iBusiness, 2013, 5, 150-153 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ib.2013.53B032 Published Online September 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ib) New Public Management in Bangladesh: Policy and Reality Farhana Ferdousi * , Lisheng Qiu Department of Political Economics, School of Economics & Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China. Email: * dfferdousi@gmail.com Received July, 2013 ABSTRACT New Public Management (NPM) is a management philosophy used by the government since 1980s to modernize the public sectors. Many developed and developing nations are now experimenting about the applicability of NPM in their context. In Bangladesh, NPM reform ideas have also been recommended by international donor agencies as well as numerous reform committees but yet the country has hardly made any progress in establishing effective public management. This paper attempts to identify some administrative reforms in Bangladesh that have the spirit of NPM as well some peculiarities that threaten successful implementation of NPM in Bangladesh. It is argued that state incapacity, bureaucratic failure and donor-driven reform policies are responsible for the failure of implementation of NPM in Bangladesh. Therefore, to establish efficient public management or to follow NPM model, Bangladesh need to have solid institutional frameworks, sound rule of law, proper control structures, appropriate checks and balances, effective civil service system, appropriate accountability and transparency; and for these political leaders, bureaucrats and donor-agencies have to work in line. Keywords: New Public Management; Administrative Reforms 1. Introduction Since Bangladesh gained independence in 1971, reforming the administrative state, inherited from the colonial authorities, has become a major aspect of the country’s quest for development. Various governments, be they military or civilian, have made reforms a major priority on their developmental agendas and have, therefore, expended significant resources, both human and financial, in these efforts. The preoccupation with reform stems from the expectation of establishing an effective system of government and resolving the problems that had hindered its development as a province of Pakistan for twenty-four years. At the end of forty years of its independence, the country has hardly made any progress and still suffering for the absence of good governance, fragile economy, poor law and order situation, unstable political system, uncontrolled corruption, unreliable social services and inefficient bureaucracy etc. Interestingly, since independence the government constituted 17 reform Commissions or Committees with a view to reorganize/reform civil service and public sector. More than 20 reports on Public Administration Reform have been prepared by these Commissions and Committees and some of those reports were prepared at the initiative of some of the important development partners, particularly the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Asian Develop- ment Bank (ADB), the Department for International Development (DFID), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [1]. But the recent history of Public Administration Reforms has become nothing more than a sequence of reform studies and proposals, with little evidence of real change. The present study is an attempt to find out some problems regarding im- plementation of new public management, the current trend in the world to reform and manage the public sectors. 2. Concept of New Public Management and Administrative Reforms in Bangladesh In response to economic, institutional and ideological changes, as well as criticisms of inefficient and costly public sectors, public sector reform has become an international phenomenon [2,3]. As part of these reforms, a paradigm of public sector management known as new public management (NPM) has emerged in OECD (Organisa- tion for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries and elsewhere [3-5]. Therefore, the New Public Management (NPM) can be defined as a management philosophy used by governments since the 1980s to modernize the public sector. It is a broad and very complex term used to describe the wave of public sector * Corresponding author. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. IB