Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

282 Public Management and Administration
What we have seen over the course of the twentieth century is a contest
between bureaucracy and markets within the field of public administration. At
certain points in time, one is dominant, at other times, the other. Since the early
1980s markets have dominated in the intellectual sense in the same way that
bureaucracy did in the 1950s and 1960s. One could go further and say that in
reality markets and bureaucracy actually need each other to survive. Markets
can never totally replace bureaucracy as, indeed, as a corollary, it was impossible
for bureaucracy to replace markets in such countries as East Germany
before 1989. But what the public management movement has shown is that
many of the functions of the early traditional bureaucracy can be, and now
often are, performed by markets. And in an environment where bureaucracy as
an organizing principle is in a weak position, market solutions will be tried. Of
course not all will succeed, but that is not the point. Governments will try solutions
from the public management toolbox and if they do not work they will
look to the same source for something else to try. It is this above all else which
exemplifies the paradigm shift this book is about.