These debates on the production and allocation of public services, particularly in the context of a growing welfare state, are captured in the vast literature on public choice theory, including the work of, _inter alia_ , Black (1948),<sup>64</sup> Arrow (1951),<sup>65</sup> Downs (1957),<sup>66</sup> Buchanan and Tullock (1962)<sup>67</sup> and Olson (1965).<sup>68</sup> As such, the underlying rationale is that the production of services will be dictated by a confluence of interests and actors within the political sphere, whereby self-interest ultimately determines the allocation of resources. As such, certain goods such as health and education, may be undersupplied by market forces, necessitating the government to step in where the private market cannot—or will not—provide them. The idea of differentiating types of goods, including public goods that may be undersupplied due to market failures, can be linked to the early work of Samuelson (1954), who defined “collective consumption goods” as those “which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtractions from any other individual's consumption of that good.”<sup>69</sup> Conceptions of “non-rivalry” and “non-excludability” in describing public goods and services are further emphasized by the work of Ostrom (2005), who treats the production of goods and services as a matter of public choice and bargaining based on diverse individual incentives.<sup>70</sup> Marrying the work of Samuelson and Ostrom, OGD in this context can be seen as a collective consumption good, which is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous.

It is precisely at this junction where the present research on OGD links to public administration theory, including “new public management” (NPM), which recognizes government’s special role in service provision, financing, and regulation.<sup>71</sup> As first defined by Hood (1991),<sup>72</sup> NPM has been postulated to provide for better provision of public services, particularly in contexts of heightened public accountability, declining fiscal space, and focus on performance results. In particular, Gruening (2001) highlights the diverse antecedents of NPM, as a mixture of public choice theory, managerialism, policy analysis, principle-agent theory, property rights theory, transaction-cost economics, and methodological individualism,<sup>73</sup> which allows for a more flexible, outcome-driven approach to public sector management. As such, key characteristics of NPM include, among others: accountability for performance, performance auditing, privatization, decentralization, competition, performance measurement, freedom to manage, and increased use of information technology.<sup>74</sup> In the context of OGD, NPM theory is especially relevant because it provides the basis for performance measures—in terms of outcomes and not just program inputs—that can help determine the efficacy of service delivery as well as allow for evidence-based decision making and subsequent action based on managerial discretion.

Importantly, it should be noted that while not incompatible, NPM departs from the classical public administration theory, which emphasizes the role of bureaucratic inputs managed by a top-down power structure. As such this classical public administrative theory—as first put forth by Max Weber’s seminal _Bureaucracy_ (1922)<sup>75</sup> —makes a case for a top-down control mechanism in the form of a “monocratic hierarchy” whereby policy is formulated at a high level and then executed by a series of descending

> 64 D. Black, _The Theory of Committees and Elections_ . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1958).

> 65 K.J. Arrow, _Social Choice and Individual Values_ , (1951, 2nd ed., 1963).

> 66 A. Downs, _An Economic Theory of Democracy_ . Cambridge: York: Cambridge University Press (1957).

> 67 J.M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, _The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy_ (1962).

> 68 M. Olson Jr., _The Logic of Collective Action_ . Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1965, 2nd ed., 1971).

> 69 P.A. Samuelson, "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure". _Review of Economics and Statistics_ 36 (4) (1954) p. 387–89.

> 70 E. Ostrom, _Understanding Institutional Diversity_ . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (2005).

> 71 World Bank, WDR (2004).

> 72 Christopher Hood. "A Public Management for All Seasons?" Public Administration Vol. 69 (1991) p. 3-19.

> 73 G. Gruening, “Origin and Theoretical Basis of New Public Management,” _International Public Management Journal_ 4 (2001). 74 Ibid, p. 2.

> 75 Max Weber. _Bureaucracy_ (1922) as discussed in _Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:  New Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy and Social Stratification_ , ed. Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters, Palgrave MacMillan (2015) p. 73-128.

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