First, the basic content of the new public management
Different from the traditional administrative management theory based on Wilson and Goodnow's dichotomy of politics and administration and Weber's bureaucracy theory, the new public management thought is based on modern economics and the management theories and methods of private enterprises. It does not emphasize the use of centralization, supervision and strengthening the responsibility system to improve administrative performance, but advocates the use of enterprise management methods in government management to improve management efficiency and the introduction of competition mechanism in public management to improve service quality and quality. Strictly speaking, the new public management has not yet formed a single theory, but only a theoretical trend of thought, so we call it "thought" instead of "theory" here. According to the western administrative scholars P. Greer, D. Osborne and T. Guble, the new public management mainly has the following ideas:
1). The management function of the government should be steering rather than rowing. Different from the traditional public administration where the government only collects taxes and provides services, the new public administration advocates that the government only formulates policies but does not implement them, that is, the government should separate management from specific operations, and the government only plays the role of steering rather than rowing. The advantage of this is that it can reduce the size of the government, reduce expenses and improve efficiency. "The person at the helm should see the whole picture of all problems and possibilities and balance the competitive demand for resources. The rower concentrates on a task and does it well. Guiding organizations need to find the best way to achieve their goals. Paddle organizations tend to maintain their way of doing things at all costs. " [1](P 12) Therefore, an effective government is not a "pragmatic" government or an "executive" government, but a government that can "govern" and is good at implementing "governance".
2) Government services should be customer-oriented or market-oriented. Based on the theory of public choice, the new public management holds that the government should be customer-oriented or market-oriented, thus changing the relationship between the government and society under the traditional public management mode and repositioning the government function and its relationship with society. The new public management believes that the social responsibility of the government is to provide services to customers according to their needs. "The market exists not only in the private sector, but also in the public sector. When the market appears in the public sector, we usually call it system, such as education system, vocational training system, mental health system and so on. But they are all markets, just like the financial system, banks and health care systems. If we apply the market-oriented concept to our public system, we can make great achievements. " [1](P288) Therefore, in the management of the new public, the government is no longer a closed bureaucracy above the society, but a responsible "entrepreneur", and citizens are its "customers" or "clients". "Entrepreneur" has its special meaning in the management thought of the new company: either a person who can do business or an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs transfer economic resources from places with low productivity and output to higher places, and enterprises use new forms to create maximum productivity and efficiency. Therefore, the entrepreneurial government should be a government that can provide high service efficiency. In order to achieve this goal, government services should be oriented to customer demand or market. Only a customer-driven government can provide diversified social needs and promote the improvement of government service quality. Because this will further develop competition, not government managers choose service providers, but government managers let citizens choose service providers. Although enterprises aim at profit, the customer-driven mechanism makes enterprises constantly seek new ways to satisfy customers. On the contrary, the government serves citizens, but in most public organizations, even their customers or clients are not clear, and the service level is very poor. Therefore, a "customer-driven" mechanism that gives citizens more choices and gives them the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of government work will be a good mechanism to promote the government's improvement.
3). The government should widely adopt the way of authorization or decentralization for management. Government organization is a typical bureaucratic centralized structure, which divides government organizations into many levels. People have a sense of identity with their grass-roots organizations, and it is very difficult to communicate across organizational levels, which leads to the inability of government agencies to respond to new situations in time. Due to the development trend of information technology, the pressure to speed up decision-making has violently impacted the government's decision-making system.
Government organizations need to respond quickly to the changing society. Managers in commercial enterprises adopt the method of decentralization, and respond quickly by reducing levels, authorizing and delegating decision-making power, thus effectively solving problems. Therefore, the government should also quickly respond to external changes through authorization or decentralization. The government should delegate the power of social service and management to the basic units of society: communities, families, volunteer organizations, etc. Through participation or democracy, they can serve and manage themselves. Osborne and Guble said: "When families, residential areas, schools, voluntary organizations and enterprises are sound, the whole community will also develop healthily, and the most basic role of the government is to guide these social institutions and organizations to develop healthily. ..... those governments that concentrate on active guidance determine the future of their communities, states and countries. They make more decisions. They let more social and economic institutions take action. " [1] (p7 ~ 8) This is because a healthy and dynamic social basic unit constitutes a healthy and dynamic country. The new public management believes that compared with centralized institutions, authorized or decentralized institutions have many advantages: they are much more flexible than centralized institutions and can quickly respond to new situations and changes in customer needs; More efficient than centralized institutions; More innovative than centralized institutions; Can produce higher morale, stronger sense of responsibility, higher productivity and so on than centralized institutions. 4). The government should relax strict administrative regulations and implement clear performance target control. The new public administration opposes the traditional public administration to pay more attention to observing established laws and regulations rather than performance measurement and evaluation, and advocates relaxing strict administrative regulations and implementing strict performance target control, that is, determining the specific goals of organizations and individuals, and measuring and evaluating the completion according to performance targets. They believe that although any organization must have rules to operate, too rigid rules will be counterproductive. "We accept rules and red tape to prevent bad things from happening, but the same rules will also prevent good things from happening. They will slow down the government's work like snails It is impossible for them to respond to the rapidly changing environment. They make the waste of time and energy an inherent part of the organizational structure. " [1] (p 91) They believe that the entrepreneurial government is a government with a sense of mission. They define their basic mission, and then formulate the budget system and regulations for employees to realize their mission freely, so that employees can realize the mission of the organization in the most effective way they can find. Organizations with a sense of mission have more morale, flexibility, innovation and efficiency than organizations that follow the rules.
5). Civil servants don't have to remain neutral. There are obvious differences between new public administration and traditional public administration in the relationship between civil servants and government officials. Traditional public administration emphasizes the separation of politics and administration, and emphasizes that civil servants remain politically neutral, do not participate in partisan struggles, and must not influence decision-making with partisan prejudice. The new public management believes that the interaction between civil servants and government officials is inevitable in view of the strong political color of administration. So instead of avoiding it, it is better to face up to the existence of this relationship. Based on this point of view, the new public management advocates political appointment of some senior civil servants, so that they can participate in the policy-making process and bear corresponding responsibilities to maintain their political sensitivity. In the eyes of new managers, policy formulation and policy implementation should not be completely separated. Facing up to the political functions of administrative agencies and civil servants can not only enable civil servants to implement policies dutifully, but also enable them to design public policies with a proactive spirit, so that policies can play their social functions more effectively. This reflects the value orientation that new public managers attach importance to encouraging and encouraging citizens to participate.
6) It is no accident that the new public management thought appears in the west. First of all, since the 1970s, due to the oil crisis and the heavy burden of the welfare state, economic recession has generally occurred in western countries, and public finance has also experienced persistent deficits due to factors such as reduced income and excessive welfare expenditure, and governments all over the world are facing financial difficulties. Secondly, since the Second World War, due to the continuous expansion of government functions, the scale of the government is also gradually expanding. This makes western governments generally bloated and inefficient. Thirdly, due to the influence of the scientific and technological revolution, especially the information technology revolution, governments of various countries urgently need to establish a government management model suitable for their own economic and social development. These factors have led to internal changes in the management and organization of western governments. By implementing enterprise management, introducing customer-oriented competition mechanism and promoting privatization in government management, western countries have generally set off a wave of public administration reform, which indicates that western countries have generally entered the new public administration era.