The New Public Service: Serving Rather Than Steering
Author(s)
Denhardt, Robert B.; Denhardt, Janet Vinzant
Abstract
The new public management encourages governments to be more efficient and responsive by employing market approaches to public service delivery. Recent critiques of the new public management challenge the notion that market based approaches are adequate to capture the full set of political considerations that are part of local government service delivery. A theoretical framework is needed which gets beyond the market versus government failure dichotomy and explores the full range of components in the public service delivery decision. Some scholars have used transaction cost approaches to compare the costs of direct public delivery with the contracting process. We present a broader framework that also includes attention to the uniqueness of citizen interaction and professional management in public service provision.
