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The research group ‘Public Administration & Management’ conducts fundamental and applied research on the managerialist turn in public administration.
Rather than to engage in the dispute between ‘old’ public administration and ‘new’ public management, we want to develop a theoretical understanding of the tensions that NPM has provoked. In our view, three perspectives remain underexposed in managerialism as well as in its counter-arguments; the role of public law, the political nature of public administration, and the construction of performance. These are the foci of our research agenda.
1. Law and administration
Administrative law is the tailpiece of Weberian bureaucracies. The administrative law serves to regulate the delegation of authority to bureaus as well as the rights and duties of the citizen vis-à-vis government. NPM not only introduced more contractual relations in the public domain, it also shifted roles; citizens become clients and administrations become providers. We want to study whether and how public law incorporates these changes and whether and how a new equilibrium between public law and private law can be found.
2. Politics and administration
The separation of politics and administration can be seen as one of the proverbs of public administration. NPM has taken the separation of politics and administration to the extreme. Politics formulate policies that need to be executed by public managers without political interference. Contracts and performance indicators are devised to monitor and evaluate success. Empirical evidence does however not support a clear-cut separation. Politicians interfere in the machinery of government and bureaucracies assume considerable political roles. In order to better understand the impact of managerialism on public administration, we have to bring politics into the analysis.
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Performance and administration
Notwithstanding the performance rethoric in NPM, the movement has never substantially defined what ‘performance’ in the public sector means. Managerialist approaches define performance as the outputs and outcomes of government activity, but remain silent about the nature of those outputs and outcomes. Our agenda is to measure performance of public administration, and study the impact of managerial reforms on performance. In addition, NPM analysis tends to see performance as a hard fact and hereby it overlooks its inter-subjective character. The social mechanisms that construct performance remain uncovered. We also want to study the dynamics that determine performance in general and the use of performance information in particular.
Within the department the research group distinguishes itself by its explicitly multi- and interdisciplinary approach. The research group combines juridical, sociological, political and management points of view to study public administration. The research group co-operates within the University of Antwerp systematically with the faculties of Law and Applied Economical Sciences, and is as actively involved in the ‘AntwerpManagementSchool’ (AMS).
The research group ‘Public Administration & Management’ is connected with the international scientific networks European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG). In Flanders the research group co-operates on several research projects with the Public Management Institute (KU Leuven). Moreover, we participate in the Policy Research Centre – Governmental Organisation Flanders (2007-2011), a research consortium with, besides Antwerp, the universities of Leuven and Ghent.
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