The most important yield of the study is that it proved through statistical analyses that informal institutions, in other words norms, traditions, habits, beliefs and social culture that are followed by the members of society, play a decisive role in deciding whether the reforms related to the new public management movement can be successfully introduced in a given country or not. If the informal institutions of a country differ from the approach of the NPM movement, then the low probability of the successful implementation should prompt professional practitioners to fit the reforms to be introduced to the informal institutional facilities of the country. The practical relevance of this statement is significant: it can even influence the aid policy of the European Union. If the culture or traditions of a new member state differ from the cultures of the leading countries of the EU, then the European Union takes up a huge risk, if it encourages / forces the new member states to implement such reforms that do not fit the informal institutions of the given countries. In recent years the
European Union has spent significant amounts on the support of the reforms in the new member states, a decisive part of which can be linked to the NPM movement. Based on the current study we can claim that these reforms will be unsuccessful with high probability, if during their implementation they do not sufficiently take into consideration the informal institutional environment characteristic of the given country. In most cases the result is squandered billions, or the development of non-sustainable systems, or even worse, distorted reforms causing effects contrary to the objectives. At the beginning of this paper we alluded to some case studies, which analyzed the introduction of the NPM in Africa and Asia and they pointed out the seriously negative effects of the reforms belonging to the NPM movement.
These cases are “trivial” in the sense that in the instances of non-democratic systems the toolkit of the NPM movement works in a dysfunctional manner. Based on the current study we can claim that even under democratic and market economic conditions the success of the NPM reforms cannot be guaranteed.
We can claim based on the results of the study that the possible introduction of the NPM reforms depends decisively on the informal institutions of society and to a smaller extent on its formal institutions (the necessary condition of success), while the magnitude of the success of the already implemented reforms is determined also by the culture of the public administration, and other factors not examined (3. and 4. blocks of our model) in the study (sufficient condition).
We consider the modelling and the description of the differences between the influences of formal and informal institutions on the NPM reforms as an important result. During our analysis it emerged that the possibility of the implementation of the NPM reforms depends on informal institutions, which change slowly and which are givens for politicians and for business people at a given point in time. The NPM movement during the past thirty years can be characterized as a wave of fashion, which was followed by politicians in order to maximize
votes. Let us assume that a politician, say that the country’s minister of economy, intuitively realizes that the reforms belonging to the NPM movement and demanded by the member of society, or by a part of it (for instance the scientific elite), or even by an external organization (EU, IMF, etc.) do not fit the country’s culture. In this case, he or she keeps public interests in mind, if he or she does not embark on such reform that is doomed to failure with great probability, so instead he or she handles the pressure laid on him or her rhetorically. Let us not forget that explaining why he or she does not support the implementation of a reform, which is successful in another country, is a quite difficult and dangerous political task.
According to Pollitt, the NPM movement is in a great part the series of such kind of “reform talk” (Pollitt 2007, 14), which he calls discursive convergence. This could seem as an act of compensation, but based on the results of our research it is conceivable that in the decisive majority of the cases politicians act correctly, when they do not introduce a given NPM reform. Based on our results, the discursive convergence can be interpreted as a rational and effective defence mechanism.
Our model also points out that those cultural attributes, which are labelled by Inglehart (1999) as postmodern, could play a dominant role in the success of the NPM reforms. This is by all means thought-provoking, when we decide on whether to recommend or not the implementation of the reforms related to the NPM movement in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where the societies of these countries cannot be characterized by postmodern attributes yet. By reviewing the results of the study, we can claim that between the informal institutions of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the countries successfully implementing NPM reforms there exists such a huge gap that most likely these countries would not be able to adapt, in other words to tailor the NPM reforms to their own institutional environments. The examples of the Slovakian and Czech practices (Nemec 2010;
Nemec, Merickova and Ochrana 2008), or the Hungarian cases (Hajnal 2008 and 2011) also
attest this. Based on our study, the reasons behind the failures should be found between the differences in the approach and value system necessary to the success of the NPM reforms and the informal institutional systems of the Central and Eastern European countries.
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Appendix
Table 1.
The proxy-variables of informal institutions (Bold: proxies after the principal component analysis)
The name of
proxy-variables Source
Trust World Value Survey / European Value Survey Questions:
A165.- Most people can be trusted E085.- Confidence: Justice System E076.- Confidence: The Civil Services E075.- Confidence: Parliament
Feeling of Happiness World Value Survey / European Value Survey Questions:
Fairness World Value Survey / European Value Survey Tolerance World Value Survey / European Value Survey
Questions:
A035.- Important child qualities: tolerance and respect for other people
A125.- Neighbours: People of a different race A129.- Neighbours: Immigrants/foreign workers F118.- Justifiable: homosexuality
F120.- Justifiable: abortion
Role of the state World Value Survey / European Value Survey Opinion about market
World Value Survey / European Value Survey Questions:
E036.- Private vs state ownership of business E039.- Competition good or harmful
C060.- How business and industry should be managed
Obedience World Value Survey / European Value Survey Responsibility taking or
obviating World Value Survey / European Value Survey External / internal
factors are decisive in life
World Value Survey / European Value Survey Questions:
A173.- How much freedom of choice and control C034.- Freedom decision taking in job
Individualism / Collectivism
World Value Survey / European Value Survey Risk taking or risk
avoidance
World Value Survey / European Value Survey Working culture World Value Survey / European Value Survey
Political ideology (left – right)
World Value Survey / European Value Survey Liberal / Conservative
thinking
World Value Survey / European Value Survey Questions:
D018.- Child needs a home with father and mother
D019.- A woman has to have children to be fulfilled
D022.- Marriage is an out-dated institution F126.- Justifiable: taking soft drugs
Religiousness World Value Survey / European Value Survey Breach of norms and
rules
World Value Survey / European Value Survey Nationalism World Value Survey / European Value Survey Power distance index (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005) and
http://www.geerthofstede.nl/research--vsm/dimension-data-matrix.aspx Individualism index (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005) and
http://www.geerthofstede.nl/research--vsm/dimension-data-matrix.aspx Masculinity index (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005) and
Table 2.
The proxy-variables of formal institutions (Bold: proxy-variables after the principal component analysis)
Economic Freedom of the World – Fraser Institute
General government consumption spending as a percentage of total consumption
Transfers and subsidies as a percentage of GDP Government enterprises and investment
Rule of Law
Economic Freedom of the World – Fraser Institute Judicial independence
Economic Freedom of the World – Fraser Institute Hiring and firing regulations
The participation rate at the first election of the given decade Percentage of women in the Parliament in the given decade Competencies and responsibilities of local governments Local governmental revenues / GDP
Local government employment share as percentage of total governmental employment Source: Own compilation
Table 3.
The values of the politicians’ interest index in the31 countries involved in the analysis
Countries
Remarks: 1 Number of prime ministers between 1980 and 1990
2 Number of prime ministers between 1990 and 2000
3 Number of prime ministers between 2000 and 2010
4 The proportion of respondents who answered „A great deal” or „Quite a lot” to the following question: I am going to name a number of organisations.
For each one, could you tell me how much confidence you have in them: is it a great deal of confidence, quite a lot of confidence, not very much confidence or none at all? The civil service.
5 Australia: WVS in the year of 1995, New Zealand: WVS in the year of 1998, others: EVS in the year of 1990.
6 Finland: EVS in the year of 2000, Norway: WVS in the year of 1996, Switzerland: WVS in the year of 1996, others: EVS in the year of 1999.
7 All the countries: EVS in the year of 2008.
Table 4.
The applied datasets of EVS /WVS surveys in the case of the 31 countries included in the analysis