The Need of a XXI Century Governance Paradigm for Public Administration: The Specific Case of Portugal

Abstract

In recent decades, New Public Management became the hegemonic doctrine andpublic administration reforms strongly incorporated its ideals and premises. Currently,in the context of the global crisis, arises the question if this public administrationparadigm is the one that better fits the governance challenges of the newcentury. Taking this context in mind, this paper looks at how the Portuguese managerialreform takes into consideration the new governance paradigm and analyses thepossibility of combining the managerial reforms approach and the new governanceparadigm. We conclude that it is possible to successfully make this combination.However, taking into consideration the specific context that characterises ourcitizenship, more developments have to be done in order to improve citizens’behaviours regarding active citizenship.