Caught in an Evaluatory Trap : The Dilemma of Public Services Under New Public Financial Management

This paper presents a challenge to public sector managers, policy makers and interested academics. In drawing off the findings of previous international comparative studies of New Public Financial Management (NPFM) reforms, it concludes that public services and their providers are caught in an 'evaluatory trap'.The continual promotion of NPFM reforms, despite evident, repeated failure to meet specified achievements, is held to be generating a destructive cycle of ever-decreasing public services at ever-increasing costs per service unit. With the legitimacy of public services increasingly resting on the need to be seen as efficient and effective and definitions of the latter frequently demanding adoption of the latest set of NPFM reforms, the future for public services is not attractive