Public administration is like any other administration which is carried out in public interest. Before we dwell deeper into understanding public administration it would be beneficial to try and see how different authors have tried to define what administration is.
Marx defines administration as - Administration is determined action taken in pursuit of a conscious purpose. It is the systematic ordering of affairs and the calculated use of resources aimed at making those happen which one wants to happen.
Frederic k Lane defines administration as organizing and maintaining human and fiscal resources to attain a group’s goals.
A complete definition for public administration however is difficult to arrive at due to the sheer number of tasks that fall under it. Some academicians argue that all the government related work falls into this category while other choose to argue that only the executive aspect of government functioning comprises of public administration.
We can also see how different authors have defined public administration:
According to L D White, Public administration consists of all those operations having for their purpose the fulfillment or enforcement of public policy. On the other hand as per Woodrow Wilson public administration is a detailed and systematic application of law. One can also say that public administration is nothing but the policies, practices, rules and regulation etc, in action.
Now can public administration be divorced from social and political systems; certainly not and therefore emerged another definition provided by F A Nigro who argues that public administration is essentially a cooperative group effort in public setting. Secondly, it covers all the three branches of government machinery, the executive, the legislative and the judicial. He further added that since public administration plays a crucial role in formulation of policies therefore it is a part of the political process as well (for e.g. Bills and Acts). Negro also said that public administration is different from private administration in numerous ways and that it interacts with various private groups and individuals in providing services to the community.
Also, on the nature of public administration there have been two popular views, one being the Integral view and the other one is the Managerial view. The Integral view is all encompassing and consists of sum total of all managerial, clerical, technical and manual activities and employees form all levels. This view was endorsed by L D White and Dimock. It may differ from one agency to another depending on their sphere of work.
On the other hand the Managerial view, as the name suggests says that the public administration involves only the managerial activities. This view was supported by Simon, Smithburg, Thompson and Luther Gulick.
After having said that; the word administration itself is highly contextual, and may vary in meaning and definition from one organization to another.
So if you want to understand it from the context and setting of an organization, it can be roughly explained that; the top leadership or the Board decides the vision, mission, short and long term goals and the business unit heads then draw out action plans and create or reform processes, allot responsibilities, direct planning, get people on board and start working towards achieving those set goals as per defined guidelines. So, the Board can be the Government and the Business Unit Heads and their teams can be the public administrators who are the implementers and actually the people who run the show.
In the next section we shall make an effort to understand whether public and private administrations are similar, different or are there any overlaps between the two.
Nature and Scope of Public Administration
Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it. - Joseph A. Schumpeter
The above quote by Schumpeter can call for a heated debate on its relevance and credence. However there is no denying that bureaucracy; since a couple of centuries or so; has been an integral part of the Government, the State the people and the way they function with each other.
Public administration is the single most important aspect of bureaucracies across the world; be it a democratic, socialist or a capitalist state, more so in a socialist state, as all aspects of the citizen life are influenced and decided by the government.
There has been considerable shift in the way the public administration was carried out in ancient and medieval times when the initiatives were nothing more than sporadic administrative functions like maintaining law and order and collecting revenues with little or no welfare activities. The people who carried out those activities were selected by the monarchs and were no better than their personal servants.
With changing times, the objective of public administration also underwent a change and by the nineteenth century; an organized approach to public servants and public administration was adopted. This approach was based on an exhaustive legal framework replacing the patriarchal and hereditary function with bureaucracy.
The advent of this new approach to public administration happened due to many reasons. The foremost being the Industrial revolution. With Industrial Revolution, the Government forayed into trade and commerce; which was followed by Imperialism, Nationalism and Internationalism which added on to the widening avenues of Government duties and responsibilities.
The times today are again vastly different from what existed a century ago and once again the scope of public administration has also undergone a shift, it’s difficult to decide whether it is paradigm or not. However, the increasing awareness amongst people especially in the developing countries [for e.g. The Right to Information Act or RTI act in India] and an acquired knowledge of rights, privileges and laws amongst the people of developed countries[for e.g. the debates on The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010] have thrown new challenges for the public administrators and policy makers.
The demand for unified national services, the conflicting interests between the various economic sections of the society and with global migration and subsequently globalization; the protection of the interests of the multi-ethnic groups of the society have kept the public administrators occupied.
Administration matters so much because it is not enough to make policies and laws on paper. The interpretation and translation of those policies and laws into actions and carrying them out is the difficult part. The public administrators therefore have to play an important role in running the government as machinery. Bureaucracy has often been sneered and ridiculed at but if the administrative work is stopped, nothing really would be happening.
In almost all the countries the number of people employed in public administration work is appalling like in USA the figure roughly stands at 2036000 civilians excluding the employees of Congress and Federal courts, in England the figure runs into several thousands and in India the civil services exam itself draws lakhs and lakhs of applicants while the selection percentage is meager [for e.g the 2006 numbers for selection in the UPSC was 383983 applicants and 474 actually recommended for posts.]
The various important roles that public administration plays, the most important one are implementing laws and policies and acting as their adjudicators. It is therefore important that the reader approaches the study of public administration with an open mind and without prejudices to appreciate the full nature, role, importance and relevance of the bureaucracy.
Public Administration: An Art or a Science
At a first glance it seems easier to accept public administration as an art. It is just the administration of Government affairs and for most part it does not follow the laws of Science like absence of normative value, predictability of behavior and universal application. So, does that mean we cannot list it into a respectable category of scientific subjects?
There are many authors who ferociously defended it and argued that public administration as an area of study is indeed a Science. The earliest of them was Lorenz von Stein an 1855, a German professor from Vienna who said that public administration is an integrated Science and viewing it just as administrative laws was a restrictive definition. In modern times, categorizing public administration as Science found favor with many, the most important one being the father of American public administration, President Woodrow Wilson. We shall read more about the Wilsonian view of public administration in the next article, however he mainly emphasized that the objective of administrative study is to discover what government can properly and successfully do and how it can do those things with utmost efficiency with least possible cost of money or energy.
After Wilson another important argument came from Frederick Taylor who wrote a book called The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) in which he proposed to discover one best way of doing things/operation and thus save on cost on time and energy. Luther Gulick and L Urvick collectively published, Papers on the Science of Administration which reaffirmed its status as a Science. W F Willoughby stated that public administration like Science has certain fundamental principles which can be generally applied and therefore it is a Science.
