ABSTRACT
In a special edition of the journal Public Management Review published in 2001, the guest editors titled their editorial 'Towards a Post-New Public Management Agenda'. This special edition addressed, specifically, governance reform in developing countries. Many authors give their definition of what new public management (NPM) entails. In making sense of NPM as an ideology, issues of tradition, discourse, and rhetoric are of interest. Ideology is not seen purely in terms of a political ideology. This chapter examines NPM from three different perspectives: NPM as ideology, NPM as design and implementation, NPM as an academic research. More than one scholar has referred to NPM in religious terms, suggesting that faith plays a role in the adoption of NPM. As Gray and Jenkins put it, 'Faith is not too strong a word to describe public management and its growth. Many of its advocates are clearly true believers in the power and the sanctity of markets'.
