Comparative Public Administration

J.A. Chandler, J.A. Chandler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317676997
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

This accessible introduction to the system of public administration uses a clear, country by country analysis to the contemporary system of public administration and management in a number of significant countries. This text examines the extent to which new public management, politicians and public opinion can influence bureaucracies in various countries; in addition, it explores the role of public administration systems within the wider political systems and democratic frameworks of their states.

The new edition revises and updates several of the original country studies including: the United States, France, the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Italy, and adds three more chapters on Greece, Russia, India and China. Each chapter is written to a common framework which makes comparison easier and covers the following issues:

Political culture

The Constitutional framework

The civil service

Public sector agencies

Federal and local government

Financing the system

Co-ordination of the system

Managing the system

Accountability, secrecy and openness

Democracy

Further developments and the financial crash

This student-friendly volume is a highly valuable resource for students of Politics and Administration.

This textbook is essential reading for students of comparative public administration.

1   Introduction

J. A. Chandler

Public administration is a practice that is constantly in the news. It relates, for example, to debates on the advantages and disadvantages of privatisation, the extent of corruption or dedicated altruism among public servants, the degree to which local government values a sense of community, or whether we are increasingly being dominated by faceless administrators in Brussels or Washington. Public administration is a practice, whether we realise it or not, that continually affects our lives. It is, nevertheless, one of those many concepts that, while theorists know what they mean by the idea, is difficult to concisely frame as a subject area. As Greenwood and Wilson observe any simple definition is doomed to failure (1989: 1). As an academic subject public administration encompasses the study of the development and maintenance of policy by members of governments, public agencies and public sector employees and the practice of putting the authoritative decisions they have made into practice. A public body is one that is established and sustained by the constitution or authoritative governments of a nation or nations. As such, public administration can be seen as a branch of political analysis, although, like any subject area, it will also touch on other disciplines such as, in this case, ethics, economics or management theory. The boundaries of what is public and private are, however, not always clear-cut but can fade imperceptibly into one another as both sectors are necessarily closely entangled in the complex network of relationships that form a social system.

The development of New Right theory has created a fashion for denigrating the term ‘public administration’ as old fashioned, instead concentrating issues of developing and regulating public provision of services and values under the phrase ‘public management’. Within the use of this term is a concentration on effectiveness and efficiency, paralleling the dominant capitalist ideology of seeing progress as the development of profit through private competition. Public administration is, however, not solely about profit, growth and efficiency, but is also concerned with wider concerns such as ethics, human rights, democracy and well-being. Moreover, most private business management is relatively small-scale and concentrated on a limited range of products. The practice of public administration is, generally, not a matter of small scale provision, and covers a wide range of basic human needs. It involves, as this book shows, a multitude of interconnected organisations that need substantial financial and human resources to undertake their functions to ensure a framework for sustaining reasonable living standards for large populations.

The comparative approach

It is important, even at the most introductory phase of any national survey, to adopt a comparative framework and not simply study the social arrangements for a specific nation. We cannot fully understand the social and governmental structures of any particular country unless we have a knowledge and understanding of other regimes. We may know the basic structure of the institutions of a country and how the various elements of this structure interrelate to establish and implement public policy, but we cannot appreciate whether the institutions are particularly efficient, democratic or ethically sound without comparison with other countries. For example, efficiency and democracy are not, in practice, qualities that can have absolute values attached. Just as it is physically impossible to develop a thoroughly efficient engine, it is impossible to conceive of a government that could achieve absolute efficiency for the management of its health or social services. It would be even more problematic to discern what could be required to produce a perfect democracy. It is, therefore, only possible to make any judgement on the effectiveness or ethical acceptability of the systems that govern our lives if we can compare them. The British, American, Russian or Chinese political systems are, for example, only more or less democratic than each other, and are not measured against a hypothetical and unpractised ideal situation.

The structure of the chapters

Although designed to be a preface to comparative study this work cannot claim to be a fully comparative analysis in the sense that the authors do not make any general theoretical claims concerning the differences and similarities in systems of public administration. As an introduction to comparative study the book is, however, structured to make it possible to show how each particular country or administrative system that is included differs, or is similar to, others systems in specific structural areas. Hence, each author presents a chapter that is structured to a common format so that it is easier to gain an impression of how, for example, the civil service or local government system of one particular country may differ from another. The sections into which each chapter is divided are as follows.

