UGBS 105

SOME BASIC CONCEPTS IN PUBLIC ADMIN.

 Local government:
❑Smaller decentralized political and administrative unit within a well-defined
geographical area that exercises transferred powers and functions from the central
government.
❑They are administrative offices that are smaller than a state, province or central
government.
❑They are semi-autonomous bodies:
❑The exercise legal powers by making bye laws
❑They make their decisions and implement them

❑ They are established by law [in Ghana PNDC Law 207 of 1988 and Local Government
Act (ACT 462) established the local government units].
❑There currently 2016 local government units in Ghana.
 Bureaucracy
❑The concept refers how administrative execution of legal rules in an
organization are organized especially in the public sector.

It is characterized with:
➢ Standard procedure

➢ Formal division of responsibility

➢ Hierarchical and impersonal relationships

➢ Organized to ensure the enforcement of universal rules

 Institutions:
❑Institutions according to Ostrom (1990) are sets of rules which are used
to determine who is eligible to make certain decisions in a particular
arena.
❑They determine what;
❑Actions are allowed or constrained

❑Procedures are must be followed

❑Information must be provided

❑Pay-offs must be assigned to individuals etc

 Governance:
❑Can refer to the way society sets, organizes and manages the rules that guide
policy-making and implementation.
❑It may also be viewed as the traditions and the institutions by which authority in a
country is exercised for the common good.
❑It is a very broad concept that operates at all levels
❑It covers:
❑How society selects its leaders
❑How the leaders are monitored and replaced
❑the capacity of the government to effectively manage its resources and
implement sound policies
❑the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and
social interactions among them etc.
 Good Governance
❑Governance is said to be “good” when it allocates and manages resources to respond
to collective problems.

❑Governance is also said to be “good” when it efficiently provides public goods of

necessary quality to its citizens.

❑Good governance is thus assessed based on the quantity and quality of the goods and
services provided by the state to citizens
 Civil Society
It refers to a population organized in associations voluntarily and independent
from the state.
It consists of organizations that citizens create and join on their own, without any
prompting or interference by government.
It main feature is that it is marked off from the state.
It includes interest based groups
➢democratic political parties; unions; business associations
➢charitable organizations
➢ social clubs
➢religious and
➢ ethnic based groups.
 Forms of Government
Authoritarianism
❑Refers to the system of governance where the form of social control is
characterized by strict adherence to the authority of the state or organization.

❑It normally uses oppression to maintain and enforce control

❑Fundamental human rights are sometimes abused by the state

Democracy:
A form of government where supreme power is vested in the people
and exercise directly or indirectly by representation

It involves:
➢Periodic free and fair elections
➢The rule of law
➢Separation of powers
➢Checks and balances
➢Guarantee of fundamental human rights etc.
 Autocracy
❑Refers to the rule by one person

❑One person exercises supreme governing authority

❑Such leaders may rely on institutions like the army, bureaucracy and loyal
individuals for advice but still has considerable latitude to make final decisions.

❑typical examples are Adolf Hitler

 Oligarchy
❑Refers to the rule by the few

❑Small number of individuals usually not more than 20 at the top of the ruling elite
share power among themselves through understanding and compromises

❑Contemporary China can be described as been ruled by a Communist Party

Oligarchies
 Totalitarianism
❑A form of authoritarianism in which the governments’ domination of politics, the
economy, and the society is virtually total.

❑The government controls and regulates almost every aspect of citizens’ life in the
state (the economy, religion, education, the media, culture, leisure activities).

❑The USSR under Stalin, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein are examples.
 Monarchy
❑A regime in which the crown exercises powerful and actual political power as the
head of state and government.
❑A constitutional monarchy is a regime in which the monarch is a head of state
but real decision making power is in the hands of other institutional authorities
such as legislators, the prime Minister, and other officials.
❑It is common in countries that once had powerful monarchies as a way of
preserving their historical traditions while radically diminishing the crown’s
actual power.
❑Contemporary monarchies include Belgium, Britain, Japan, Netherlands, Norway,
Denmark, Sweden.
 Communism
❑It is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization
based on common ownership of the means of production
❑Communist state is a state characterized by one party rule or one dominant party
the soviet union
❑The doctrine of the liberation of the proletariat
❑Proletariat- is that class in society which lives entirely on the sale of its labour
and does not make any profit from any kind of capital.
❑Their survival depends on the demand of labour (Frederick Engel)
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