cts of PA. John Major also scrutinized public management policy and in the mid-1980s, public management became an important focus of policymaking in such countries as New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden. In the United States (US), the Clinton administration embraced the notion that public administration should become a policy focus. Barzelay pointed out that the term "New Public Management (NPM)" is used to express the emerging from these shifts of the cumulative flow of policy decisions from 1980 forward, which represents a substantial shift in the governance and management of the state sector (Barzelay, 2001, pp. 24 -- 25).
NPM, as defined by Barzelay (2001), suggests that the decisions through which the state sector is managed represent a defensible if imperfect response to policy problems: "the agenda-setting process, in particular, has been heavily influenced by electoral commitments to improve macroeconomic performance and to contain growth in the public sector" (p.
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