A third paradigm claim in public administration: New public governance theory and practices

Two major paradigms dominated the two hundred years of the modern public administration. The first of these, "Classical Public Administration (CPA)", ruled until the last quarter of the 20th century with its hierarchical and bureaucratic assumptions. In case the second paradigm is "New Public Management (NPM)", which emphasizes the private sector and market-based reforms. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, it was understood that the NPM was not sufficient in dealing with value-centered conflicts, responding to the changing needs and expectations of the society, and maximizing the public interest. In other words, an approach beyond the second paradigm was needed to overcome the complex and wicked problems of the new century. In this context, "New Public Governance (NPG)" has emerged as a third paradigm claim, with emphasis on factors such as co-production, participation, pluralism, interdependence, collaboration, partnership, value-centeredness and mutual trust. In this study, it is aimed to examine the theoretical arguments and sample practices of the NPG and to compare the relationship between the reasons for their emergence and the findings of the practices. In this context, the main hypothesis is that the strengthening of the new paradigm claim depends on the development of the practical dimension in addition to the theoretical dimension. For this, it is necessary to focus on new wicked problems that reflect the complexity of the 21st century rather than the internal problems of organizations in academic researches related to the NPG practices. This hypothesis is measured by the systematic literature review method, based on the findings of the case studies that deal with different countries. In the first part of the study, which consists of three parts, the conceptual, historical and paradigmatic framework of the field of the public administration is presented in general. In the second part, there are theoretical information about the NPG and discussions about making a new paradigm claim. In case in the third part, expectations from the NPG practices and findings of case studies in different countries are discussed. In this framework, the NPG practices in twelve different countries selected from Anglo-Saxon, Nordic and Land European political culture (USA, England, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Spain) were investigated. As a result, although the third paradigm claim of the NPG is theoretically strong, it has been reached that it has not achieved the same level in terms of practice.