The Impact of New Public Management Reforms on Regional Planning

In this paper I discuss the research question what kind of impact the New Public Reform wave has on regional planning. In the regional planning and development work, we often talk about a shift in regional policy-making and planning characterised by a new process of governing. Regional governance has been added to the regional government structure, but the governance structure seems to live in the shadow of the government structure, and the regional planning and development agencies as part of the governance structure are rather weak political institutions. In this paper I analyse their weak power position by using the term network organisation where different actors from public, private and voluntary sectors participate. Further, I examine to what extent the New Public Management reforms in Norway have given the public sector the characteristics of a self occupied and closed machine bureaucracy, and I discuss to what extent these reforms can explain the weakness of the governance structure in regional development.