Bibliometric Analysis of Academic Papers Citing Dunleavy et al.’s (2006) “New Public Management Is Dead—Long Live Digital-Era Governance”: Identifying Research Clusters and Future Research Agendas

• Published date: 01 May 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231157753
• Author: Beomgeun Cho
• Date: 01 May 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231157753

Administration & Society

2023, Vol. 55(5) 892 –920

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997231157753

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Article

Bibliometric Analysis

of Academic Papers

Citing Dunleavy etal.’s

(2006) “New Public

Management Is Dead—

Long Live Digital-Era

Governance”: Identifying

Research Clusters

and Future Research

Agendas

Beomgeun Cho1

Abstract

I trace the bibliometric evolution of “New Public Management Is Dead”

by Dunleavy et al. to investigate how the seminal paper influenced the

administrative reform debate. They suggested Digital-Era Governance as

the main post-NPM idea. My bibliometric analysis discovers public value,

administrative reform trajectories, and digital government as influential

themes. Unlike Dunleavy etal., the literature found the managerial reform

wave is not linear, reform ideas are supplementary, and NPM remains a

major toolkit. Future research should focus on reintegration and need-based

holism, linking digital government to administrative reform, and the negative

impact of digital government on democracy.

1University at Albany – SUNY, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Beomgeun Cho, University at Albany – SUNY, 135 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12222,

USA.

Email: bcho@albany.edu

1157753AAS0010.1177/00953997231157753Administration & SocietyCho

research-article2023

Cho 893

Keywords

digital government, new public management, administrative reform,

bibliometric analysis, network analysis

Introduction

Public administration scholarship has been long interested in what the prin-

ciples for establishing good governance ought to be. As such, the field of

public administration has several seminal papers that capture commonalities

in the administrative reform trends and academic discussions of various

countries and incorporate these discussions into broader frameworks (e.g.,

Dunleavy et al., 2006; Hood, 1991; Lynn, 2008; Osborne, 2006). These

papers have contributed to the field by providing a conceptual lens to grasp

the changing nature of public administration, diagnose current problems in

the public administration system, and guide the transformation of govern-

ment bureaucracy (Goldfinch & Wallis, 2010).

Despite the vast body of research on public sector reform and the widely

acknowledged importance of these papers, the question of “how a seminal

paper diffuses and influences a field of research using advanced bibliometric

analysis” has rarely been answered (Chandra & Walker, 2019, p. 3). The bib-

liometric method uses a quantitative analysis of bibliographic information to

investigate and evaluate previous studies (Chandra & Walker, 2019; Vogel,

2014). Although there has been a recent increase in the number of literature

reviews of the public administration field using bibliometric analysis (Chandra

& Walker, 2019; Hu et al., 2016; Ni et al., 2017; Vogel, 2014; Vogel & Masal,

2015), such reviews of seminal papers on administrative reforms are scant. To

the best of the author’s knowledge, Chandra and Walker (2019) seem to be the

only case. They make a rare contribution by investigating papers citing Hood’s

(1991) “A Public Management For All Seasons?” According to their co-cita-

tion analysis, Hood (1991) led to the emergence of three groups of research:

the implementation of New Public Management (NPM) doctrines, innovation

and leadership, and the limits and paradoxes of NPM.

Influential papers capturing the changing nature of public administration

have developed new languages and lines of arguments for improving the

quality of public institutions and provoked novel controversies in the field.

As such, picturing a map of what local research clusters have created in the

wake of these articles and how they have reacted to the novel arguments

helps us understand intellectual development (Chandra & Walker, 2019). To

overcome this limitation, this study focuses on Dunleavy et al.’s (2006) “New

Public Management Is Dead—Long Live Digital-Era Governance.” This

paper makes unique contributions to the study of public administration. By