Strategic political steering: exploring the qualitative change the role of ministers after NPM reforms.

This article explores strategic political steering after New Public Management reforms, focusing on the new role assigned to government ministers. The NPM model of strategic steering and the problems embedded in it are addressed. The primary empirical data concern the practices of strategic political steering in Finland. The Finnish experience is contrasted with existing evidence from the UK and Australia and from Nordic local politics. The empirical conclusion is that management reforms aiming at introducing the strategic role of politicians have not been a success. Theoretically, this is not a surprise as politics does not follow the logic of rational managerial models. Politicians are not eager to define goals and to set priorities, nor are they motivated to consider issues that are not realized in the immediate future. In addition, they tend to focus on specific issues and to intervene in details. Consequently, it may not be relevant to ask whether ministers are able to adopt the strategic role but to consider the possibility that they do not, and will not, have incentives to do so, making it quite frustrating to develop rational managerial models as tools for politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]