However, there still remain certain aspects to be established before public administration can be actually and in real terms, be classified as a Science. The places of normative values in public administration should be clearly defined. More efforts should be put in to understanding the human nature and dynamics at play in public administration. Lastly, the principles of public administration should derive references from across the worlds, cultures, type of states etc to make them more universal and free of cultural, religious and political biases.
The advent of the modern welfare state itself has added, to the changing approach to public administration. The kind of activities and sphere of works have never been more varied and dynamic and there has been a never before interest in actually improving the efficiency of the government.
Subject matter experts like Frederick Taylor have opened ways to exploration, experimentation, observation, collection of data and analysis based on which principles and laws can be made. There are increasing number of authors like Metcalfe, Fayol, Emerson, Follett, Mooney, and more recently Drucker etc who have written on the subjects of administration. In-fact Drucker wrote a book called “The Age of Discontinuity” and one of the chapters of the book called The Sickness of Government became the basis of the New Public Management theory popular in 1980s which emphasized the market oriented management of the public sector.
So, one can safely say that with the changing times and more and more studies carried out in the field of social sciences, administration and human relations, the subject of public administration can no longer take the shelter of art and would have to emerge stronger with relevant and fundamental principles like that of Science.
Public and Private Administration
The expansion of public sector into industrial enterprises has been into practice for quite some time, a little over half a century now. The public sector organizations in order to function efficiently are borrowing heavily from the business knowledge, administration and process orientation of the private organizations. However, there still remains a considerable difference between these two administrative practices.
It would be interesting to learn about both similarities and differences between these two to arrive at a better understanding. Let us first understand the differences and see what the authors and subject matter experts have to say about it.
According to Paul H. Appleby the public administration is different from private administration in three important aspects, the first is the political character, secondly the breadth of scope, impact and consideration and public accountability. These differences seem very fundamental and very valid in the Iight of our own exploration of the subject in previous articles.
Josia Stamp went a step further and identified four aspects of difference of which the only one similar to that of Appleby’s is that of public accountability or public responsibility as Stamp identifies it. The other three are:
Principle of uniformity
Principle of external financial control
Principle of service motive
Herbert Simon cited very practical and easy to understand differences based on popular beliefs and imagination and therefore might seem more appealing. He said that public administration is bureaucratic while private administration is business like. Public administration is political while private administration is apolitical. And finally; the aspect most of us would swear by that public administration is characterized by red tape while the private administration is free of it.
The management Guru Peter Drucker sums up the difference in more comprehensive manner. He says that the very intuition which governs both kinds of administration is different from each other. While the public administration functions on service intuition the private administration follows the business intuition. They also have different purposes to serve, with different needs, values and objectives. Both of them make different kind of contribution to the society as well. The way the performance and results are measured is different in a public administration than that of private one.
Let us now understand the similarities between the two and see to what extent and in which areas are they similar. You would be surprised to know that there are many similarities between the ways in which a public and a private administration functions. The similarities are so much that some subject matter experts and authors like Henry Fayol, M P Follet, Lyndall Urvick do not treat them as different. Fayol said that all kinds of administration function on some general principle irrespective of them being public or private. The planning, organizing, commanding and controlling are similar for all administrations.
The above arguments and several other points suggested and illustrated by other authors as well clearly point out that there are more similarities between the two administrations than what we see and understand.
The managerial aspects of planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling are the same for public and private administration
The accounting aspects like maintenance of accounts, filing, statistics and stocking are the same
Both of them have a hierarchical chain of command or reporting as the organizational structure
Both get influenced, adopt and reform their own practices in the light of best practices of the other. They also share the same pool of manpower
And lastly they share similar kinds of personnel and financial problems
Woodrow Wilson’s Vision on Public Administration
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of USA (1913-1921) and is often addressed as the father of American Public Administration. Wilson and his contribution to the subject of public administration is widely read and referred to. He was one of the first political leaders who emphasized the need to increase the efficiency of the Government.
Wilson argued that administration is the most obvious part of the Government and the least discussions happen around it. He further says that despite being the executive, the operative and the most visible side of the Government and being as old as the Government itself it has remain hidden from the scrutiny and inspection of writer, authors and subject matter experts where it should have been the centre of debates and researches. He shows little appreciation towards the obsession regarding the constitution of Government, the philosophical approach towards the existence of State, the sovereignty or some greater meaning lying at the heart of the Government. Basically what he meant was the know-how of the actual business of Governing people and how that can be made more efficient.
In the context of the early 20th century USA and the world in general, Wilson and his ideas regarding administration made sense. Life had changed much since the good old days of farms and cattle and now there were complexities of trade and commerce, stocks and bonds and financers and then the national debts, the ever increasing conflicts between the capitalist class and the workers. In the light of these developments, ways the Government can function also needed a change which unfortunately was not assessed adequately resulting in inefficiency and wastage of resources.
In addition to above aspects, the Government’s sphere of work was expanding, like the postal service in America and rail-road lines in Europe. So, if the transition was happening at the grass root level say for example to manage rail-road, national commissioners were made in addition to older state commissioners, the resulting extension of administrative function became a matter which needed to be delicately handled and not carried out in haste.
Wilson also clarified that the studies conducted in the field of public administration were mostly carried out by French and German academicians and were therefore not entirely relevant and suited to the needs of the American people and State in its original form. He suggested that any principle adopted from Europe would have to be Americanized and modified for the complex and multiform state and a highly decentralized form of Government in the USA.
Wilson had carefully studied the administrative practices of not just France and England but a small nation like Prussia and praised the ruler Frederick the Great who regarded himself as the chief servant of the people and his office as a public trust. He also wrote favorably of Napoleon and his recasting of French administration after ending the monarchial rule. He however; wrote harshly about the ways of English administrators and those of his own country; pointing out that their history was not of administrative development but of legislative oversight. There were little progress made in Government organizations but vast leaps taken in law making and political criticism.
While reading Wilson one cannot help but wonder that whether enthroning public opinion in the matters of Government a wise decision at all? The dark side of it is that it becomes a larger obstacle to manage; since any change or reform proposed needs to get pass veto at so many levels. To sum up, Wilson proposed a very no-nonsense and businesslike approach to administration which should be free of shackles of political doctrines.
