Governance innovation as social imaginaries: challenges of post-NPM

Abstract

The effects of NPM have been criticized for decades and we are now seeing how alternative, post-NPM, governance innovations emerge. What joins these innovations is the critique against NPM and the ambition to provide new ways of governing public organizations. From a critical stance, we engage in a discussion of governance innovations from the perspective of social imaginaries and analyse post-NPM from dystopian and utopian viewpoints. We argue that the main legitimacy for post-NPM lies in it demonizing NPM, whereas a more fruitful way forward would entail incorporating elements of NPM to create a holistic governance model for the future.