Forgoing New Public Management and Adopting Post‐New Public Management Principles: The On‐Going Civil Service Reform in Israel

Abstract

Summary Since the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) and post‐NPM reforms have dominated attempts to improve public administration. The literature suggests several reasons for the latter approach. However, these explanations seem to be less relevant to the ongoing civil service reforms in Israel. The Israeli experience is an example where NPM reforms did not occur, but post‐NPM reforms were adopted enthusiastically decades later. Our findings demonstrate how under the structural conditions of both non‐governability and bureaucratic centralization, post‐NPM reforms may provide an attractive layering strategy, offering the option of changing certain features of the system without requiring a drastic, comprehensive overhaul of it. Once Israeli decision makers decided that there was a real public demand for reform, and long‐term learning and diffusion processes convinced them that change was needed, the characteristics of the post‐NPM approach made it much easier politically for them to adopt. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Adaptation of the Organizational Learning Culture (OLC) Dimension Methodology in the Israeli Local Authorities Context

“…Traditionally, this sector in Israel suffers from some main problems (Cohen, 2016): the excessive influence of the political echelon; labor unions became the key players in the political arena; no professional senior bureaucracy and low motivation of employees; employees are not trained and able to deal with the social-economic changes; has enjoyed high employment protection and premium pay; the system is very concentrated and is multi-procedures, especially notable concentration of the Ministry of Finance.…”

Setting Local Government Priorities in Healthcare Infrastructure Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process Approach: The Cases of Local Governments in West Java Province

“…Th e objects of the study are the representatives of six local governments -4 regencies and 2 municipalities -in West Java Province, Indonesia: Garut Regency, Tasikmalaya Regency, Ciamis Regency, Pangandaran Regency, Banjar Regency, and Tasikmalaya Municipality. Respondents are the chief administrators of local government, in particular, echelons of the planning agency, health agency, and public works agency, where the selection is through snowball sampling (Cohen, 2016). Judgement sampling, which is conducted by considering the respondent's understanding of the problems in public budgeting, especially for healthcare infrastructure, was used to select respondents in the study.…”

Lack of reform in Israeli local government and its impact on modern developments in public management

“…According to the theory of gradual institutional change (Mahoney and Thelen 2010), reforms in local authorities might be regarded as incremental changes (Gardner 2017). However, unlike recent developments typical of Western and democratic nations (e.g., Ebinger, Kuhlmann, and Bogumil 2019), and unlike reforms in other Israeli public areas (Cohen 2016), the Israeli central government has not adopted any substantial reform in local government and the management of local authorities (Beeri and Razin 2015;Ben-Bassat and Dahan 20092009;Ben-Elia 2007;Levi et al 2020;Matzkin and Sadinsky-Levy 2012;Razin 2004;Razin and Lindsey 2017). This policy of non-reform can be defined as a political situation in which there are no significant reform initiatives (Jeffery 2008;Rahat and Hazan 2011).…”