International Perspectives on Public Administration

Henry T. Sardaryan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000389937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

International Perspectives on Public Administration uses civilizational theory for grouping and analyzing systems of public administration in different countries around the world, thus offering a global perspective which reveals how different systems may be divided by cultural borders of the modern day.

The author uses different scientific disciplines — namely political theory, political philosophy, law and economics — to offer comparative analyses of the genesis and development of public administration systems in the Western, Orthodox, Islamic, Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist, Japanese and African civilizations, together with reviewing their experience in application of the most modern and progressive practices of public management.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of public administration, political science, public management, public policy, and civilizational theory.

1 The theoretical principles of public administration

1.1 The concept and essence of public administration

Public administration as a phenomenon has existed since the time when the first state came into being, because it, in its essence, is inextricably linked to the need to exercise authority and manage society. In each country, it has its own specific features and is embodied and implemented in various forms, but no state could exist without a system of public administration.

Whereas the state and power have been of interest to philosophers for millennia, public administration as a separate field of scholarly knowledge has started to evolve rather recently. Globalization and the instant distribution of information, as well as the openness and transparency of the contemporary world, have made it clear that, despite the similar configurations occurring in the legal regulation of government forms or in the territorial and political constitution of countries, the operating efficiency of public authorities and their specific features and structures are totally different in the various parts of the world.

As a field of scholarly research and academic discipline, public administration combines fundamental knowledge from various sciences. One cannot imagine it without jurisprudence, which contains knowledge regarding law, the only framework within which public authorities operate in the majority of contemporary efficient states. In its turn, political science provides today’s public administration with ideas regarding the origin and political nature of public authorities and the specific features of their functioning in various civilizational and cultural environments. Finally, economics fills public administration with knowledge allowing us to, for example, evaluate the performance of public authorities, process and analyze statistical data and develop and implement various strategies of economic policy.

Before discussing the concept and substance of public administration, it should be noted that its configuration and operating principles take very different shapes in the various countries of the contemporary world. At the same time, the pioneers in the theoretical conceptualization of public administration were, as a rule, European philosophers, who tried to ascribe a universal nature to the patterns and established traditions of public administration in European countries – a trend that still prevails, not only in many contemporary studies, but also even in some international standards and directives.

Nevertheless, whatever part of the world a state is located in, it needs the staff, powers and resources to exercise its authority. The term “public administration” includes two parts – “administration”, which refers to the substance of the activity, and “public”, which refers to its nature.

It should also be noted that in English, for instance, the idea of running something could be conveyed by at least three terms – “administration”, “management” and “governance”. They are not synonyms, and they represent different approaches toward the exercise of authority. Given that the science of administration has been developed mainly in Western countries, one should consider these terms in order to understand the underlying notions.

The concept of administration refers to the systematic process of running an organization based on certain functions intended to prepare plans, define policies and procedures, set goals and tasks and enforce rules and regulations.

In its turn, management means directing people and their work to achieve a common goal using the resources of the relevant organization by means of creating an environment in which the manager and his or her subordinates can work together toward a common goal.

Finally, governance refers to the running of a social system (family, formal or informal organization, region or nation) through the processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in collective problem solving that eventually leads to the creation, reinforcement or reproduction of social norms and institutions.

Therefore, the very contents of the notion “administration/management/governance” depend upon the specific form of its operation, the roles of participants in the process and the set of its actors’ functions and powers.

However, there exists a common thing consolidating the various forms of administration/management/governance, that is, the idea of leadership being exercised through the making, implementing and following-up of any decisions aimed at achieving the objectives and tasks at hand.

The creation and reproduction of various forms of administration in social relationships are inherent in humankind. A family, a sports training group, a school, a university, a corporate staff, a district, a city, a region or a country as a whole represent various social systems that require very diverse forms of administration in order to run them.

Of course, public administration is the most complicated, multi-tiered and regulated large-scale system; it differs from other systems in that the state through its various bodies and their representatives, and acts as the subject of administration, and there exist a number of other differences as well.

