The Politics of New Public Governance

In recent decades, the general trend in the surge of new governance paradigms has been to redefine the role played by different actors in policymaking and policy implementation - and to invite still more actors into governance processes. While this was the exclusive domain of public authorities in the Old Public Management paradigm, New Public Management invited in a few more actors. The New Public Governance paradigm turns policymaking and policy implementation into multi-actor activities. There is considerable research attention on how multi-actor governance emerged and functions as a strategy for enhancing public governance effectiveness and quality. However, there is a tendency to overlook how NPG is both a product and way of doing politics, defined as contestations and struggles for influence on decisions that shape the authoritative allocation of value in society, which condition who gets what, when and how. To put it bluntly, the NPG research lens is more public administration than political science. This chapter analyses the politics of NPG in terms of the politics driving its emergence and its structuration of power relations and patterns of political contestation between those involved in governing society.