of those coming from the ‘Old West’. However, this difference seems to be
founded in the very concept of the NWS and its genesis. In order to sum up the
discussions at TED, we can draw three key conclusions:
First, the
NWS as an empirical concept has a distinctive background in Continental
European developments and incorporates in many ways the European answer to
economic globalization. Indeed, as Pollitt described the process how the
concept of NSW was born, when analyzing Continental reform efforts in the late
1990s and early 2000s, it become clear that these activities could not be
placed on a simple more NPM – less NPM scale. Instead, the Continental reforms,
while varying to a significant degree between countries, were based on three
fundamental premises according to Bouckaert:
1) to keep the state as the primary framework;
2) to use the law as the steering
instrument of the framework; and
3) to not experiment with state,
administration and other such important issues.
The Continental
states more or less accept a strong state and seek to modernize it, rather than
to minimize it (in contrast to the Anglo-American countries). Thus, looking at
the empirical aspects of the NWS concept, one can conclude with Pollitt that the
NWS is a political response to some of the forces of globalization that
attempts to preserve the European social model directly threatened by the
processes of globalization. The "neo” elements preserve the main part of the
traditional Weberian model and modernize it (which, again, can take various
context- and country-specific forms). The NWS does not say whether it works but
brings out the political mood and the incremental changes specific to the
context of Continental Europe. Thus, it would not be correct to call the NWS a
strategy (since the changes have been incremental) but a political orientation.
Empirically, the basis of the NWS remains the Weberian structure to which some
of the NPM elements have been added (rather than Weberian elements added to
NPM).
Second,
while the NWS has clear empirical origins, in recent years the concept has also
obtained a strong normative meaning for middle-income and less-developed
countries (e.g., CEE), where it serves as a critical reminder that before
public administration (PA) modernization (such as NPM reforms), one needs
Weberian PA that can be modernized, and that there is a clear linkage between
sustained economic growth and Weberian PA. Indeed, as numerous participants
argued during the discussions, there is a whole thread of recent publications
that point out that if NPM reforms were to work well at all, they would only do
so on a strong Weberian basis – an aspect that implies complementarities
between Weberian PA and NPM. Ironically, it appears that NPM cannot be
successful, if at all, without a traditional, solid, stable, neutral
bureaucracy. This, however, has huge connotations for CEE and also for many
Southern European countries where NPM-style reforms abound, yet solid Weberian
structures are hardly in place. As Ongaro, Spanou and others stressed in the
discussion, for such states, Weberian reforms are normatively desired, and this
makes the NWS a very attractive explicit reform strategy for these countries.
This is strongly corroborated by the empirical connection between
Weberianism and sustained economic growth. (See Evans and Rauch 1999)
Indeed,
the NWS seems to be the perfect match for an innovation-based society,
contrary to NPM. Innovation in the general interest, rather than that of an
individual entrepreneur, is a question of successful innovation policy, and who
should implement that if not the administration? L’innovation, une affaire
d’état, as Claude Rochet succinctly put it (2007). To put it simply,
innovation-based economy asks for, draws upon, and requires a highly competent,
long-term-oriented, dedicated and enabled civil service to implement it, not
without the societal actors either, but certainly not without public
administration. If we follow Carlota Perez’ great surges theory and her model
of Techno-Economic Paradigm Shifts (2002), we can also observe that, as we are
in the middle of the ICT paradigm and heading towards a new one in the
distance, at this moment, after the collapse and before heading towards
"synergy,” state and administration are expected to take up their great tasks
again and the anti-state climate of the earlier installation period of ICT is,
or should be, over. And whatever the new leading technology will be – nanotech,
biotech, convergence or something completely different –, its setup will
require a particularly capable state actor and a science and technology policy
implemented by a civil service that is denoted by long-term thinking, high
competence, and tolerance for mistakes – the opposite of NPM. (Drechsler 2008)
In other words, the period in history we are now entering, and this goes for
the next 20-30 years, is bound to be much more state-friendly than the 1990s,
and the NWS seems to be one of the most interesting theoretical and normative
answers to the question of how to govern or steer (as argued also by Peters in
the discussion) a complex innovation-based society. However, as Pollitt posed the question, is it
possible to establish Weberian PA after we have tried to create NPM in a place
where Weberian PA was missing at first? In sum, while the NWS might be
normatively desired in CEE countries and elsewhere, we have fairly little
theoretical and empirical knowledge how to actually go about and "produce” it.