Subject (Latin subjectum “lying under; being in the base”) is the carrier of activity, consciousness and cognition who obtains knowledge of the external world (object) and influences it in the subject’s practical activity.

The subject of administration means any person or entity influencing the relevant object in his/her/its practical activity.

Public administration covers the territory of the entire country, region, city or district, depending on the level of the relevant subject of administration. That is, any decisions being made by a state or municipal authority will be binding upon any residents or entities belonging to the territory or field of its competence. Administration in the private sector suggests that any decisions will only be binding upon the staff of the relevant entity.

Public administration in developed countries operates by means of regulatory acts and is based on the supremacy of law principles. Of course, humankind also knows states where the leader’s personal decisions, religious principles or tribal traditions prevail over legal regulation. But the systems of public administration in such countries never demonstrate high stability or performance. Regarding the private sector, the decisions being made by an entity’s governing bodies do not constitute laws or regulations and can be issued in oral form, and failure to comply with them will not, in most cases, entail criminal or administrative responsibility.

Public administration involves the lawful capability of using force, for example wherever the law is breached, public order is destabilized or the constitutional system is under threat of destruction. Administration in the private sector rules out the use of force with respect to the object of administration in any form whatsoever.

The purpose of public administration is to resolve problems and achieve results aimed at the development of the country, the fulfillment of the strategy determined by its political leadership and the stable and efficient activities of the public authorities. One could also mention such goals as improving the living standards of the population and enhancing the level of security, education and social protection of the citizens; these are, as a rule, indispensable goals for public administration systems in the developed countries of the world. However, humankind has seen in the past and still sees certain totalitarian systems of government, which consider their own reproduction their principal goal, pursue the policy of restraining the development of human potential and use repressive measures to limit the rights and freedoms of their own citizens. They all feature characteristics of a public administration system and constitute such systems, but they are aimed not at the development of the nation, but solely at their own reproduction. At the same time, the principal goal of administration in the private sector is typically the extraction of profit.

Therefore, public administration should be understood as the activities of public authorities and their representatives aimed at achieving the goals and objectives determined by the political leadership of the country, such activities being carried out through legal regulation and including certain functions for policy implementation and follow-up, as well as for the provision of any necessary services for the population.

Due to the increasing significance of the activities of public authorities and the need to improve their performance, the theory of public administration has started to evolve. This theory is a synthesis of historical science, organizational theory, sociology, political science and related studies and focuses on the meaning, structure and functions of public administration in all of its forms.

Three different approaches toward the understanding of public administration can be distinguished in contemporary science and practice: Public Administration, New Public Management and Public Governance.

Long before Max Weber had formulated the key principles governing the formation of national bureaucracy, which still constitute the basis for the activities of a public administration system in most contemporary countries, nepotism-free bureaucracy models emerged in a number of countries worldwide.

Nepotism is a system based on giving advantages to relatives in various fields, including business, politics, entertainment, sports, religion and other activities.

When in the 500s B.C. China made the transition from the aristocratic principle of manning its military forces (mainly the cavalry) to the formation of a large infantry recruited from the poorer strata of its population, that change resulted in the need to mobilize more resources through the collection of taxes, that, it its turn, required a bureaucratic staff based on the principle of an employee’s maximum efficiency rather than his belonging to a given family.

But Max Weber was the first to systematize the key principles of bureaucratic organization in a state. He was convinced that bureaucracy was the most efficient and rational way to organize human activity and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency and eliminate favoritism.

Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (April 21, 1864, Erfurt, Prussia–June 14, 1920, Munich, Germany) was a German sociologist, philosopher, historian and political economist.

Bureaucracy (from French bureau “bureau, office” + Greek κράτος “domination, power”) is a body of non-electable public servants working for public authorities.

Weber believed that legitimacy-based rational domination embodied in an authority relying upon a law or norm would be increasingly prevailing in society, thus leading to the formation of a bureaucra...