Defining Public Administration

Selections from the International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration

Jay M. Shafritz, Jr., Jr., Jay M. Shafritz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367098766
• eBook ISBN: 9780429980701
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This anthology, Defining Public Administration, is designed to assist beginning and intermediate level students of public policy, and to stir the imaginations of readers concerned with public policy and administration. The forty-five articles included in the text are all reprinted from the International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration, and these accessible, interesting articles have been assembled to offer a sample of the riches to be found within the larger work. The articles provide definitions of the vocabulary of public policy and administration as it is used throughout the world-from the smallest towns, to the largest national bureaucracies. Defining Public Administration is organized into twelve parts. Each part focuses on a domain pertinent to the study of public administration, including overviews, policy making, intergovernmental relations, bureaucracy, organization behavior, public management, strategic management, performance management, human resource management, financial management, auditing and accountability, and ethics.

Part One
Overviews of Public Administration

1
Public Administration

Frank Marini,
University of Akron (emeritus)

1. The occupational sector, enterprises, and activities having to do with the formulation and implementation of policy of governmental and other public programs and the management of organizations and activities involved. 2. The academic field concerned with the study of, improvement of, and training for the activities mentioned in 1.

Public administration refers to two distinguishable but closely related activities: (1) a professional practice (vocation, occupation, field of activity), and (2) an academic field which seeks to understand, develop, criticize, and improve that professional practice as well as to train individuals for that practice. The simple meaning of the term is quite direct: it refers on the one hand to the administration or management of matters which have principally to do with the society, polity, and its subparts which are not essentially private, familial, commercial, or individualistic, and on the other hand to the disciplined study of such matters. In this simplest meaning, public administration has to do with managing the realm of governmental and other public activities. This simple definition conveys the essence of public administration and probably covers the vast majority of activities and concerns of contemporary public administration.

Such a simple view, though, needs modification to account for at least two important considerations: First, it must be recognized that professional management of the public's affairs involves not only management in the narrowest sense (keeping the books, handling personnel decisions, implementing decisions which have been made elsewhere in the politico-socio-economic systems, etc.), but also significantly involves the planning, formulating, modifying, and urging of goals and purposes of much of public affairs. Second, it must be recognized that some matters of public administration are handled in ways which are not purely private but are also not precisely governmental.

The first consideration—that public administration is involved in the substance of policy as well as in the implementation of policy decisions—is frequently alluded to with terms such as the demise of the politics-administration dichotomy the impossibility of value-free public administration, and the need for proactivity by public administrators. These terms reflect the widespread, though not universal, belief or allegation that it is no longer, if ever it was, defensible to interpret public administration as solely involved in technically objective solutions or in the neutral implementation of decisions made by nonadministrative parts of the political system (e.g., partisan leadership; electoral processes; party processes; partisan bargaining; and parliamentary legislative, and judicial institutions). This belief and related understandings have led to significant public administration attention to policy and policy process. Some have felt a need for a rubric which emphasizes such a policy focus and which might also encompass or indicate receptivity to areas of studies which are closely related (e.g., planning, urban affairs, economic analysis, public policy analysis), and terms such as public affairs are sometimes used for this purpose. In general, though, public administration still functions as the umbrella term throughout the world, though it must be realized that the term implies a broader range of concerns and activities than the narrow meaning of management or administration may convey.

The second consideration—that not all public administration occurs in and through governmental organizations—also has led to a broadening of the meaning of public administration. At various times in the past of public administration it has seemed that its essence and activities could be identified by referring to nonmarket approaches to social purposes, but this perspective has been mitigated by the recognition that public programs and benefits could be developed through and provided with some market characteristics. Thus there have been developments such as governmental or quasi-governmental activities which compete with private sector activities or provide benefits through use of a price mechanism; sometimes water, utilities, sewers, health care, education, and other benefits are provided in this way There are also devices such as public corporations, quasi-public corporations, public-private cooperative enterprises, and government contractual arrangements with nongovernmental organizations to provide certain benefits or perform certain functions. Indeed, even for large parts of the world where the private-public distinction has not been as prevalent or obvious as other places (for example, where the economy is essentially directed or non-market), the movement toward market or marketlike mechanisms for the provision of public goods is increasingly a matter or rhetoric, planning, or action.

When these considerations are taken into account, public administration is probably best defined as the practice and study of the professional formulation and influence of public policy and the implementation of such policy on a regular and organized basis on behalf of the public interest of a society, its civic subparts, and its citizenry.

