From government to governance: The incorporation of managerial regulation at the ministry of education in Israel

Abstract

This study presents the complex process of transforming a bureaucratic public administration into a post-bureaucratic one through the incorporation of a mode of regulation anchored in New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG). Drawing on Actors-Network Theory (ANT), we followed the formation of the governance network first, at the Central Government and then, in the Ministry of Education in Israel by tracing the different human and non-human actors that participated in the formation of the managerial assemblage and the tri-sector cooperation assemblage. Important actors common to the two assemblages are represented by consulting firms chosen by tenders that instill the managerial culture and governance mode into the ministry and operate new non-hierarchical and dialogical techniques. Thus, the adoption of a managerial regulation in the Ministry of Education entails the consultization of the ministry responding to the NPM’s mandate to reduce the size of public administrations. In addition, the growing influence of NGOs resulting from the governmental encouragement of third sector participation according to NPG’s policies, engendered an idiosyncratic Israeli regulation mode - a post-bureaucratic NGO-ization regulation model - in which NGOs play an increasingly significant role in education provision but also in education policy making.