Political culture

It is not possible to make much sense of any social system without setting it in the context of the economic and social structure of society, the prevailing ideological values of its citizens and some concept of the historical developments that underlie the evolution of these predominant values. In this section the authors, therefore, provide a brief description of the process of establishing the nation, the extent of consensus or conflict in the system over territorial arrangements, and the principal ideological tendencies within the state. Most authors have expressed the nature of ideological division through brief descriptions of the values of the major political parties in their area of specialisation.

The constitutional framework

This section will provide a brief account of the central policy-making structures of government and, in particular, a survey of the division of power and resources between central bureaucracies, ad hoc agencies, federal and local governments, and the extent to which the private sector is involved in the implementation of public policy.

The civil service

At the heart of policy-making and often the process of implementation within government are the permanent bureaucrats attached to central government departments. This section will describe the structures of the civil service of each country, its relative power within the governmental system, the pattern of recruitment, promotion and training within the service and the prevailing values of senior civil servants. An important issue discussed in each chapter is the extent to which civil servants are close to the policy-making process and have partisan links with the governing political parties. The section will also consider the prestige of the service within a state, management styles and the impact of demands for efficiency.

Central government agencies

While the civil service may be identified in the public mind as the quintessence of public bureaucracy, in many regimes, much of the task of implementing policy and even determining policy is in the hands of public bodies that are not directly responsible to a specific government minister or department. The many organisations established by government but not directly subordinate to a government department are referred in the study as central government agencies. As the book will show the extent to which different political systems have established agencies differs considerably and a wide variety of organisations may be placed in this category. For each country studied this book will provide a survey of the extent and type of agencies concerned with centralised administrative tasks and the structure and powers of some of the major agencies. The section will also consider the use made of agencies as a means of furthering private sector business practices within the public sector.

Federal and local government

Several of the countries analysed in the book are federal systems or, as in Britain, are moving in this direction. In these regimes major sub-divisions of the state are guaranteed sovereign power over certain specified policy-making and administrative tasks and, therefore, the federal units to some extent share power with the central government. Normally the powers of the federal units are guaranteed under a written constitution that stipulates what the federal and central government may or may not do. An effective federal system also requires that the constitution cannot be changed without the consent of at least a majority of the federal units of government.

In both federal and non-federal states some measure of power and responsibility is also devolved to local governments, which, unlike ad hoc agencies, are controlled by politicians responsible to their local citizens and usually subject to popular election. The book will provide a description of the structural arrangements for these units of territorial devolution and decentralisation. The section will consider the policy-making powers of sub-national governments, their resource base, their elected political structures and their bureaucratic services. An important aspect of the role of federal and local government is its relationship with national government, and this may ensure that in some systems, such as that of the United States, devolved governments have considerable authority, whereas in others, such as the British system, its powers are far more restricted.

Financing the system

Any discussion of the administrative arrangements of a state must also consider how the various structures are financed. Most agencies and local governments can achieve little independently of central government unless they have independent powers to raise revenue through taxation or sales of services. An organisation that is wholly beholden to central government for its resources can easily be bent to the will of the paymaster. As a public organisation central government, let alone its agencies and local government, cannot be given complete power over its finances without instituting some independent means of checking that it is using its resources for the public good.

Co-ordinating the system

Administrative systems are, as can be seen from the preceding paragraphs, complex organisations made up of a variety of central offices, agencies and federal or local governments. It is, especially for the more complex administrative systems, important to provide some understanding of how the elements of the system work together.

Managing the system

Earlier in this introduction it was indicated that an important theme of this book is the extent to which administrative systems in liberal democracies are changing under the impact of new public management. This section will open a discussion on changes in the systems of each country and the extent to which they are being moved towards a managerial emphasis on efficiency, effectiveness and economy.

Accountability, secrecy and openness

Bureaucracies, whether at the national or local level, should be subject to scrutiny and made accountable to legislatures and ultimately to their citizens. The extent to which the administrative structures within the state are accountable will, in part, be determined by the extent to which their activities are open to public scrutiny and each chapter will consider how far the administrative systems of each country facilitate open government. Open government alone does not, however, ensure democratic accountability. This must also be secured by establishing means that enable citizens or organisations to secure redress against government and bureaucracy through the courts or tribunals and offices such as the ombudsman.

Democracy and the administrative system

The penultimate section of each chapter summarises the preceding arguments on accountability and open government to discuss the extent to which the administrative system of a particular state provides an effective, open and accountable system that enhances democracy within the nation. The section may also consider the problems of ensuring accountability within a more commercialised and competitive management structure.

