Hybrid Politicisation and the Limits of Managerial Reform: Rethinking Political–Administrative Relations in Malaysia

Abstract

New Public Management (NPM) reforms have long been associated with the expectation that managerial governance can depoliticise public administration through performance measurement, managerial autonomy, and professional management; however, growing empirical evidence across diverse governance contexts challenges this assumption, as political influence persists despite successive reform waves. This article argues that politicisation does not merely survive reform but adapts to it. Drawing on qualitative evidence from 35 elite interviews with senior Malaysian civil servants and documentary analysis of public sector reforms, it introduces the concept of hybrid politicisation to explain the coexistence of managerial governance norms and embedded political influence within administrative systems. The Malaysian case, particularly through instruments such as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), National Key Result Areas (NKRA), and the Government Transformation Programme (GTP), demonstrates how managerial reforms can generate symbolic compliance while simultaneously enabling indirect forms of political steering. Rather than treating politicisation as a deviation from bureaucratic neutrality, the article reconceptualises it as an adaptive and institutionalised feature shaped by institutional layering and ongoing political-administrative interaction. Empirical findings indicate that managerial instruments are frequently interpreted and operationalised in alignment with political priorities, thereby embedding political influence within formal governance structures. In doing so, it challenges binary distinctions between politicised and depoliticised administration and contributes to comparative public administration by offering a more context-sensitive framework that bridges debates on managerial reform, institutional continuity, and political–administrative relations in developing and hybrid governance systems.