Political Science and Public Administration (Part 2)Lecture-5: Evolution of the Public Administration

Discipline: Theories and Paradigms

Professor Dr. Mohammad Mohabbat KhanSenior most Professor University of DhakaDepartment of Public Administration Dhaka -1000Bangladesh

Emergence of Public Administration as an independent field

Luther Gulick and Paul Appleby were among those who argued for dichotomies that were wholly different from Wilson's.

Gulick has been called a strong personification of public administration in the United States (Fry 1989, 73). Gulick ascribes to many of Wilson’s themes, including a “science of administration,” increased efficiency, structural reform of the bureaucracy, and augmented executive authority.

The chief executive coordinates the otherwise disaggregate activities of a large, complex organization such as a government. However, Gulick challenged Wilson’s strict dichotomy by suggesting every action of a public administrator represents a “seamless web of discretion and interaction.”

The administrator’s role is to understand and coordinate public policy and interpret policy directives to the operating services, but with unquestioned loyalty to the decision of elected officials” (Fry 1989, 81).

Paul Appleby argued against the increasingly dominant theory that administrators were somehow neutral policy actors. He argued that “administrators are significant policy actors who influence the policy-making process in several different ways” (Denhadt 49).

Administrators are charged with the execution of public programs, the analysis of data for decision recommendations, and interpreting the law as it is carried out on a regular basis. Consequently, administrators influence and even produce policy on a daily basis.

Administrators are charged with the execution of public programs, the analysis of data for decision recommendations, and interpreting the law as it is carried out on a regular basis. Consequently, administrators influence and even produce policy on a daily basis.

Despite their break with Wilson on the issue of completely separating administration from politics, these divergent scholars agreed that a professional workforce remain educated, skilled, and exist in meritous competition for public sector employment.

Thus, Gulick and Appleby are major theorists whose theories truly break with Wilson's original public administration theories.

In addition to Gulick and Appleby, Herbert Simon, Chester Barnard, and Charles Lindblom are among the first of those recognized as early American public administrators. These men ushered in an era during which the field gained recognition as independent and unique, despite its multidisciplinary nature.

In Simon’s Administrative Behavior (1948), the argument is made that decision-making is the essence of management. The premises with which decisions are made are therefore integral to management. Simon also contributed a fact-value dichotomy, a theoretical separation to discern management, decisions based upon fact versus those made based on values.

Since one cannot make completely responsible decisions with public resources based solely on personal values, one must attempt to upon objectively determined facts.

Charles Lindblom also expressed disaffection with the comprehensive rational model in a 1959 article, “The Science of Muddling Through.” He argued for “successive limited comparison" .

Though the result of this process was not as rational or ultimately as reliable as decisions truly rational methods, incremental decision-making is undoubtedly preferable to making a decision “off-the-cuff” or those that consume extensive resources.

Chester Barnard was also one of the watershed scholars. That is, his theories would bridge what would become a gap between managers like F.W. Taylor and Henri Fayol with subsequent humanists: Mary Follett, Elton Mayo, and Chris Argyris.

Barnard published “The Economy of Incentives” (1938), in an attempt to explain individual participation in an organization. Barnard explained organizations as systems of exchange.

Low-level employees must have more incentive to remain with the organization for which they exchange their labor and loyalty. The organization (and higher level employees) must derive sufficient benefit from its employees to keep them. The net pull of the organization is determined by material rewards, environmental conditions, and other intangibles like recognition.

Governance: A New Paradigm of Public Administration The concept of "governance" is not new. It is as old as human

civilization. Simply put "governance" means: the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented). Governance can be used in several contexts such as corporate governance, international governance, national governance and local governance.

As a process, governance may operate in an organization of any size: from a single human being to all of humanity; and it may function for any purpose, good or evil, for profit or not.

A reasonable or rational purpose of governance might aim to assure, (sometimes on behalf of others) that an organization produces a worthwhile pattern of good results while avoiding an undesirable pattern of bad circumstances.

The World Bank defines governance as

the exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society's problems and affairs.

According to the United Nations Development Programme's Regional Project on Local Governance for Latin America:

Governance has been defined as the rules of the political system to solve conflicts between actors and adopt decision (legality). It has also been used to describe the "proper functioning of institutions and their acceptance by the public" (legitimacy). And it has been used to invoke the efficacy of government and the achievement of consensus by democratic means (participation).

Types of governance

Global governanceIn contrast to the traditional meaning of "governance", some authors like James Rosenau have used the term "global governance" to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority.

The best example of this in the international system or relationships between independent states. The term can however apply wherever a group of free equals need to form a regular relationship.

