ABSTRACT
Most of the discussion of public administration for the past several decades has been focused on administrative reform and especially on the “New Public Management” (NPM) that has emphasized the importance of effective management in controlling public programs. The definitions of “effective management” in NPM have been derived largely from the private sector and have tended either to ignore the role of politics or to consider politics and politicians as barriers to making “government work better and cost less.” While those managerialist recommendations for reform have not been anti-democratic per se, they certainly have considered politics as at best a necessary evil and at worst a serious barrier to effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector.