Development of the Field

As first defined above, public administration has existed virtually since human beings first cooperated on behalf of their society for common purposes. Clear and explicit discussion both of the task of formulating decisions and of carrying out the details of those decisions may be found among the most ancient documents of various civilizations. Attention to the proper education and training of individuals for the various tasks involved is also clear and explicit in many such documents. The systematic study and codification of the technical aspects of such endeavors in a style reflecting the contemporary field of public administration may be variously dated.

It is usual, for example, to date the contemporary social scientific awareness of bureaucracy (a term which can include both private, or "business," administration and public administration) with the work of the German social scientist Max Weber (1864–1920). Such dating, though, is more a matter of convenience or recognition of important scholarly influence than of historical accuracy For example, the German and French writer Baron de Grimm (1723–1807), the German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), and other philosophers and social commentators explicitly discussed bureaucracy; and the English economist and social philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)—especially in his 1861 Considerations on Representative Government—offered profound insights into public bureaucracy and its possible relationship to representative government. Similarly, in many European countries—especially those which see public administration as essentially a subfocus of public law—understandings of systematic modern public administration may be traced to ancient Roman law and its heritage, to the eighteenth-century German and Austrian Cameralists and Prussian government, to the nineteenth-century Napoleonic Code and its influences, and to the general heritage of positive law.

In the United States, it is usual to credit the reformism of the Populist and Progressive era of politics (about 1880–1920) and especially Woodrow Wilson's academic article "The Study of Administration" (in the Political Science Quarterly in 1887) for the systematic and self-conscious development of the field of public administration. It is usual also to identify the early years of U.S. public administration with scientific management, a school of thought largely attributed to Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) which emphasized a task analysis and efficiency approach to management; and with the subsequent human relations movement, which emphasized the human and social aspects of work environments and motivations somewhat in contradistinction to the scientific management movement. Both of these latter movements had their orgins in industrial and business management, but were very influential on public administration in the United States and around the world. The period of U.S. history between the Great Depression and World War II (about 1929–1945) is commonly held to represent U.S. public administration in a self-confident—though some also say naive—phase; this period is frequently referred to in the United States and elsewhere as the period of classical public administration or orthodox public administration. The period between the end of World War II and the 1960s is usually interpreted as a period of the growth of a behavioral, empirical approach to the social sciences and to public administration and its concerns. Not only in the United States, but in the industrialized and industrializing world generally, this period has been characterized as bringing scientific and technological advances to public administration. The dynamics of the Cold War competition between the United States and Western allies and the USSR and its allies, and the manifestation of this competition in various forms of technical assistance, aid in economic development, and administrative assistance had an impact upon public administration. In the 1960s and 1970s, much of the world of science and technology came under attack. In the United States, these decades and their challenges have come to be interpreted against the backdrop of the civil rights movement (and related movements such as feminism), Vietnam War activism, the "new left," anti-institutionalism, and particular manifestations of youth rebellion. Other parts of the world also experienced similar movements, frequently exacerbated by issues of neocolonialism, nationalism, anti-institutionalism, environmentalism, anti-technologism, and general critiques of scientific and technological perspectives and, indeed, the entirety of "modernity." All of these matters had effects upon politics, the social sciences, and public administration. In the United States and elsewhere, many of these developments were accompanied by significant critiques of public administration. One manifestation of this was a dialogue about the need for fundamental rethinking in public administration (and, for some, the need for a "new public administration"). In the last couple of decades, this had been augmented by tremendous technological developments (e.g., in computer applications and in communications developments) on the one hand, and ever more sophisticated philosophical and methodological interpretations asserting that we are transcending "modernity" in ways which call much of our contemporary understanding and technological approaches into question on the other hand. At the present time, public administration worldwide is in creative tension and undergoing rapid change and attempts at reconceptualization. What the effects of all this will be over time, or what the next developmental stage will be, is unclear but generally appears to have an energizing effect upon the field.

Configuration of the Field

Public administration is sometimes treated as though it is one of the social sciences, a discipline in some sense. As the number of programs offering doctoral degrees in the field has increased, this interpretation has gained strength. In some countries, public administration is a formal, degree-granting field at both the baccalaureate and postbaccalaureate levels. In some countries, public administration is not a degree-granting field, and education for the public administration academic and practitioner is pursued through undergraduate and graduate degree programs in economics, political science, law, and other such fields. In some other countries, public administration is a degree program at the post-baccalaureate but nondoctoral level (i.e., degrees or certificates exist at the master's level, but undergraduate study and doctoral study are pursued under the disciplinary auspices of other disciplines such as law, economics, history, sociology, political science, etc.). In some countries, those who aspire to public administration careers at the highest levels of the professional civil service compete for admission to special academies and schools which serve this specific purpose. And, of course, some of these types of educational programs exist in mixed forms in many places.