Corporate governance

Corporate governance consists of the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way people direct, administer or control a corporation. Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many players involved (the stakeholders) and the corporate goals. The principal players include the shareholders, management, and the board of directors. Other stakeholders include employees, suppliers, customers, banks and other lenders, regulators, the environment and the community at large.

The first documented use of the word "corporate governance" is by Richard Eells (1960, pg. 108) to denote "the structure and functioning of the corporate polity".

The "corporate government" concept itself is older and was already used in finance textbooks at the beginning of the 20th century (Becht, Bolton, Röell 2004). These origins support a multiple constituency (stakeholder) definition of corporate governance.

Project governance The term governance as used in industry (especially

in the information technology (IT) sector) describes the processes that need to exist for a successful project.

Information technology governance IT Governance primarily deals with connections

between business focus and IT management. The goal of clear governance is to assure the investment in IT general business value and mitigate the risks that are associated with IT projects.

Participatory Governance Participatory Governance focuses on deepening democratic

engagement through the participation of citizens in the processes of governance with the state.

The idea is that citizens should play a more direct roles in public decision-making or at least engage more deeply with political issues. Government officials should also be responsive to this kind of engagement. In practice, Participatory Governance can supplement the roles of citizens as voters or as watchdogs through more direct forms of involvement.

Measuring Governance

Over the last decade, several efforts have been conducted in the research and international development community in order to assess and measure the quality of governance of countries all around the world.

One of these efforts to create an internationally comparable measure of governance is the Worldwide Governance Indicators project, developed by members of the World Bank and the World Bank Institute.

The project reports aggregate and individual indicators for more than 200 countries for six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability, political stability and lack of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption.

To complement the macro-level cross-country Worldwide Governance Indicators, the World Bank Institute developed the World Bank Governance Surveys, which are a country level governance assessment tools that operate at the micro or sub-national level and use information gathered from a country’s own citizens, business people and public sector workers to diagnose governance vulnerabilities and suggest concrete approaches for fighting corruption.

A new World Governance Index (WGI) has been developed and is open for improvement through public participation.

The following domains, in the form of indicators and composite indexes, were selected to achieve the development of the WGI: Peace and Security, Rule of Law, Human Rights and Participation, Sustainable Development, and Human Development.

Additionally, in 2009 the Bertelsmann Foundation published the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI), which systematically measure the need for reform and the capacity for reform within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The project examines to what extent governments can identify, formulate and implement effective reforms that render a society well-equipped to meet future challenges, and ensure their future viability.

Good governance Good governance has long been a topic of discussion in the

international arena, and particularly in the field of development assistance. Indeed, good governance is pivotal to the development process.

Good governance has 8 major characteristics. It is participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follows the rule of law. It assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society.

Figure : Characteristics of good governance

Participation Participation by both men and women is a key

cornerstone of good governance. Participation could be either direct or through legitimate intermediate institutions or representatives.

Rule of law Good governance requires fair legal frameworks

that are enforced impartially. It also requires full protection of human rights, particularly those of minorities.

Transparency Transparency means that decisions taken and their

enforcement are done in a manner that follows rules and regulations. It also means that information is freely available and directly accessible to those who will be affected by such decisions and their enforcement.

Responsiveness Good governance requires that institutions and

processes try to serve all stakeholders within a reasonable timeframe.

Consensus oriented There are several actors and as many view points in

a given society. Good governance requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus in society on what is in the best interest of the whole community and how this can be achieved.

Equity and inclusiveness A society’s well being depends on ensuring that all

its members feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of society.

Effectiveness and efficiency Good governance means that processes and

institutions produce results that meet the needs of society while making the best use of resources at their disposal.

Accountability Accountability is a key requirement of good

governance. Not only governmental institutions but also the private sector and civil society organizations must be accountable to the public and to their institutional stakeholders.

New Public Management New public management (NPM), management techniques

and practices drawn mainly from the private sector, is increasingly seen as a global phenomenon. NPM reforms shift the emphasis from traditional public administration to public management.

Key elements include various forms of decentralizing management within public services (e.g., the creation of autonomous agencies and devolution of budgets and financial control), increasing use of markets and competition in the provision of public services (e.g., contracting out and other market-type mechanisms), and increasing emphasis on performance, outputs and customer orientation.

NPM reforms have been driven by a combination of economic, social, political and technological factors. A common feature of countries going down the NPM route has been the experience of economic and fiscal crises, which triggered the quest for efficiency and for ways to cut the cost of delivering public services.

NPM has become convenient shorthand for a set of broadly similar administrative doctrines which dominated the public administration reform agenda of most OECD countries from the late 1970s (Hood, 1991; Pollitt, 1993; Ridley, 1996).

