Traditional Bureaucratic Culture as an Impeding Factor in Implementing New Public Management in Bangladesh

Abstract

Since the independence in 1971, Bangladesh has made a commendable progress in all sector of the state in its 47 years of journey. Over this period it has come across to a long way in administrative reforms under different political regimes. Most of the reforms in the administrative section could not achieve the desired results due to different reasons. This paper particularly tries to find out how traditional bureaucratic culture has been an impeding force on the way of implementing New Public Management in Bangladesh. Public servants have been a strong body in Bangladesh due to different political incidents. Basically military backed governments at different times were highly dependent on bureaucratic administration. Such political practice has grown a peculiar culture of reform resistant behavior among administrative members. As a result, they are not enough open to new changes in the administrative system and thus impeding the implementation of new administrative reforms frequently as there remain uncertainties of power distribution.