rtments, and agencies that the entire set of tasks associated with governance takes place.
PA as described by John Chandler is a set of practices and activities that define what government "does" and "how it does it" (pp. 4 -5). From the broad development of national budgets to the allocations of financial resources at the level of towns and villages or even precincts, PA encompasses economic decision-making and programming as well as other areas of activity.
PA, therefore, is both a field of study and a set of integrated activities that represent "government at work." Policymaking, program and service delivery are included under the umbrella of PA in most countries. For much of the twentieth century, policy debates about administration and management in government occurred within a narrow set of parameters in the developed democracies (Barzelay, 2001, p. 1). As Barzelay put it: "Public management was generally regarded as a process through which policies were formulated, resources allocated, and programs implemented rather than as a policy issue in its own right" (2001, p. 1).
This was as true in the case of Japan as it was in other established constitutional democracies in the post-war years (Barzelay, 2001, p. 2). The purpose of this study is to consider how a shift in the nature of PA -- to be delineated briefly below and in greater depth in Chapter III of the study -- has been observed in Japan as an example of the ways in which the so-called "New Public Management (NPM)" has taken hold in shaping governmental reform.
The traditional approach to PA changed, beginning in the 1970s, as a consequence of economic stagflation and decreased public support for bureaucracy itself (Barzelay, 2001, p. 2). In Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher made the culture, size, cost, and operation of the British civil service a policy issue and drove through changes in public management policies that impacted upon almost all aspe...