A paradigm in economics and a paradigm in public sector management

The goal of the paper is to describe relationships between New Public Management and mainstream economics. The first part of the article characterizes the concept of paradigm developed by T.Kuhn and the structure of paradigms. The next sections contains detailed analyses of the connections between NPM and modern economics. Finally the main thesis of the article is formulated, namely the statement that strong economic assumptions determine the institutional framework of economic policy.