PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND POLICY EVALUATION IN JAPANESE LOCAL GOVERNMENTS; INTRODUCTION AND EVOLUTION OF THEORY AND PRACTICE

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND POLICY EVALUATION IN JAPANESE LOCAL GOVERNMENTS; INTRODUCTION AND EVOLUTION OF THEORY AND PRACTICE OF NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

Hiroko Kudo, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Waseda University, Tokyo

Bldg.N.16, 1-6-1, Nishi-Waseda, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 102-0084, Japan

Tel: +81/3/52861580, Fax: +81/3/32341007

e-mail: hirokokd@mn.waseda.ac.jp

(member Aidea-Giovani Italy, former institution: University of Venice)

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Nineties, NPM has become popular among industrialized countries, especially in the context of Anglo-Saxon tradition, where there had already been long experience of public policy study and public management. Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the Great Britain are among the first countries to introduce NPM theory and applied the managerial methods according to their needs.

What is NPM (New Public Management) ? The term "reinventing government" came to represent an important concept of NPM, that of reforming the public administration with new managerial method. Although initially, stress had been given to; effectiveness, efficiency, priority, transparency, and accountability. Only recently, the concept of CS (customer satisfaction, or sometimes citizen satisfaction) and customer oriented public service enter into the public management practice.

Public management was used to accompanied by the classical dichotomy of "State and market (principle)", until the introduction of new partnership between public sector and private sector. Principal concepts and techniques of management strategy have changed. But is this all for "manage" or "govern" ? In fact, some of the strategies of NPM are; accounting management, performance measurement, policy evaluation, and also rather traditional reorganization and/or restructuring of public administration.

The Japanese experience of public administration reform began in the Sixties, when a big quantitative reform, that is a reduction of the number of civil servants and institutions, was implemented. In the Eighties, following the examples of Reaganomics in the United States of Reagan and Thacherism in the Great Britain of Thacher, the Japanese Government decided to reform public sector, starting with the privatization and restructuring of public companies. Reasons and procedures of the privatization in Japan were different from those of the Britain, in spite of the apparent similarity of the events.

The introduction of those techniques of public management to Japan at that period was a typical example of a global application of managerial methods. There were some local characteristics, but most of the instruments were introduced directly from the foreign experiences with certain modification. This paper analyzes first the privatization of three public companies in Japan in order to show both the foreign influence and the local application of public management methods.

In the Nineties, many local governments in Japan introduced the Performance Measurement to improve their administration. Most of them were rather copies of successful cases in the States, but some of them were innovative and original to themselves. Since three or four years, Performance Measurement has become a kind of fashion among local governments in Japan.

What is Performance Measurement ? International cases show for what

Performance Measurement serves and the importance of communication in its procedure. That is; it is important to empower the citizen involvement for "CS" of public service. The American cases show its importance, meanwhile the cases of Japanese local governments are interesting cases that show the modification and application of international experiences. The paper describes and then analyzes these cases of Performance Measurement in Japanese local governments, trying to show both the local characteristics and the global influences. The most important difference between the American Performance Measurement and that of Japan is the main actors and the procedure of application. The analysis of recent discussion on Performance Measurement in Japan shows also process of introduction and application of NPM in this sector.

With the decentralization policy, it has become more and more important to guarantee local justice, that is, as Jon Elster described, to realize and keep the harmony among distribution of goods, service, and burden. The introduction of NPM theory and Performance Measurement is a condition necessary for this and, in fact, the major changes occurred during this period. The paper also shows this procedure, which is unique to each local unit.

In conclusion. the paper tries to show the global influence of managerial theory and practice to Japanese public policy and public administration, comparing with cases of several different countries.