New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG) represent two distinct, yet sequentially evolving, paradigms in public administration, each offering a different approach to how public services should be delivered and managed. NPG emerged partly as a critique and evolution of NPM, highlighting its limitations.

New Public Management (NPM): NPM, prominent from the 1980s, advocated for applying private sector management techniques and market principles to the public sector. Its core aim was to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability by making public services more 'business-like.' Key features included:

• Managerialism: Emphasis on professional management, clear objectives, performance measurement, and output-based accountability.
• Marketization: Introduction of competition, contracting out, privatization, user charges, and quasi-markets to foster efficiency.
• Disaggregation: Breaking down large, monolithic bureaucracies into smaller, autonomous, and often competing units.
• Customer Focus: Treating citizens as 'customers' who consume public services.
• Efficiency and Economy: Primary drivers, often at the expense of other public values.
• Decentralization: Delegation of authority and responsibility to frontline managers.

NPM brought significant reforms, leading to greater efficiency in some areas, but it was criticized for fragmenting services, neglecting equity and democratic values, and creating a 'hollow state' where the government's capacity to govern was diminished.

New Public Governance (NPG): NPG, emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s, acknowledges the limitations of NPM and proposes a more holistic, collaborative, and network-centric approach. It moves beyond the state-market dichotomy, recognizing that public services are delivered through complex interactions among various actors. Key features, often in contrast to NPM, include:

• Focus on Networks and Partnerships: Unlike NPM's emphasis on market competition, NPG highlights the importance of collaboration, co-production, and multi-stakeholder engagement among state, non-state, private, and voluntary actors in delivering public value.
• Beyond Efficiency: While efficiency remains important, NPG prioritizes a broader range of public values, including legitimacy, trust, equity, democratic participation, social cohesion, and sustainability. It seeks to create 'public value' through collective action.
• Citizens as Co-producers/Partners: Rather than passive 'customers,' citizens are viewed as active participants, co-producers, and partners in governance and service delivery, contributing their knowledge and resources.
• Holistic View of Public Value: NPG emphasizes achieving public outcomes through integrated approaches, recognizing the interconnectedness of policy areas and actors, rather than fragmented, output-focused units.
• Multiple Forms of Accountability: Beyond hierarchical and market accountability, NPG incorporates network accountability, social accountability, and peer accountability, reflecting the distributed nature of governance.
• Role of the State as Facilitator: The state's role shifts from being a direct provider or market regulator to an enabler, facilitator, orchestrator, and steward of complex governance networks.

Comment: The contrast between NPM and NPG is profound. NPM sought to 'steer, not row' by introducing market logic and managerial tools, often leading to a focus on 'what works' in terms of efficiency. NPG, on the other hand, recognizes that many public problems are 'wicked problems' that cannot be solved by a single actor or through market mechanisms alone. It emphasizes 'who governs' and 'how they govern' through collaborative networks, aiming for legitimacy, trust, and broader public value. NPG represents a more nuanced and realistic understanding of modern governance, acknowledging the interconnectedness of actors and the need for collaborative solutions to complex societal challenges, moving beyond the often simplistic market-based solutions of NPM.