The Globalization of Public Services Production: Can Government be 'Best in World'?

Abstract

New public management strategies (NPM) constitute a powerful model of how virtually all aspects of public services production can be brought to more closely approximate those in private industry. Although the full NPM agenda is only partially implemented in some countries, it has already had enormous impacts in creating a proto-market in the public services. This 'market' may remain a domain of diversified, small-scale, mainly single-country provider organizations. Or it may develop on more oligopolistic and trans-national lines as a new field of big corporate dominance. Private sector trends in the evolution of service industries, changing information technology, organizational patterns and commodification processes make the corporate option more likely. Inside government agencies bureau-shaping motivations sustain the NPM approach and create a strong disposition towards embracing radical outsourcing, and residualizing government's implementation roles, a direction reinforced by the marketization of public services. Transnational pressures on nation states to standardize policies will powerfully erode the existing single- country distinctiveness of public service markets, increasing the potential for dominance by large corporations. These developments are likely to erode the 'core competencies' of government, undermining the state's ability to act even as an 'intelligent consumer' in the face of increasing concentrations of expertise, investment and implementation with corporate actors.