Context: The Winds of Change
Since 1984 the New Zealand Government was an early and bold adopter of neoliberal approaches to public administration that collectively came to be known as new public management. Specific elements included an increased reliance on market-oriented strategies such as deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing, the structural separation of purchasers and providers, an enhanced emphasis on performance measurement, a shift
from input to output-based funding, and the delivery of public services by third parties under contract (Boston, et al. 1996). However, the extent of adoption of these principles to actually become the very system of public administration was unprecedented; no other country has demanded accountability through contract-like arrangements to the extent
that New Zealand has (Schick, 1996:1).
