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This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Please check back later for the full article.The New Political Governance (NPG)—or alternatively the New Public Governance—is best understood as a heuristic model that allows us to empirically consider, compare, and contrast the evolution of democratic governance and public administration beyond the reforms associated with New Public Management. Contributors have focused on NPG as both a product of and a response to the challenges of a complex, pluralist state. Key pressures said to spur NPG include aggressive, 24/7 media; greater demands for transparency; an expansion in government oversight and accountability; an expansion of the advocacy industry; and, an increasingly polarized and volatile electorate. While these pressures are not, unto themselves, new, what is new is the response to them. Four primary elements characterize NPG as a response to these forces: the onset of the permanent campaign; full, or nearly full, integration of the range of activities associated with governing with constant concerns and tactics historically associated with campaigning; the expansion and elevation of the role of partisan political staff; politicization through the personalization of appointments to senior public service positions; and the shift in norms from a neutral, non-partisan public service to an expectation of promiscuous partisanship that demands enthusiasm for the agenda of the government of the day.The NPG framework has not been without criticism. Theoretically, some have argued for greater precision in the core concepts of NPG (e.g., politicization). Others have questioned whether it is so much the behaviors themselves—expected or undertaken—or the more public context in which they occur that marks the real shift. Finally some have pointed out the lack of integration of exogenous influences in the NPG model. A number of commenters have pointed out the limited empirical evidence that has been provided to support the NPG model.

Bolstering accountability among civil servants has been at the centre of public governance reform efforts for well beyond the past decade. A critical gap has been the lack of empirical understanding of the actual accountability practices, especially below the deputy minister level. This article presents initial findings from a larger research study comparing Canada, Australia and the Netherlands aimed at addressing this gap. The study seeks to understand both how, and for what, individual executive, managerial and working‐level public servants are held to account. The research tests an adapted version of Aucoin and Heintzman's and Bovens, Schillemans and 't Hart's respective frameworks on the purposes of accountability. The results suggest that while there is evidence that all four normative purposes of accountability examined – democratic control, assurance, learning and results – are reflected in the actual practice of accountability, practice is wanting in some respect with regard to each of the four.

How "New Political Governance" has led to the erosion of the impartial public service and the undermining of democratic governance.

AbstractUsing two very different sets of survey data, we investigated Gottman's (1994a, 1999) observational findings regarding couple‐conflict types. We hypothesized that defensible couple‐conflict types could be established using survey data based on an individual's perception of the style he or she uses in couple‐conflict situations. Furthermore, we hypothesized that membership type would be related to relationship quality indicators such as satisfaction, stability, communication processes, and affect regulation. Our results showed that survey data can reliably produce couple‐conflict types similar to Gottman's. We further found that, on satisfaction, stability, positive communication, and soothing, hostile couple‐conflict types had the lowest mean scores and validating couple‐conflict types the highest mean scores. The types related in the opposite manner to negative communication, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and flooding. The other couple‐conflict‐type means ‐ volatile and avoiding ‐ are almost always between the extreme means of the hostile and validating couple‐conflict types. Implications for research and practice conclude the article.