Is Vincent Ostrom’s Democratic Administration and New Public Management at odds in East Africa’s Public Administration?

Throughout the 1990s and in the new millennium, East African government implemented numerous public administrative reforms. In most cases, the reforms were related to the broader Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) or simply framed as a part of the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm. Research on administrative reforms in East Africa paid little attention to Ostrom and other theorists of the public choice persuasion, whose ideas shaped the emerging reform ethos. Against the background of East Africa, this paper explores the odds existing between administrative practices and reforms and the underlying theoretical perspectives as was described in Ostrom’s work. The conclusion is simple; democratic administration is at odds with NPM in many developing countries.