Explaining reforms: post-New Public Management myths or political realities? Social housing delivery in England and France 1

Abstract

This article examines the assumption that recent reforms in social and public services can be understood as a transition from New Public Management to post-New Public Management. English and French social housing delivery are selected as two cases in which to test out this assumption, for ostensibly these delivery structures share significant cross-national, post-NPM similarities – a movement towards a more ‘enabling’ or steering role for central government, the creation of coordinating agencies, ‘decentralization’ initiatives, the extensive use of public–private arrangements to finance social housing and the involvement of a wide range of extra- and semi-governmental organizations. However, further investigation reveals that these reforms of delivery structures have not been predominantly driven by an unfolding post-NPM managerial or governance logic as the thesis assumes. Rather the reforms have been driven by the partisan electoral and ideological goals of central government policymakers within the context of institutional legacies and entrenched social values.

Points for practitioners

New Public Management and post-New Public Management have become the conventional wisdom on administrative reforms particularly in a comparative context. This article argues that these ideas reflect an impoverished understanding of public administration given that they assume that change occurs predominantly through the unfolding of managerial and/or governance logics. These logics exclude the critical role of the political parties and other socio-political factors, such as urban unrest, in driving change. This Anglo-French analysis of social housing delivery demonstrates the significance of these political factors in how policymakers define social problems, re-design and implement social housing service delivery systems.