Third, as
the NWS is a concept with both clear empirical and normative facets, it becomes
evident that the very concept of modernization or change in PA (and the NWS is
part of this process) needs serious theoretical development if we are to avoid
change for the sake of change as seems to have been the case with so many
NPM-inspired reforms. Indeed, the idea of modernization itself should be
clarified, what does ‘modern’ really mean? More often than not, PA reform
documents but also PA scholarship appear to rely on highly reductionist and
completely vague idea of modernization (e.g. better service provision). In any
meaningful sense in this context, ‘modern’ can not mean anything specific, but
‘in line with the times’, ‘in line with the current situation.’ ‘Modern’ in the
sense of ‘new’ is surely not only an ambiguous, but also a highly ambivalent
concept by now, after the experiences of the 20th century – would a
totalitarian shift away from democracy be better simply because of being the
new thing? What, if not ‘appropriate for the circumstances of the times’, could
‘modern’ mean except merely ‘fashionable’? What would be bad about an
appropriate, well-working, traditional solution? What is appropriate, however,
depends on the times and the situation, and the problem is that the vast
majority of claims in documents surrounding public administration use ‘modern’
to denote a concept that is exactly not in line with times and situation
at all. The most
powerful element of NPM, perhaps, was that it was "new”. It sounded hip and
cool and in administrative reforms, there is often an emphasis on fashion. However,
today this may very well be said about the NWS as well. As Pushkarev argued in
the debate, Russia
and other countries where democracy has a difficult stance would also applaud
the idea of a strong modernizing state or the NWS. That is, starting with the
idea of a strong state may be too one-sided for such a context; it may send a
wrong message about modernization, and this means that we need to include the
aspects of civic society and participation in the discussion. In that
sense, it could be
argued that the NWS presupposes a viable democracy next to the Weberian
bureaucracy.
In sum,
NPM, it turned out, did not really have any defenders left in Tallinn. And even those participants usually
grouped with NPM conceded that NPM is not based on current economics and
business administration but rather on simplified or outdated versions. (Hence,
a sizable criticism of NPM on the highest level comes precisely from those who
would like PA to learn from economics.) This is why respective economic and
especially management-theoretical insights could only establish themselves
after the end of the dominance of NPM, which as a genuine ideology was not open
even for arguments stemming from its own leading method. NPM reforms created,
for instance, quasi-markets within administrative organizations in order to
create market behaviour: yet, such behaviour can only develop in genuine and
not in quasi- (i.e. pseudo-) markets. (See König 2001: 6–7) Another example is
the problem of the concept of performance pay vis-à-vis the demands of
multitasking and motivation through identification with the organization
(Akerlof and Kranton 2003: esp. 9–11, 27–29). But as Lawrence Lynn, Jr., pointed
out during the discussion, if any concept in the social sciences is disproved,
it is that of performance pay – and yet, it is politically pushed and implemented.
So, the NWS
might not be the way of the future, at least not everywhere, in every form, and
in every respect, but NPM is certainly dead – not as dead as a door-nail,
perhaps, but among scholars not a viable option anymore. And this was long
before the events of the Fall of 2008 that really hit home to the public
discourse of even the most die-hard neo-liberal that to give up on the state
was premature, to say the least. Nothing has become clearer than the strong
time dimension of NPM. In that sense, the criticism towards the NWS that it is
too close to NPM (such as by Samier) is justified to the extent that it does co-opt
positive elements of NPM, but on a Weberian foundation, i.e. that both are
asymmetrically aufgehoben.
The NWS was
intended as an empirical-analytical, not as a normative model, and one of its
creators, Pollitt, is quite self-critical about several of its aspects, but it
stands so far as one explanatory model of what is going on in Europe, and it
does not throw good managerialist – and participatory – babies out with the NPM
bathwater. It does still form a research agenda, but in lieu of anything
better, it significantly helps our understanding of contemporary public
administration. And as regards the needed additional research – let’s get to
it!
References
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