rally regarded as a process through which policies were formulated, resources allocated, and programs implemented rather than as a policy issue in its own right."
This was as true in the case of Japan as it was in other established constitutional democracies in the post-war years. The purpose of this study is not to specifically identify the role of PA qua PA in Japan or in any other country, but rather 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 in part, of economic stagflation and decreased public support for bureaucracy itself. Indeed, 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 aspects of PA. John Major continued to scrutinize public management policy and in the mid-1980s, public management became an important focus of policymaking in other countries, such as New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden. In the United States, the Clinton administration also 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 idea, emerging from these shifts, that the cumulative flow of policy decisions from 1980 forward represents a substantial shift in the governance and management of the state sector.
NPM, as defined by Barzelay, 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 ...