Abstract:
This study analyses the impact of the everyday forms of resistance
performed by individual public servants following the implementation of
New Public Management (NPM) reforms in Sri Lanka. Many elements of the
NPM reforms, such as productivity improvement and performance targets
affect individual public servants in a highly personalized nature. For this
reason they are unable to garner the widespread support required to prompt
collective action as form of resistance. This study argues that this highly
personalized nature of reforms pushes individual public servants to adopt
everyday forms of resistance, which eventually make a cumulative impact on
the reforms. The conceptual framework developed by James C. Scott to
analyze the everyday forms of peasant resistance is used in this study to infer
a model of the public servants’ everyday forms of resistance. Analyzing
stories of individual public servants who were accused of being resisters, this
paper reveals the nature and limitations of the everyday forms of resistance
that public servants have adopted as well as their impact on the NPM
reforms.