New Public Management Model
The term new public management was coined by scholars from UK and Australia (Hood 1991 and Hood and Jackson 1991), who were working in the in the areas of public administration. Now, the origin of this new term was to propose a new point of view towards the organizational design in the public sector, however after a decade, the meaning of this term in discussions and debates became many. Some scholars choose to define it as the introduction of new institutional economics to public management and some used it to refer to pattern changes in policy making. Before we make an effort to further understand the various aspects of New Public Management, let us see how it is different from the traditional public administration.
The new public management which emerged in the 1980s represented an attempt to make the public sector more businesslike and to improve the efficiency of the Government borrowed ideas and management models from the private sector. It emphasized the centrality of citizens who were the recipient of the services or customers to the public sector.
New public management system also proposed a more decentralized control of resources and exploring other service delivery models to achieve better results, including a quasi-market structure where public and private service providers competed with each other in an attempt to provide better and faster services. [For e.g. In UK the purchase and provision of healthcare was split up between National Health Services or NHS and Government funded GP fund holders, this increased efficiency as the hospitals now needed to provide low cost procedures to win both patients and funds.)
The core themes for the New Public Management were:
A strong focus on financial control, value for money and increasing efficiency
A command and control mode of functioning, identifying and setting targets and continuance monitoring of performance, handing over the power to the senior management
Introducing audits at both financial and professional levels, using transparent means to review performances, setting benchmarks, using protocols to ameliorate professional behavior
Greater customer orientation and responsiveness and increasing the scope of roles played by non public sector providers
Deregulating the labor market, replacing collective agreements to individual rewards packages at senior levels combined with short term contracts
Discouraging the self regulatory power of the professionals and handing over the power from individuals to management
Encouraging more entrepreneurial management than beurocracy with high retrospective accountability requirements upwards
Introducing new forms of corporate governance, introducing a board model of functioning and concentrating the power to the strategic core of the organization
With changing times newer aspects were included in the NPM model mentioned above as well and what the scholars term as NPM model 2 was brought in. The critical aspects of this new model were:
Introduction of a more elaborate and evolved quasi-market system
Creation of more fragmented or loosely contracted public sector organizations at the local level setting in a change from management of hierarchy to management of contract
Distinguishing between the small strategic core and the large organizational periphery, market testing and contracting out the non strategic functions
Delayering and downsizing
Introduction of new managerial concepts like Management by Influence, creating network for of organizations, creating strategic alliances between the organizations
Moving away from standardized service forms to more flexible and varied service forms
Now, as more and more work was done in the areas of Human Resources and Relations and popular texts which stressed on the need of excellence, the importance of organizational culture, values, vision and the concept of Learning Organization introduced by Peter Senge (1990) influenced the new public management as well and therefore suitable changed were also suggested in the theory by the scholars.
In a bottom up form of organization- Organizational development and learning was gaining importance. Organizational culture was seen as a glue which holds the organization together, judging the performance by results etc were the new point of views
In the top down form of organization- Securing changes in organizational culture was cited as important, clarifying and projecting the vision and leadership from top to down was asked for, private sector emerged as a role model for the neo style public sector, training, corporate logos, communication strategies, assertive HR and all the other aspects that are characteristic jargon of private sector were encouraged to be adopted So, basically the new public management was a radical movement to change not just the way a public sector functions but also the entire perception about it.
Approaches to Public Administration
We have come across a number of times during our exploration of the topic, that it is somewhat difficult to define public administration in concrete terms. It has close association, interaction and influences from several fields of studies like law, political and social science administrative science and human relations and even behavioral science for that matter. One can easily infer that the approaches to study this field would also be as varied and as vast as the subject matter itself. And indeed so, that there are many approaches to public administration as we shall read about in consecutive articles. For the moment, we would take a step back and try and understand the reason behind so many approaches to this field of study and why were they required.
Public administration as a serious subject which required scientific attention was first promulgated by Woodrow Wilson and as we read in the Wilsonian vision of Public Administration he fiercely recommended that there should be more scrutiny and debate and studies carried out in this area to make it more efficient and robust.
However, it was only during the beginning of the twentieth century that American Universities introduced Public Administration as a subject of academic study influenced by L.D White’s important book called Introduction to the Study of Public Administration. There were also attempts made by scholars to differentiate between politics and administration, hence comparative study of two to understand Public Administration better came into existence.
Sometime later the Principles approach to public administration was introduced. This approach was influenced by W. F. Willoughby’s work called Principles of Public Administration in 1927. His work emphasized that scientific study and research of administration can help derive fundamental principles regarding the same. This approach was championed by other authors and scholars like Fayol, Mooney, Lyndall, Urwick etc. So, resorting to scientific method of exploring, researching, observing, recording, classifying etc was used to study Public Administration.
By this time, some important work had started happening in the areas of Human Relations by the likes of Elton Mayo, his Hawthorne experiment threw interesting light on social and psychological forces in work situations. So the importance of attitudes, feeling, sentiments and social relations, work group dynamics etc started influencing the vey formal structure and way of working; present and preferred by the public organizations.
After the Second World War, behavioral sciences were quite a hot debate in the academics with a lot of research and work carried out in the field. Herbert Simon’s Administrative Behavior and Robert Dahl’s, The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems; critically questioned the inadequacies and limitations of the orthodox public administration of the pre war days. Simon focused on the aspect of decision making in Public Administration and stressed on the need to develop a robust and relevant administrative theory based on precise and logical study of human behavior.
And recently with the advent of technology in every walk of life and a common consensus amongst authors and scholars that both public and private administration are similar in many manner, the management science approach to public management came into existence.
The newest approach is that of policy analysis approach since the Government is venturing into new areas and different activities with increased involvement in welfare programs, the process of making public policies and its analysis, the measurement of the output etc became the new areas of study for the scholars and subject matter experts.
In the subsequent articles we shall dwell deeper into some of these approaches described above and see how they shaped and influenced the study of Public Administration.
Historical and Legal Approach to the Study of Public Administration
The study of History is often cited as important to understand the present as well as the future. The study of public administration also cannot be complete without understanding the evolution and progress of civilizations.
