Book review : paradigms and public sector reform : public administration of Bhutan

Abstract

This book examines public sector reform in the Kingdom of Bhutan. a small landlocked country wedged between China to its north and India to it south with a total land area of 38,394 km2 and a population of some 730,000 people. According to the World Bank (2015), Bhutan can be classified as a developing country with a per capita income of US$2,330. According to Ugyel (2016), the Government of this country has been experimenting with public sector reform since the 1960s. The book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book not only goes into a very detailed account of the geography, the economics and the population of the country but also presents a concise, theoretical summary, building on two important paradigms in public administration – ‘exemplars’ and ‘world views’ – in order to identify the ‘ideal’ types in the field. The author traces the history of public sector reform from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the Northcote-Trevelyan report (1854), the Pendleton Act (1883) and finally to the New Public Management (NPM).