Chapter 3 The Meaning of Public Administration Public

Chapter 3: The Meaning of Public Administration

Public Administration • Size and scope of public administration: government bureaucracy encountered everywhere • Administrative responsibility: efficient program implementation with accountability to elected officials and the people

Public Administration as the Administrative State • Waldo notes that the expansion of the “administrative state” began post–World War II. • Citizens have demanded more, and thus government has provided more. • Compared with the governments of other industrialized nations, the American government is among the smallest.

Public Administration: The Study of Public Bureaucracy • The study of public administration – Public bureaucracy refers to public organizations: the formal, rational system of relations among persons vested with administrative authority to carry out public programs – Public bureaucracy is too inefficient to accomplish much of anything but at the same time is made up of all-too-efficient users (and at times abusers) of power

Public Administration and Money • The federal government spent $3. 7 trillion in 2010. • The federal government has more customers than any private company: over 300 million: the American people.

A Common Definition of Public Administration? • Public administration – Suffers a “crisis of identity” – Is distinct from private administration • Role of public authority • Characteristic organizational processes – Contributes to policy execution and formation – Emphasizes administrative responsibility

Public Organizations vs. Private Organizations: The Rule of Law • The federal Antideficiency Act forbids government officials from spending on all not explicitly authorized by law. Private organizations can spend on all not forbidden by the law. • Steven Kelman: Organizations must balance goals and constraints (public orgs are heavy on constraints; private orgs heavy on goals).

Processes: Public Organizations versus Private Organizations • Career service • Measures of performance: any direct way of evaluating an organization’s outputs in relation to the cost of the inputs to make them • Competing standards • Public scrutiny • Persuasion • Oversight: public administrators’ exposure to public scrutiny

Public Organizations and the Profit Motive • Public and private activities cannot be distinguished by profit motive. • Private, nongovernmental organizations can be nonprofits and advance a social agenda.

Policy Execution verses Policy Formation • Public and private organizations share basic features of policy execution. • Public organizations also contribute to policy formation.

Public Organizations and Policy Execution • Policy execution: the task of public administration in translating written law into action. • Laws created by the chief executive and elective legislative permit things to happen. Administrators have to shape these ideas into reality.

Public Organizations and Policy Formation • Policy formation: 1) before policy is made, advising elected officials, 2) after policy is made, making sense of it. • The role of administrators in early policy formation process has developed in two ways: – Increased technicality of public policy, followed by a growth in the specialized competence of administrative agency staffs – Expansion of the chief executive’s role as a major agenda setter for government policymaking

Policy-Administration Dichotomy • In the early twentieth century, scholars separated policy or the political work of making policy from administration. • Many students reject this policy-administration dichotomy because it is now obvious that administrative staffs share in the policy formation function. • Yet, the motivations and behaviors of policymakers and public administrators are very different (a KEY issue for public administration).

Administrative Responsibility: A Part of Every Public Organization • Public organizations have a system to hold subordinates accountable to their superiors. • Administrative responsibility goes beyond external controls (i. e. , burdensome red tape) and includes internal controls, or internalized guides, to be conducted by administrators.

Administrative Responsibility and Internal Controls • Administrators must be sensitive to the legitimate roles of other elements of the government. • Administrators have a loyalty to their agencies and the programs entrusted to them. • Administrators are loyal to their professional standards and motivated to win the respect of members of the profession outside the government.

The Study of Public Administration • Nicholas Henry identifies periods of the study of public administration 1900 -1926; 19271937; 1938 -1950; 1950 -1970 (1956 -1970); post-1970 • Three generalizations to the study of public administration

Three Generalizations to the Study of Public Administration • Public administration is timeless but timebound. • Public administration is universal but also culture-bound and varies according to the situation. • Public administration is complex but is intelligible only by a simplified model or a step -by-step combining of such models.

Woodrow Wilson • Study of public administration as a neutral instrument distinct from policy, politics, and a particular regime • Classic “The Study of Administration” – Two themes advanced – Basic contradictions embedded in themes

Complexity and Simplicity • Organizational systems are complex and need varied models to study them • Complicating factors • • Interconnections of policymaking and execution Coordination Relationships and power Floating in seas of time Top-down and bottom-up Information Headquarters and field Values