In the United States, it is relatively unusual for public administration to be a free-standing degree program at the baccalaureate level (though there are some well-established and prestigious programs of this sort—especially in schools of public affairs, schools of management, or schools of public administration—and this approach may be on the increase). The more traditional and still usual pattern is for baccalaureate education in public administration to be a major or minor specialization within a political science degree program. Master-level degrees are increasingly emphasized as desirable or expected credentials for full commitment to professional careers in many fields (e.g., not only in business administration and public administration, but also in fields such as education, social work, nursing, and education where the appropriate degree for professional entry was once the baccalaureate), and the master's degree—usually, but not always, the master of public administration (MPA)—is becoming the recognized degree for those who aspire to careers in public administration. It should be remembered, though, that public organizations and activities cover virtually the whole spectrum of contemporary specialties and that the educational background and specialties of public administrators therefore reflect this diversity. Many individuals who spend their working lives in public administration (as well as business administration) organizations and enterprises will have come from educational backgrounds such as police, justice, firefighting, engineering, health services, liberal arts and sciences education, and technical training of a broad range. Increasingly, though, the expectation is for postbaccalaureate (degree or nondegree, and frequently "in-service" or "on the job") education for those who spend a career in the public service regardless of what the preservice education or training may have been.

Education for the academic part of the field of public administration—especially at the doctoral level—continues to rely heavily upon the social science disciplines. Even when doctoral degree education is in public administration (or public affairs, public policy, urban affairs, or other labels), the program of studies is interdisciplinary with heavy reliance upon the social science disciplines. Doctoral education for public administration—as for business administration and the social science disciplines—also involves significant attention to statistics, information systems, computer-assisted modeling, and other technical areas.

As modern and contemporary public administration evolved, it tended to develop a more or less regular set of subfields, approaches, and topical interests. These generally have to do either with the functional and technical specializations of public administration, with specific methods and approaches, or with the phenomena of specific locales and issue areas of public administration.

Thus, public administration has some subfields which deal with concerns which, in one form or another, have been part of the field since its earliest days. Budget and finance (how to provide, handle, and account for material resources), personnel (the policies and management of human resources), planning, operations management, organizational design and management, communications and communications systems, record-keeping, accounting of various kinds, reporting of various kinds and for a variety of purposes and clientele, internal and external public relations, and a host of similar concerns constitute some of the technical and functional foci of the field. In addition to these, there are various concerns dealing with the environment and context of administration: the constitutional and legal context; the context of the political, economic, and societal structure, requirements, and processes; the values, history, traditions, and habits of the society and its components; the values, history, requirements, and processes of the organizations, programs, and components of specific relevance at any given time; and many other such factors (as well as their interrelationships).

Specific approaches, methods, or procedural preferences sometimes also have aspects of subfield about them. Specializations such as program and organizational evaluation, organizational development, operations research, quantitative aids to management, and the like are partly defined by methodological affinity or choice, but tend also to become subfields of research, education, and training. Similarly, participative management, participative policy processes, focus group approaches, some approaches to leadership, some aspects of strategic planning, and the like are partly defined by conclusions about organizational and administrative dynamics; partly by epistemological and methodological preferences; and partly by political or civic values and theories—and they, too, tend to become something like subfields in research, education, and training. The general dialogue in the social sciences and humanities—and even in some aspects of the physical and life sciences—concerning methodologies and epistemologies which are sometimes referred to with terms such as positivism and postpositivism, while not manifesting itself as subfield concentrations or subfields, manifests itself as something of a watershed in public administration as it has in other fields.

There are also specializations and foci having to do with the specific form and level at which administration occurs: international administration; national administration; federal/confederal administration, state/province administration, district/department/sector administration; city, county, and local administration; intergovernmental and interorganizational administration; "not for profit" administration; and so forth. Issue areas present other topics and specializations: police, fire, schools, military, medical, environmental, technology and technology transfer, science and scientific applications, government-business-industry c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1 Overviews of Public Administration
• Part 2 Policy Making
• Part 3 Intergovernmental Relations
• Part 4 Bureaucracy
• Part 5 Organization Behavior
• Part 6 Public Management
• Part 7 Strategic Management
• Part 8 Performance Management
• Part 9 Human Resources Management
• Part 10 Financial Management
• Part 11 Auditing and Accountability
• Part 12 Ethics
• Appendix
• Index