Kudo, Hiroko creator text xu| 2003 continuing ng p.483-504. This article tries to describe Japanese NPM (New Public Management) from two opposite poles: from the national legislative framework and from an experimental example in local government. Since the late 1990s, although NPM was developed from Anglo-Saxon experiences, it has been implemented in Japan at the national level in a unique manner. The crisis in public finance, the urgent need for public sector reform and political instability led to two extreme options: self-reform by the bureaucracy itself; and citizen empowerment resulting in pressure on the bureaucracy. While the second one has been struggling to obtain public consensus, expertise for its practice and institutionalization, the first has resulted, to a certain extent, in the reorganization and restructuring of administrative institutions and in the establishment of both a legal framework and an operational system for measuring performance and evaluating policy. - Reproduced. Good governance Public administration International Review of Administrative Sciences 180718