It captures most of the structural, organizational and managerial changes taking place in the public services of these countries.

To quote Pollitt, NPM has variously been defined .as a vision, an ideology or (more prosaically) a bundle of particular management approaches and techniques (many of them borrowed from the private for-profit sector). (1994:1).

NPM is thus seen as a body of managerial thought (Ferlie et al., 1996:9) or as an ideological thought system based on ideas generated in the private sector and imported into the public sector (Hood, 1991, 1995).

NPM shifts the emphasis from traditional public administration to public management (Lane, 1994). As the title of Clarke and Newman’s (1997) book, The Managerial State, reflects, NPM is pushing the state toward managerialism.

The traditional model of organization and delivery of public services, based on the principles of bureaucratic hierarchy, planning, centralization, direct control and self-sufficiency, is apparently being replaced by a market-based public service management (Stewart and Walsh, 1992; Walsh, 1995; Flynn, 1993), or .enterprise culture. (Mascarenhas, 1993).

As Hood (1991) has noted, the two broad orientations of NPM are explained by the marriage of two different streams of ideas.

The first stresses business-type .managerialism. in the public sector and freedom to manage, and comes from the tradition of the scientific management movement (Hood, 1991:6-7; Ferlie et al., 1996:11).

The second strand of NPM derives from the .new institutional economics. movement, which has its theoretical foundation in public choice, transaction cost and principal-agent theories. These generated public sector reform themes based on ideas of market, competition, contracting, transparency and emphasis on incentive structures (cf. Williamson, 1975 and 1985) as a way of giving more .choice. and .voice. to service users and promoting efficiency in public service delivery.

NPM advocates argue that the dividing line between public and private sectors will diminish or be blurred and the same good management practices will be found in both sectors.

As Turner and Hulme (1997:232) have pointed out, the proponents of the NPM paradigm have been successful in marketing its key features and .persuading potential patients of its curative powers., sometimes backing up their claims with empirical evidence of substantial savings in public expenditure and improved services.

In his article titled A Public Management for All Seasons, Christopher Hood (1991) provided a list of the main doctrines of the NPM: 1. Hands-on professional management of public

organizations,i.e., managers are provided extreme autonomy to manage their organizations. This is expected to contribute to sufficient accountable administration.

2. Explicit standards and measures of performance, i.e., goals are well defined and performance targets set (later defined as performance indicators). This is also expected to enhance efficiency and ensure accountability.

3. Greater emphasis on output controls, i.e., resources are directed to areas according to measured performance, because of the need to stress results rather than procedures.

4. Shift to disaggregation of units in public sector, i.e., breaking up large corporatized units around products, funded separately and dealing with one another on an arms length basis.

5. Shift to a greater competition in public sector, i.e., move to term contracts and public tendering procedures, as rivalry is always the key to lower costs and better standards.

6. Stress on private-sector styles on management practice, i.e., military style bureaucracy is discarded. There should be more flexibility in hiring and rewards.

7. Stress on greater discipline and parsimony in public sector resource use, which means cutting direct costs, raising labour discipline, resisting union demands and limiting compliance costs to business.

Osborne and Gaebler (1992), in their book Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, have also described the main principles behind the NPM theory. They had put forward the following principles for reinventing the government : a. Catalytic government: steering rather than rowing; b. Community-owned government: empowering rather

than serving;

Competitive government: injecting competition in service delivery

Mission-driven government: transforming rule-driven organizations;

Results-oriented government: funding outcomes, not inputs;

Customer-driven government: meeting the needs of the customer, not the bureaucracy;

Enterprising government: earning rather than spending;

Anticipatory government: prevention rather than cure;

Decentralized government: from hierarchy to participation and teamwork.

Hays and Kearney (1997: 24) found that most of the studies on NPM had mentioned five core principles of NPM and thus concluded that they represent the most important philosophy of the discipline: (1) downsizing – reducing the size and scope of government; (2) managerialism – using business protocols in government; (3) decentralization – moving decision making closer to the service recipients; (4) debureaucratisation – restructuring government to emphasize results rather than processes; and (5) privatization – directing the allocation of governmental goods and services to outside firms.

All these principles are mutually related, relying heavily on the theory of the private sector and on business philosophy but aimed at minimizing the size and scope of governmental activities.

Both in developed and developing countries, the NPM doctrine was proposed as an appropriate response aimed at making the public sector administration more efficient, effective and responsive.

A number of measures such as small government, professional management, output orientation, performance-based accountability system, performance measures, strategic planning, quality management, contracting out, privatization, output budgeting, accrual accounting, contract employment and so forth have been suggested for improving the performance of the public sector in both developed and developing countries.