Public administration modernization: regularities of normative concept application

The object of this study is to assess administrative reforms and change from the point of view of theoretical administrative models of hierarchical (traditional) administration, New Public Management (NPM), and New Public Governance (NPG) in Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. Normative models offer a critique of legacy administrative practices; their wholesale implementation is seldom practical or successful. Reforms framed as “modernization” in these countries over the past three decades have generally followed the principles of NPM. Although policy arguments for introducing elements of NPG can be observed in the studied cases, the paper argues that NPG’s rhetorical attractiveness for resolving perceived shortcomings of other models lacks specific implementation mechanisms that would be viable within the existing institutional framework of the studied countries. Factors, such as the relatively small size of Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia, and obvious benefits of EU integration, appear to have moderated reforms to a point that core institutional features have become stable, and are also similar among the three countries: the dominance of hierarchical administrative model with rigid separation of powers structure and strong courts that can adjudicate administrative decisions, with numerous NPM inspired “modernization” measures, including the introduction of various interactive public services. The paper’s findings support the idea that Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia are administrative systems that have stable core governance institutions, and national public administrations modernize various aspects of their operation by introducing elements of NPM and NPG within the executive, but not reviewing the basic setup of these institutions. From this point of view, the findings are in line with the assumptions of the normative model of Neo-Weberian State (NWS)