【摘要】More than a decade has passed since the publication of Christopher Hood’s influential piece that codified the nature of the New Public Management (NPM) (Hood 1991). At that time it seemed likely, certainly within the Anglo-American research community, that the NPM was a new paradigm of Public Administration and Management (PAM) and that it would sweep all before it in its triumphal re-casting of the nature of the discipline – in theory and in practice. One hundred-odd years of the hegemony of Public Administration (PA) in the public sphere seemingly counted for nothing in this momentous shift. Since then, though, the debate upon the impact of the NPM paradigm upon PAM, and indeed about whether it is a paradigm at all (Gow and Dufour 2000), has become more contested. This brief essay is intended as a contribution to this ongoing debate. It considers, somewhat provocatively, that the NPM has actually been a transitory stage in the evolution from traditional PA to what is here called the New Public Governance (NPG).