Further developments and issues with the system

The final section of each chapter discusses the extent of pressures for change to the administrative system in the country under discussion and, therefore, the future changes that may take place in their bureaucratic systems in the near future. In particular, authors have in their concluding remarks if not in the section on public finance, considered how far the system of public administration in their particular nation state has been retrenched and subject to privatisation as a consequence of the world recession that followed the crash in the banking sector in 2008. This issue is also taken up as a major theme in the concluding chapter of this edition.

The choice of countries

The book discusses public administration in a range of relatively stable nations with extensively developed or developing economies. The countries studied are, therefore, comparable from the point of view that they are all capable of extensive spending per capita on public services and have populations that generally accept the prevailing structure and legitimacy of the systems of government. The choice of systems that are studied within this framework in part reflects examples of very different constitutional and administrative systems. States with a relatively long liberal-democratic tradition are featured and include the United States, with its presidential and federal system, as opposed to the parliamentary systems of West European countries. The study also includes states of differing population size so that contrasts may be made between, for example, Ireland and Greece, as smaller liberal democracies and the much larger states such as France or the United States. The second edition of this book has also included chapters on three major economic powers – Russia, China and India. Russia and China represent regimes that have rapidly evolved from communist to capitalist economies but have still, to varying degrees, yet to embrace a pluralist and liberal-democratic tradition. India has sustained the liberal democracy bequeathed to it on independence, more perhaps through the necessity of balancing power in such a populous and diverse country, but has yet to establish a society that is fully developed for both the poorest and the elite policy-makers within it.

References

Greenwood, J. and Wilson, D. (1989) Public Administration in Britain Today (2nd edn) London: Unwin Hyman.

2 The United Kingdom

John Kingdom

The structures and process of British public administration have evolved over centuries to create a variety of state bodies with varying histories, functions and patterns of accountability and control. These include the civil service (the central government bureaucracy), a large army of local public servants serving an elective system of local government, a mammoth institution administering the state-provided National Health Service (NHS) and, under the acronym ‘quango’, a large miscellany of institutions playing executive, consultative, advisory and regulatory roles. In addition there is a complex of tribunals and inquiries, an ombudsman system and the judiciary with responsibility for the administration of justice.

The architecture of the modern state was drawn largely in the nineteenth century when the rising industrial bourgeoisie sought a means of supporting the emerging capitalist economy. A number of major reports and acts of parliament provided a blueprint for an efficient and meritocratic civil service and a system of prudently managed local authorities. By the opening of the twentieth century an ethos of political impartiality, permanence and public service prevailed. Public administration was seen as different from that in the private sector. Reconstruction following the Second World War saw the enlargement of the functions of these institutions, together with the creation of the NHS and the nationalisation of a number of major industries in the form of public corporations.

From 1979, with the advent of the Thatcher government there was a drive to supplement the traditional public service values with an emphasis on the ‘three Es’ (economy, efficiency and effectiveness). This entailed the rise of a movement termed ‘new public management’, where the assumption was that the managerial methods and ethos of the private sector could be profitably introduced into the public sectors (see Elcock, 1991 and Jarvis, 2002). The approach was largely continued after 1997 by the New Labour government of Tony Blair. Public administration was also to be affected by developments in political institutions, including devolution and structural changes in the judiciary. In 2010 the general election saw the creation of a coalition government committed to resolving a huge national debt crisis with cuts in the public sector. Talk of the ‘big society’ suggested a nostalgic vision of more voluntary (and less state) involvement in the lives of people.

Political culture

Background: the people

Although genetic analysis indicates that around 80 per cent of British DNA comes from an indigenous population settling in Britain around 12,000 years ago, the modern population embraces many ethnic minorities. Centuries of history have seen colonisation by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Normans. Successive settlements have added to the gene pool and to social patterns, political life and the language itself. Although the Norman Conquest, in the emblematic year of 1066, was the last time the island nation was successfully invaded, a largely peaceful influx of other races and nationalities, often seeking refuge, has never ceased. The medieval period saw numbers of Jewish settlers and at the end of the seventeenth century the country became host to Huguenots escaping persecution in France. The Irish potato famine of the eighteenth century produced a further injection into the body politic.

The post-war, post-colonial era saw further waves of immigration following the 1948 British Nationality Act bestowing citizenship upon all Commonwealth citizens. First came large-scale migration from the Caribbean, to be followed from the 1960s by arrivals...