The Historical approach to public administration focuses on the administrative systems, process and policies practiced in the past and then try to interpret them relevantly in the context of present times. There are two sides of the coin which the scholars have argued, while this approach may provide rich details regarding what worked and what not in the past but authors like John Pierre and B Guy Peters say that the study of history cannot provide any usable information which can be used now and the students of public administration should not have such misconceived notions. The important point to note is that scholars should know when to revisit the past and when to disassociate from it to draw pertinent theories and conclusions.
The study of history of administration does not become any lesser important even in the light of above contrasting argument. It remains important because developments in society over time and ages have a lasting effect on the quality and quantity of public services delivered.
This approach helps the scholars and students to understand that how the Government adjusted its administration and functioning with changing times and what ramifications it had. The study of the past also provides crucial information regarding why some methods, policies, systems etc were adopted and which needs did they address.
With the importance of historical approach established in studies of public administration, we shall now see what the legal approach to public administration was. Taking the legal route to public administration would venture into the formidable legal structure and organization of public bodies. As the name suggests, this approach associated itself with laws, rules, regulations, codes, official duties etc. It also described the power, limitations and discretionary powers of the authority and judicial decisions. Many countries especially in Europe like Germany, France, Belgium and others have adopted the legal route to study public administration.
It works well for these countries as they have two distinct divisions of laws, the constitutional and the other administrative. The constitutional law mainly dealt with the interrelation of power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Government while the administrative part concerns itself with the functioning of the public organizations.
The legal approach throws light on the legal framework in which the public administration operates but excludes other important and informal aspects like sociological and psychological dynamics at play and therefore is considered an incomplete approach by many scholars. However there were many other takers for it and in USA, Frank J Goodnow, was an important advocate of this legal approach. In his book Politics and Administration he challenges Montesquieu’s theory of separation of power in the book Esprit De Lois which proposed three branches of power; legislative, executive and judiciary but highlighted the independence of judiciary from administrative as the sole recognition of judicial power. According to Goodnow, this in itself was not sufficient and that extreme form of this theory was incapable of application to any concrete political organization. Goodnow and his further work have greatly influenced the way the American Public Administration shaped up in the later years.
Institutional Approach to Public Administration
The instructional approach to the study of public administration concerns itself with the institutions and organizations of the State. The core area of this method lies in detailed study of the structure, the functioning, rules, and regulations of the executives, legislatures and the departments of the Government. The scholars who practice this approach consider administration to be an apolitical and technical function which lies only in the aspect of policy implementation.
Now, there were many authors like L D White and Luther Gulick who concentrated their effort in describing what an institutional structure was and did little to build any theory actually. The reader may be intrigued as to why this special attention was paid to define institutions. The present day definition of institution encompassing all kinds of rules, regulations and organizations is argued as inaccurate by many authors like B Guy Peters and Jon Pierre. Institutionalization of an organization takes time.
An organization keeps getting complex by adding informal norms and practices which happens through its interaction with the external environment and they are in a sense independent of the individuals who make an organization at a given point of time. However, according to Selznick (1957), any organization which is complex needs to be infused with value which is beyond the technical requirement of the tasks that are performed by that organization. This means that an organization has a distinctive sense of self and identity and its way and its beliefs become important for the society as well. It also starts representing the aspiration of the community and in turn influences the community with their own values and beliefs. A real institution becomes a symbol for the community in many ways, like the very building in which it is housed. It can be interestingly explained and seen all through the History that the revolting group often occupy the presidential palace or offices or the parliamentary buildings or pose a threat to the powerful and symbolic structures like the terrorist threat on the Pentagon during 9/11 and the 26/11 Taj Hotel attack in India.
The above discussion becomes relevant with respect to the study of public administration because Government organizations are institutional in many ways and represent the needs and aspirations of the community. Therefore, studying and understanding their administration becomes important to make them more efficient and result oriented.
The traditional study of public administration emphasized on the knowledge of History and Law but this institutional approach focuses on the organizational structure, goals and principles as primary. So, a lot of attention was given to the problems related to the functioning of an organization like delegation, coordination & control and bureaucratic structure.
The main drawback to this approach was that little or no attention was given to the external sociological and psychological factors. These factors affect the organization in ways which are not always subtle, but have strong ramifications on the health and well being of an organization.
With this new approach the older approach and theories to the study of public administration also underwent a few changes. There were serious questions raised on the politics- administration bifurcation. The premise that the basic principles of administration can be applied universally was also challenged with the emergence of diverse administrative environments. The administrative goals of economy and efficiency were supplemented with social and economic progress. And also, a lot of management principles came into the field of public administration. We shall explore a couple of more approaches to the study of administration in subsequent articles.
Behavioral Systems Approach to Public Administration
The behavioral approach to public administration owes its genesis to the Human Relations Movement of the 1930s. The movement started off as a protest to the traditional approaches to public administration that focused on organizations, institutionalization, rules, and code of conducts etc with absolutely no mention of people who are the center of all these activities.
The pioneering work done by Taylor and the emergence of Scientific Management created quite stir not just in the industrial sector but also in management and study of public administration. Henry Fayol worked on his Fayolism at around the same time as Taylor and came up with different set of functions and principles for the management bringing in terms like discipline, unity of command, equity and team spirit.
Herbort Sumon was one of the torch bearers of this moment and stated that administrative behavior is part of behavioral sciences and the study of public administration cannot be complete without the study of individual and collective human behavior in administrative situations. The behavioral approach has certain salient features like:
The literature that has been written on the topic stays away from being prescriptive. It follows a descriptive course with an exception to the studies carried out in the areas of motivation
Individuals were paid attention to and aspects like motivation, decision making, authority and control were brought into focus
The informal aspects of an organization and communication patterns amongst the members were emphasized
The effort was to identify operational definition of terms and a lot of empirical study like field study, laboratory study and statistical methods were conducted
It borrows a lot from other social sciences, social psychology and cultural anthropology
This approach made more sense and had greater relevance than earlier approaches as it took into consideration the fact that the political, social, economical and psychological environments have an effect on human motivation and which ultimately has an effect on the work output of an individual. It also helped to develop an understanding of what, how and why of the way the public administrators act. It showed that the way administration is conducted is influenced by human sentiments, presumptions biases and perception, which many of us may have experienced firsthand during our interaction with government organizations and public administrators.
