Arvydas,

I suggest you read the article (attached) by Patrick Dunleavy, Helen Margetts, Simon Bastow and Jane Tinkler  which gives a brilliant eyeopener to some of the questions you have raised.

Dear Arvydas Guogis,   

Yes – there are empirically-based studies that outline tools – this one looks at Swedish transport infrastructure policy:

Fredrika Wiesel and Sven Modell (2014) From New Public Management to New Public Governance? Hybridization and Implications for Public Sector Consumerism, Financial Accountability & Management, 30(2), 175-205.

The following looks at tackling unemployment:

Colin Lindsay, Stephen P. Osborne and Sue Bond (2014) The ‘new Public Governance’ and Employability Services In An Era Of Crisis: Challenges For Third Sector Organizations In Scotland, Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 1, pp. 192–207.

And this one - China’s current administrative reforms:

Runya XU, Qigui SUN, Wei SI (2015) The Third Wave of Public Administration: The New Public Governance, Canadian Social Science, Vol. 11, No. 7, 11-21

DOI: 10.3968/7354

Hope these helpful

Kind regards,

Paul Chaney

I would also like to suggest that you look into the terminology of meta-governance,

Eva Sorensen, Jakob Torfing, Peter Triantafillou. Louise Meuleman, are prominnent scholars,

I have a phd/book out on the topic, my case study does however reveal huge problems with implemenation via the tools offered by meta-governance: it is here on reserach gate and is called The governmentality of meta-governance!

Indeed, but the fact of the matter is lateral (NPM) can neither be practised nor can it survive in the absence of former, rather NPM relies heavily on NPG, while as NPG has its own legs to stand on. 

Dear Arvydas,

the concept of governance has been criticized heavily for its fuziness and for its being used substantially different ways (as a practical, normative, melioristic, etc. concept) and amidst diverging discussions in fields such as economics and foreign policy, among others. But I think it is a matter of analytical distinction; i.e., one can easily distinguish different usages. Mark Bevir has suggested a useful distiction of governance as theory, practice and dilema (Bevir, Mark, 2011: Governance as Theory, Practice, and Dilemma. In: Bevir, Mark (Hrsg.): The SAGE Handbook of Governance. Los Angeles, 1-16).

The literature in German language is in my view more related to the analytical categories necessary to understand implementation processes, see for instance:

• Benz, Arthur, (Ed.) (2004): Governance – Regieren in komplexen Regelsystemen. Eine Einführung, Wiesbaden.
• Benz, Arthur u.a.(= Benz, Arthur, Lütz, Susanne ; Schimank, Uwe; Simonis, Georg), (Hrsg.) (2007)  Handbuch Governance. Theoretische Grundlagen und Empirische Anwendungsfelder. Wiesbaden.

Hope this helps

best regards

Marcelo

Dear Arvydas

As you know, I'm a practitioner and have extensive experience of NPM and the reforms it has precipitated in UK institutions.  There is a slight danger that the thinking may lag behind the practice in the current climate, and matters are moving faster than ever before in our public institutions.  Christopher Pollitt, Dunleavy's opponent, would argue that we are now witnessing the advance of classic NPM, with increases in outsourcing and the private sector now with a very significant role in delivering public services here.  I fear for the role of governance around such moves, more so than before, and my fears are not allayed by experience.  With another 40% of UK public services to be cut, I remain sceptical about the role of NPM and NPG in future as the delivery of services becomes more profit-driven and less about the service user.  You are absolutely right about the "fuzziness" of NPG and the implementation, in my experience, remains a problem of significant proportions as we hand more services to the private sector.  Governance does not necessarily reside with responsibility at present.

As above, there is a valid question about how you connect governance conceptually to implementation. One way that has been done in the literature is to position public value (Moore, 1995) as the strategic management theory best aligned to new public governance.  (See Stoker, 2006, Public Value Management: A New Narrative for Networked Governance?) FYI this alignment does not, nor does it claim to offer, a complete 'implementation' of NPG.

You may also find the following book provides a useful overview of service provision (as one form of implementation in the NPM environment): Alford, J and O'Flynn, J, 2012, Rethinking Public Service Delivery: Managing With External Providers, Palgrave Macmillan

The most useful overall research approach to governance, (call it a tool if you like),  would be on the ground institutional research (governmental and nongovernmental) carried out through local (in country)  well educated academics and others.  International donors, etc. could support this, but should not be exclusively "studying" institutions in other countries. 

In researching my latest book, I listened to over 100 carefully-chosen people in 3 countries who knew much more than I did about their own countries. Many of them had already done research and were based at universities. For my purposes, these were democratization NGO activists.   Other governance (or development) topics might require other groups. 

www.importingdemocracy.org

I think a large part of the problem with evaluating NPG or NPM is the absence of an adequate, multi-disciplinary and historical theoretical framework and associated empirical methodology. At present we  have academics and policy makers from different fields and divergent interests examining issues in a fragmented manner.

Bevir's work on governance makes an effort to give an overarching view of the field of governance which is great. But, it remains too abstract as there is again an absence of a 'point of view' from which  purchase can be gained in order to make the notion of governance one which can be fruitfully employed to investigate concrete problems.

The problem of evaluation here could be tackled at two levels: looking at the politics/political economy of NPM and NPG and/or looking at their epistemology. ie. using two foundational disciplines to provide deeper-level explanation and understanding.

 I try to do the former in: > W Gill-Mclure (2014) 'The politics of managerial reform in UK local government: a study of control, conflict and resistance 1880s to present', Labor History 55 (3), 365-388. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2014.913417

and the former  in a paper examining paradigm shifts in science - in particular in industrial relations:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2014.913417

Dear all,

Thank You everybody for valuable insights and pointed references. I shall try to use them also for my teaching and writing.