From Public Administration to Governance: science or ideology

Governments have been launching major public sector reforms. Traditional \npublic services are under pressure to transform and seem to be evolving \n– but into what? In the 1970s one could generally talk of public administration. \nIn the 1980s came the new move to the New Public Management (NPM), \nand some to Public Administration and Management. Recently some authors \nhave argued that there is a further shift from the NPM to governance. Although \npublic sector reforms are influenced by global precedents, local dynamics necessitates \nspecific responses from politicians, academics and public officials. This \nmuch is so in South Africa where evidence shows that theory played a secondary \nrole in the praxis of public administration. Instead, that praxis is dictated by political \nagendas and what is taught at traditional universities and the universities of \ntechnologies are uncritically supportive of these agendas. The aim of this article \nis to provide a content analysis of the ongoing shift from the concept of public \nadministration to governance by looking at the theories and approaches that have \ndominated the public administration arena from the traditional administration \napproach to the current governance approach. The article also seeks to investigate \nthe reasons for this shift.