EXPLAINING HYBRIDITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: AN EMPIRICAL CASE OF BHUTAN'S CIVIL SERVICE

Public administrations are mostly hybrid in nature with a combination of characteristics of different paradigms and models. In the first part of the paper, I use the notion of paradigms to explain a form of hybridity in public administration. The concept of paradigms in public administration is helpful in identifying a typology of the ideal types and their characteristics based on the main paradigms and models of public administration: the patronage system, the traditional public administration, the new public administration, and other emerging models such as public value management, responsive governance, and new public service. In the second part of the paper, through the trajectory of Bhutan's public administration history, we observe that its public administration exhibits characteristics that sit across the various paradigms and models of public administration. Thus, in doing so, the paper makes a significant contribution in applying the ideal type typology to explain how hybridity in public administration occurs in practice. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.