Behavioral approach has contributed to the study of public administration in many ways like the scholars started studying cross-structural and cross-cultural administrative behaviors and which further paved the way for the comparative study of public administration.
Like all new things, this approach too has its fair share of criticism and the critics have ruthlessly questioned the utility of this approach in the analysis of administrative problems. They find it limited in scope and of little use. The study of public administration goes beyond small social groups and deals with large communities and therefore the behavioral approach falls short.
The modern behavioral approach is leaning towards becoming more action oriented and prescription format nevertheless. Roscoe Martin and his Craft Perspective define the shift better. It concerns itself with the decisions, outcomes and the political skill needed to perform a particular managerial job.
The Closed and Open Models of Public Administration
The closed and open model approach to the study of public administration focuses on the organization itself. One way to study complex organizations is to view them as an open or a closed system. Before we try to understand the open and close system with respect to the study of public administration in general and organizations in specific, let us make an effort to know what an open and a closed system are.
An open system is a system which interacts and exchanges matter with its environment, imagine a pond while a closed system remains isolated from its environment; think an aquarium. While studying complex organizations American sociologist James D Thompson published a book in 1967 called Organization in Action in which he analyzed the behaviors of the complex organization as entities in action. He studied the organization in the light of their technologies and environment and thus he came to identify the meaning of a closed and open system within organizational context.
According to Thompson, an organization is called a close system when:
The resources of an organization are employed in a functional manner
Each component of the organization contributes to the logic of the system where controlled mechanisms are employed to diminish uncertainties
The examples he gave of a closed system were Taylor and his Scientific Management, Weber’s concept of beurocracy and Gulick and Urwick’s Administrative Management.
Thompson also defined an open system with respect to organizations, he said that: The complex organization is a set of interdependent parts which together make up a whole because each contributes something and receives something from the whole which in turn is interdependent with some larger environment. So an open system is dynamic, full of surprises as well as uncertainties. Systems keep evolving through a continuous process of development and strive to attain homeostasis or the state of equilibrium.
An important case study was carried out by Philip Selznick in 1940s to study the open system approach to organizational analysis. He conducted his research on the emerging Tennessee Valley Authority entitled TVA and Grass Roots (1949). He focused his research on the aspects of decentralization and involvement of already existing local and state agencies, with a view, to practice democratic planning. It was during this case study that he defined an open system also known as the institutional approach, about which we know from the previous chapter. According to Selznick, an organization is understood to be a means to achieve goals but the members of the organization act more than just means; they participate whole heartedly with each individual equipped with different skills, expertise, motivations and desires. An organization also needs to interact with parties, interest groups and other agencies, which communicate and influence the organization; and each other.
From the managerial context, an organization cannot take only one strict approach that is, either of an open or a closed system, it needs to keep switching positions as and when need arises to achieve the stability and certainty required to perform jobs and deliver goals.
Structural Functional Approach to Public Administration
The structural functional approach to public administration is a term adapted from sociology and anthropology which interprets society as a structure with interrelated parts. This approach was developed by the celebrated anthropologist Malinowski and Radcliff Brown. So, according to them, a society has a structure and functions. These functions are norms, customs, traditions and institutions and can be analogized as organs of a body, as explained by Herbert Spencer. All these functions need to work together to make the body function as a whole.
Having explained the broader meaning of the term; it makes more sense for us to understand it from the perspective of public administration which would guide our further analysis of the topic. During his stint as a Researcher at the Foreign Policy Association in USA, Fred Riggs came across an interesting phenomenon regarding the American Public Administration. He found them to be extremely narcissistic in their approach which believed that the American way of administration was unique without any counterparts elsewhere in the world and that it was capable of answering all the administrative problems emerging in the new developing countries.
To explore the consequences of intermingling of contrasting systems in the developing countries, he looked at the structural functional approach of the social sciences. This approach provides a mechanism to understand social processes. The function is the consequence of patterns of actions while the structure is the resultant institution and the pattern of action itself. It reads complicated but the theory in itself is not that difficult to understand. Social structures can be concrete (like Government department and Bureaus or even specific societies held together by shared beliefs, customs and morals) and also analytic like structure of power or authority.
These structures perform certain functions and in terms of structural functional approach, these functions have an interdependent pattern between structures. So as a public administration student, if one would want to study bureaucracy, the first step would be to view beurocracy as a structure which has administrative system with characteristics like hierarchy, specialization, rules and roles. The behavioral characteristics can be rationality, neutrality, professionalism and rule orientation. Subsequently, one can proceed to analyze the functions of bureaucracy.
Now, we come to an interesting and relevant question pertaining to the above explanation. Do the similar kinds of structures perform the same functions? The structural functionalists say a big Nay to that, which means that a structure can perform multiple functions and vice versa i.e. one function can be performed by multiple structures.
According to Riggs, there are five functional requisites of a society:
Economic
Socio-communicational
Symbolic
Political
While talking about Riggs explanation of the concept and contribution to this approach, we cannot proceed further without mentioning his Prismatic Model. This model uses a common phenomenon as an analogy, when white light passes through a prism it breaks into seven colors of different wavelength. As per Riggs, the white light is the fused structure of traditional society. The rainbow represents the diffracted (or refracted) structures of an industrialized society. Inside the prism the society was in transition.
Riggs challenged the traditional approaches of public administration implying that basic principles of administration have universal application. It also contributed to the comparative study of public administration by providing a more relevant perspective; that not all systems work the same in all places, so one can take what one likes and leave the rest.
Public Policy Approach to Public Administration
We remember reading about the Wilsonian philosophy of public administration and the famous dichotomy of politics and administration. After Wilson, there were many authors like Frank J Goodnow, L D White and F. W. Willoughby who elaborated on the topic and reaffirmed the need to separate the political functions and administrative functions of the government. Willoughby went to the extent of calling public administration as the fourth branch of Government after legislative, executive and judiciary.
However, this politic-administration dichotomy theory lost it relevance after the Second World War. The writers, authors, academicians and subject matter experts finally awakened to the fact that administration of a government can never be free of political elements. They started protesting and writing against the separation of politics and administration as they could clearly see that both were horribly intertwined with one another and impossible to separate both in spirit and action.
