ABSTRACT
Displacing traditional technocratic decision-making, and emulating corporate management, public administrators used cost-benefit assessments and financial criteria to improve efficiency under the banner of New Public Management (NPM). The challenge to NPM, New Public Service (NPS), was guided by a belief in democratic processes serving citizens in the public interest, valued people and expected accountability, and argued that democracy involved inclusion and a focus on the needs of the community. Since 2009, the state of Michigan has used various renditions of its financial emergency law to assume control of eight municipalities under fiscal distress. Emergency Managers (EMs) applied austerity measures to address financial rather than social problems facing these communities. These measures achieved two objectives: (1) they preserved the financial interests of lenders and bond holders, and (2) they imposed solutions that privatized public assets and then turned to the same financial instruments (in the form of unsustainable long-term debt) that created fiscal stress in the first instance. NPS tells us that it is not the role of government to facilitate the creation of a favorable environment for the private sector. In the end, most if not all EMs resolved each community’s financial problems undemocratically and without affecting significant structural changes.
