A content analysis of the 2011 strategy for the reform and development of public administration in Lebanon

Abstract

The revival of the Lebanese public administration is necessary for restoring the basic role and services of the Lebanese government. In 2011, The Office of Minister of State for Administrative Reform (OMSAR) presented the “Strategy for the Reform and Development of Public Administration in Lebanon.” The reform strategy is laced with words like “empowerment”, “business re-engineering”, “benchmarking”, “learning organization”… it seems that New Public Management principles inspired the reform framework designed by OMSAR. The intention of this study is to increase the understanding of the 2011 reform strategy; in particular, it will examine whether the reform strategy converges with the principles of New Public Management (NPM). To answer the research question, the text of the reform strategy will be examined using conceptual content analysis. Qualifying the presence and the occurrence of pre-selected NPM concepts within the text of the strategy will help us understand to what extent this strategy seek to introduce and apply NPM doctrines in the Lebanese public administration. The content analysis conducted showed that: 2011’s Strategy for the Reform and Development of Public Administration in Lebanon diverges from NPM principles… In Lebanon, the need to reform the public administration is urgent; However reform planners don’t have to choose a paradigm and blindly apply all its principles, on the contrary, they can selectively chose the tools they regard as essential from different paradigms.