After the Second World War, there was a renewed interest in the aspects of administration because of the practical encounters and alliances formed during the war, creation of international organizations and emergence of the developing countries. Also, after the war, the Government reinvented itself from a peace keeper and provider of services to become a Welfare State. The public expenditure in most parts of the world increased greatly after 1945 as the Governments started taking more and more initiatives for the welfare of the society. A lot of reforms were carried out in areas not just regarding the content of public policy but also the ways in which they were formulated.
This new approach gained momentum after 1970s when a lot of analysis started happening around the way the government policies affected the people. The Vietnam War and Watergate scandal in US, the Administrative Reforms Commission established in India in 1966, the initiative to reduce public expenditure in order to reduce direct taxation under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the creation of the Malaysian Administrative and Management Planning Unit in 1977 in Malaysia were to name a few.
With changing times, the needs of the society have also changed and so has the role of the government and nature of its policies. The increase in the average age of the population has made the Government to look into the pension policies in the developed countries while the young illiterate population of the developing countries has forced their governments to come up with policies like Right to Education in India.
The irony of this public policy approach is that it encompasses many aspects of government functioning. The spectrum has become so broad that; to a student of public administration, it appears confused and spread all over. The other approaches that have clear segregation between the politics and administration were clearly distinguishable and easy to understand.
Many readers may also get dissuaded to realize that politics influence the policy making as well as the administration aspects of the way a Government functions. However with increasing number of stakeholders and pressure groups, the politics can be kept in check and the role of politician comes under scanner to dissuade any kind of strategic policy making to benefit only a few.
Political Economy Approach to Public Administration
We have read about the famous Wilsonian dichotomy of politics and administration and after the Second World War the diminishing relevance of this dichotomy. The above reference is vital to be kept in mind to understand this topic which brings together the science of politics and economic together to gain a detailed understanding of the administration of the state and its resources.
After the New Public Administration theory of 1968, there was a new approach proposed in the 1970s which talked about economic approaches to analyze public administration called the Public Choice Theory. We shall take a step back to understand a few concepts and developments of that time to better analyze the Public Choice Theory.
By the middle of the last century, the Pigouvian social welfare system was adopted by many economies. British economist Arthur C Pigou wrote a book called The Economic of Welfare in 1920 and also tried defining what welfare is in economic terms. According to him economic welfare can be measured like monetary welfare by means of using money as a yardstick.
Thus economic welfare, in the Pigouvian sense is the utility satisfaction that a person derives from the use of goods and services which can be exchanged amongst each other. The important aspect of this theory was that to maximize the welfare through the means of distribution of national income. Now, we also need to understand a term called externality. It comes into action when an individual X affects Y in a reckless manner without taking Y’s gains or losses into account. This leads to a situation called externality. Therefore, in an economy, the Government intervention becomes important to address these externalities.
Consider this example given by Pigou himself: If a person is running the business of manufacturing alcohol, there is a specific and substantial social impact of this product. This can be, increase in crimes, increased cost of police staff and prisons, the long time and resources investment of the judiciary etc, which exceeds the net private product, the alcohol. To counter this, the alcohol production will have to be increased by the manufacturer. To deal with this overproduction the Government would have to impose a tax on the manufacturers. This tax would be to equate the private cost (of the manufacturer) and the social cost.
The above explanation was necessary to understand the Public Choice theory in a rather detailed manner. Before this theory was proposed, economists and other subject matter experts considered State or the Government to be an agent beyond the realms of economic theories. The state functioned on different drivers than economy and it was an accepted fact. However, the Public Choice theory challenged this very fact and proposed the use of economic yardstick to evaluate the resource allocation in the public sector and economic analysis to identify the inefficiencies in the Government policy and decision making processes. It also makes a premise that the bureaucrats and politicians work on a model to increase their own power and influence and end up formulating policies which may be against the larger public interest. Not, that we needed a theory to prove that however, it got a thumbs up from many authors and subject matter experts. This theory also brought in a more consumer centric approach in the formulation of policies and the manner in which the government machinery should function. There was a clear inclination towards democratic administration from bureaucracy and an important aspect was emphasized that the government action needs to be in sync with the values, needs and wants of the citizens.
Marxian Traditions and their Approach to Public Administration
Karl Marx has often been cited as the most powerful personality in the history of human civilization. He was a philosopher while being an economist, a socialist who was also a journalist and a historian who proposed the materialist conception of history. His views regarding his areas of work and interests are collectively termed as Marxian.
Karl Marx was a rebel in many ways which also contributed to his abilities to look and understand beyond the obvious. He firmly believed that the world cannot be changed just by generating ideas; changes can be brought in, only by real, physical activity. Even as s student Marx was deeply influenced by the work of German philosopher G.W.F.Hegel. It was Hegel who inspired Marx to switch from legal studies to philosophy; a fact Marx admitted in a letter to his father, justifying his decision. What is interesting is that, Hegel and his inspiration did not prevent Marx from comprehending the lacunae between the rational and the real in the philosophies of Hegel. One of his important works was his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the Right. It is advisable to the reader to do a little background study about the philosophy and works of G.W.F. Hegel, to understand the above discussion in a better light.
It would only make sense to point out to the readers at this stage is that Marx wrote very little about bureaucracy as such, and mostly after 1843. However whatever little he wrote gives a clear understanding of his stand regarding the need and relevance of bureaucracy in a modern State. Marx believed that understanding the functionalism and structuralism of bureaucracy was critical because it is the political expression of the division of labor.
In his The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx calls France as the abode to bureaucracy as opposed to Germany which in his opinion, up until then was the supreme example of oppressive bureaucratic conditions in the states. He suggests that bureaucracy create conditions which subjects people to gross manipulations.
Another important deviation from the Hegel influence can be viewed in the manner Marx and Hegel understood bureaucracy. According to Hegel public administration was a bridge between the State and civil societies. The state through bureaucracy joined various particular interest to arrive at one general interest.
On the other hand Marx viewed that the State did not represent the general interest but the interests of the ruling or the dominant class. And obvious enough, this class was a part of the civil society. He went on to say that in a capitalist economy, the bureaucracy is aligned with the dominant class and it masquerades the interests of this dominant class as the general interest which is subsequently forced on the society.
