ABSTRACT
In the first section of this chapter I will propose an evaluation of the Western NPM by considering first its impact on the economy, as this is the main reason NPM proponents have put forward for explaining its superiority over the traditional Weberian–Keynesian public management. Moreover, NPM’s economic performance is well known and documented, and therefore it does not need to be developed in detail in this book. Nevertheless, our brief overview allows us to see right from the beginning that the economic performance has been achieved alongside some negative consequences on labour. Second, in a more detailed section I will evaluate the impact of NPM on society. This perspective is very important because, according to the NPM proponents, the economic performance will inevitably benefit everybody within the countries concerned. This constitutes for them the indisputable argument that explains its superiority over the traditional way of managing the public sector and its interface with the economy. This will be done, as already mentioned in Chapter 2, by taking into consideration the impact of NPM on employment, income distribution, poverty, crime and health. Some other indicators will also be given when necessary. Before we go any further, the reader should refer to the remarks at the end of Chapter 2 (pp. 55–63) regarding the difficulties in collecting and analysing these data as well as the analysis in Chapter 3 (pp. 87–90) of the technical difficulties that NPM must overcome.
