The new public management in the Moroccan administration: true or false institutional change

Abstract

The role of institutions for good performance has been the subject of several works which have shown the direct relationship between good institutions and economic growth. It is with this in mind that New Public Management has developed over the past decades as the new managerial trend in public affairs. This new management, inspired by the management of private organizations, calls for making performance the basis of public management. All over the world and particularly in developing countries, especially Morocco, adherence to the principles and practices of this new management has become a source of legitimacy for public organizations.

The objective of the reforms inspired by this new management, from their first generations, is to produce a change in public organizations: a change in structures, organizational processes, behaviors, responsibilities and cultures and in the delivery of services.

The question that arises then and after several years of experimentation and testing is whether this new management has produced a change in Moroccan public organizations.

To answer this question, we conducted a survey of the administrations that participated in the foreshadowing waves of the new organic finance law under the 2015 finance law (whose are experimenting with several principles and tools of the new public management centered on results and performance), as well as with the support, control and audit entities of these administrations.

The analysis of the data from this survey has confirmed to us that the adoption of reforms, even if they have performed well elsewhere, is not enough on its own to produce change in public administration.

JEL Classification : H83, O43, D23.

Paper type : Empirical research.