While reading Marx on bureaucracy one can visualize it as an oppressive, mysterious system beyond the understanding or control of common people. It has certain symbols and secret ways of working and staunch traditions which makes it inherently incompetent in so many ways. Lenin was a follower of Marxian approach on bureaucracy and had ruled out any scope of it when the capitalism would be thrown out of Russian. But, after 1917, when he came into power, he could not help but rely on bureaucracy to help him run the State.
Marx was never oblivious to the growing popularity of bureaucracy and the need of public administration as an aspect of Government functioning, around the world. Nevertheless, this promulgation of bureaucracy did not prevent him to see the dangerous loopholes it carried.
Political Science and Public Administration
We have read about the dichotomy between the politics and administration. Subsequently, we also read about how the later authors and subject matter experts opposed the earlier dichotomy and insisted that politics and administration cannot be viewed in isolation. In this section let us try to understand the relationship between the politics and administration.
According to the political scientist James Pfiffner, the politics and administration are so closely knit together that it becomes difficult to draw the line where one ends and the other begins. Politics is the study of power which is the latest definition of the term. According to Raymond Aron, politics is the study of authority relations between the individual and groups and the hierarchy power which establishes itself within all numerous and complex communities. As per this definition, since, power is kind of omnipresent, it is safe to assume that it has an important say in the matters of public administration as well.
Another important figure in the field was Dwight Waldo, an American political scientist and a prominent figure in the area of modern public administration. In his book: The administrative state: a study of the political theory of American public administration, he explains an interesting phenomenon regarding the evolution of reforms in civil services in USA. The principal concern of early civil service reformers was not greater administrative efficiency but was cleansing and promoting democracy. The primary issue was not increasing efficiency but was protecting and building moral.
There is no argument regarding the fact that public administration emerged as a discipline of political science, the former deals with the output of the Government machinery and the latter with the input. It can also be put as such that, political science provides the framework within which public administration functions. From the academic perspective, both these subjects share a number of common areas of study like constitutional law, administrative law, delegated legislation, government budgeting and local governments amongst many other. So, a comprehensive understanding of both the subjects is mutually inclusive to each other, to learn one, the other has to be mastered as well.
Another important academic field from which public administration heavily borrows and is deeply influenced is the Sociology. It is a branch of study which deals with social order, change, class, conflict, problems, associations and institutions. According to Marshal Edward Dimock, administration takes place in a social setting and it is the society which determines the pattern of administration. He goes ahead and adds that through an administrative leadership however, the society itself can be changed for good. He says that the job of a public administrator is not mere administration but that of a social engineer who can bring about desirable changes in the society.
In the modern times, the various activities which the society governed and administered itself like community welfare, health, security etc have been taken over by the Government and public administration departments. The social control has been replaced by administrative controls and hence, it makes sense for the public administrators to be in sync with societal goals.
We have constantly been referring to diverse subjects to understand public administration better; the reader is now in a position to understand the relevance, importance and vastness of this subject which has an immediate and direct interaction with us in our everyday lives.
Role of Public Administration in the Modern State
The critical role of public administration as defined by John Rohr (a leading scholar of the US Constitution and its relation to public administration and civil servants) is governing the society. The authors have also argued that a government can exist without a legislature, even without a judiciary but never without administration. The government will become as dysfunctional as a lame horse in a derby race. Public administration as a part of Government has existed since the time of the monarchies, ancient India’s most prominent political scientist and economist Chanakya (373-283 BCE) in his treatise Arthashashtra; dedicates substantial chapters to Statecraft or the public administration of a state.
Public administration provides numerous services to the public and serves their interests in many ways. As explained by Felix A Negro, the real core of administration is the basic service which is performed for the public. It is the administration which ensures the security and protection of life and property of the members of the society by maintaining proper law and order.
The economical, cultural and even spiritual progress for that matter; of a society depends on the public administration. The day to day functioning of the Government machinery, external affairs and the most important of all, the national defense are the other important functions performed by the public administration of the country.
In the modern state, the role and scope of public administration is ever expanding and all encompassing. We are way past the laissez-fare state which was responsible for maintaining law and order only. The modern state which expects government to provide much more has seen the role of public administration change dramatically, since those times.
The current role and functions adopted by public administration owes its origin to the changes which the human history has witnessed in the last couple of centuries. The first important change was the industrial revolution which resulted in the urbanization of the large cities of the world. Secondly, there was a change in the political philosophy from minimalist state intervention (or laissez-fare) and individualism to social welfare. The two World Wars combined with the changing international scenarios with new countries, alliances and organizations like the formation of United Nations, generated a need to reform the goals of administration in the society; not just of within a nation but also with respect to the world.
Lastly, the increasing population of the world means tremendous pressure on the available resources. The role of providing for basic amenities like food and shelter has therefore fallen into the lap of the Government.
According to E N Gladden, there are three characteristics of an efficient public administration:
It needs to meet the functional aims for which it has been created
It must be able to meet the long term needs which might arise due to change in administrative techniques or the changes in social environment which are more important and influential
It needs to conform to a centralized plan but also accommodate the specific and special demand of particular department units
There is an increasing awareness amongst the citizens of a country regarding their rights and the duties of the Government. Thus, the role and functions of public administration has also become quite dynamic in nature and is constantly evolving in response to the changing needs and demands of the society. Technological intervention, incorporation of new management principles, taking into accounts the needs and aspirations of the end customer are some of the new trends in the areas of public administration.
Democratic and Socialist Goals of Public Administration
The role and functions of the Government and the bureaucracy is that which keeps constantly evolving in the wake of developments and changes in and around the world. During our discourse we have seen how the academic discipline of public administration has evolved. It has undergone reforms and has been influenced by developments in other sciences like social and behavioral.
Democracy is a representative form of Government chosen by the people. The entire idea of public administration in a democracy is contradictory. Public administration as described by Frederick Camp Mosher is three steps removed from the people. According to Berkeley and Rouse public service and democracy are both opposing in nature yet complement each other.
