REFORMASI BIROKRASI: Membangun Semangat Baru Administrasi Publik

This paper explains the extent to which Indonesia have taken up new public management (NPM) reforms which begin by paradigm shift on Public Administrations. While Indonesia has taken up elements of the NPM agenda, It isn’t adopted anything remotely near the entire package. Moreover, plenty of reform initiatives are going on that are unrelated or even contrary to that agenda. New public management ideas are influential, but more so at the level of rhetoric than practice.  The paper goes on to examine the argument that the new public management is inappropriate to developing countries on account of problems such as corruption and low administrative capacity, including Indonsia. There are NPM success stories as well as failures in the developing world. The outcome of individual NPM initiatives depends on localised contingency factors rather than any general national characteristics. Reformers need to keep an open mind as to what may work and what may not, and to be guided by the needs of the situation