Unit 8
Paradigms of Governance: Policy-making and Administrative Governance from the Administrative Welfare State to the Neo-liberal State

Unit 8 presents another opportunity to explore current trends in policy-making and administrative governance. To ensure that the character of these trends is fully appreciated, the commentary and the assigned reading focus on contrasting the current neo-liberal paradigm of governance with the postwar governing paradigm of the administrative welfare state. This approach is meant to provide a more theoretically sophisticated and historically grounded appreciation of the character of public administration in the twenty-first century. While some of the analysis, and many of the specific facts in this unit will be new, the basic issues raised should be familiar from earlier units and their assigned readings.

A short book has been selected to serve as the Unit 8 assigned reading. This is somewhat more demanding than the reading assignments of earlier units. But, because this unit completes our exploration of the central issues related to public policy and administrative governance, it is useful to tackle a significant reading that manages to bring together a number of important themes while also looking beyond public administration to a broad set of recent changes in ideology, theory, and governance.

Learning Objectives

When you have completed Unit 8, you should be able to achieve the following learning objectives:

  1. Describe what is meant by the notion “paradigm of governance” and contrast the three governing paradigms that have had periods of hegemony over the course of Canadian history
  2. Discuss the character of the administrative culture and state form associated with the postwar welfare state
  3. Outline the core features of neo-liberal governance and explain the place of the NPM in this paradigm of governance
  4. Comment in some detail on the recent transition from an administrative welfare state form to a neo-liberal state form
  5. Provide an analysis and normative evaluation of the NPM