ABSTRACT
In many developing countries, although the governing institutions and processes functioned largely as the instruments of postcolonial states in the past, at least officially they played certain roles in enhancing socioeconomic progress, realizing people’s needs, and increasing public participation through various means. However, these trends have changed over recent decades dominated by the emergence of anti-state or anti-bureaucratic ethos and the rise of businesslike reforms based on neoliberal principles (including privatization and deregulation, neo-managerial agencies, and performance standards). These pro-market reforms are usually presented as new public management (NPM), and have recently given rise to revisionist governance models like shared governance, new public service, good governance, and so on. While these NPM-style reforms have been pursued in the name of greater efficiency and effectiveness, its politico-economic implications have often been anti-democratic for many developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This chapter aims to explore such adverse consequences of adopting NPM in terms of dilemmas between its promise of efficient and effective governance and its actual anti-democratic outcomes, such as the weakening of public interest and participation and the diminishing of people’s access and entitlement.