In a democratic state, the spirit of democracy needs to be maintained in the manner in which the public services are administered. The public administration of a democratic state needs to be transparent, efficient and most importantly should be open for public scrutiny and criticism. It should ensure scope for incorporation of public opinions and ideas for improvement and delivering better services. It needs to be representing the general interest of a large section of people rather than personal interests of specific few.
In a diverse country like India where the social denominators like caste, religion, language etc pose barriers at so many levels, the public administration should be such that it rises above and transverses all differences.
According to Richard C Box in his book Democracy and Public Administration, there are several important roles that public administration plays in a Democracy, like:
Preserving and upholding democratic values and delivering democracy by ensuring the access to the fundamental and other rights of the citizens
Ensuring that the general interest of the public is addressed through the routes of public services
Administering all government institutions as per the democratic values
Following the instructions of the legislative bodies carefully while implementing policies, laws, rules and regulations
Acting as a role model of reliability, morality while being ethical and professional
We have read Karl Marx slamming bureaucracy as a government tool created and controlled by the dominant class to cater to their interests. Antonio Gramsci Italian socialist theorists states that bureaucracy is a narrow minded and conservative force and it becomes dangerous when it detaches itself from the mass of members that constitute it and starts functioning as an independent entity.
So if the resources and the power of their distribution lie with the state, the role that bureaucracy has to play can be:
Ensuring equitable distribution of goods and services
Improving the quality of living standards of people
Expanding the scope of administrative function to include all
Associating with people in more ways to make them a part of the administrative process
A reader may find these goals to be quite similar to that of a democratic set up and indeed it is. The only difference in a socialist set up is that the government tends to have more and centralized power. Critics have argues that democracy involves planning which means that the freedom and liberties of some will have to be given up for the greater good. However, in the long run, even to achieve socialism, certain level of democracy becomes essential.
Public Administration - Challenges in a Developed Society
The developed countries are identified by certain parameters like highly developed economy, greater technical infrastructure, high GDP and net income per capita, level of industrialization and also the standard of living of the people. Development and modernization of a state has an obvious and significant impact on its politics, culture and society. Subsequently, these changes find their ways in several other important institutions like judiciary, executive and legislative. USA has been one of the nations, which have witnessed vast changes and reforms in its administrative history owing to the industrialization, two world wars and the various academic and experimental studies carried out in the areas of social and behavioral sciences.
Let us also look at the general features of the public administration in developed countries before we proceed to study about the challenges they face.
The government organizations are significantly differentiated and functionally specific. The bureaucracies are large and perform a myriad of specialized functions and are of the Weberian type
There is a lot of internal specialization within the roles and the selection of people is based on merit
The decision and law making process is largely rational
The government institutions are present in all spheres of the life of the citizens
Since there is popular interest in public affairs, there is a direct relationship between political power and legitimacy
Now, the problems that the public administration of developed countries faces are also complex. The first problem which is kind of basic is the lack of coherence between numerous service providing agencies and regulatory bodies. The problem especially surfaces at the local levels where the authorities design their own programs and also run the programs funded by the national authorities. The other example can be dominance of politicians in the matters of specialized domains of bureaucracy.
Most of the developed states, especially of Europe are called Administrative States and their bureaucracies perform certain specific functions. Rumki Basu in her book Public Administration: Concepts and Theories explains these functions. According to her, the public administration in these countries performs regulatory functions while ensuring the enforcement of law and order, collection of revenues and the national defense against aggression.
The public administration provides a range of services like education, health, cultural, insurance, housing, unemployment benefits and communication and transport. They also play an important role in bringing about the economic growth of the country by operating industries, giving loans etc.
The present day challenges in the developed countries are primarily economic. The economic depression has put immense pressures on the services provided by the government. A lot of reforms have been proposed in which the state resources are being closely administered. The withdrawal of certain benefits has left the public administration of the countries exposed to a lot of criticism and flag from the common people. The regulatory role of public bodies has also come under scrutiny for their failure to prevent major upheavals from taking place. As things improve, the role and challenges of public administration shall change once again.
Importance and Challenges in a Developing Society
The developing countries of the world are concentrated in the regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The developing nations are characterized by an economy which is transitioning from agrarian to industrial. You may recall Fred Riggs and his famous Prismatic Model from the earlier article, according to Riggs, the developing nations are the prismatic societies. There are a few characteristic features of these developing economies:
They have all been an Imperial nation’s colony at some point in their history
The subsequent exploitation by these colonial masters has driven their economies into a state of deep national debts
The national income as well as the per capita income is very low
The social development in these countries are in early stages
The main problems are poverty, population explosion, illiteracy, poor sanitation, insufficient infrastructure and in a rapidly developing economy like India, the problem of inequitable distribution of this economic prosperity between rural Bharat and urban India
The conflicting interests and diversities based on caste, creed, language, regions etc
There are constant conflicts between the traditional and the modern
The public administration plays a crucial role in achieving inclusive developmental goals
Now, having understood the general scenario prevalent in these developing countries, we can take a step forward and try to understand the nature of public administration in these economies.
The public administration system of these nations are often than not an imitation of that of their colonial masters
The imitative system seems divorced and distant from the people and their problems
There is an acute shortage of skilled manpower with technical and managerial competencies
Also, there is a kind of monopoly of bureaucracies in these nations because of which they enjoy vast amount of autonomy however the goals intended to achieve by them often gets lost amidst all this
An interesting phenomenon coined by Riggs called Formalism is common place in these economies. According to it, the bureaucratic officers and public servants insist on following law, rules etc and tenaciously hold on to them while providing services to the people however their own professional behavior is far removed from the laid down laws, rules and regulations
The problems plaguing the bureaucracies of these countries are that they are ill equipped to carry out developmental goals. Since, they came into existence to serve the goals and objectives of their colonial masters; they seem to be in disharmony with the changing needs and aspirations of the natives. For e.g. the Indian Police still follows the 1865 Police Commission guidelines which was laid out to address the law and order situation in the era of British Raj.
In developing countries the major challenge is development and modernization. The public institutions have the enormous developmental tasks in their hands; combined with rapid economic development due to the growth in the private sector and the economically wealthy young population, the demand for delivery of services is increasing. Finally, the rural areas have not kept up with the rapidly growing urban areas, whether in Brazil or in India, they look upon Government, public administration and public servants as their only hope.
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