GOVERNMENT STUDIES (PIG3571)

INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

SESSION ONE

THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Definition:
Public administration is the formulation, implementation,
evaluation and modification of public policies

Various definitions:
The management of public programs
 The translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day

 The study of government decision making

 The analysis of the policies themselves

 The various inputs that have produced policies

 The inputs necessary to produce alternative policies

ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH CENTURY
 Pharaohs, kings & emperors have acquired treasurers & tax
collectors to administer the practical business of government
 Public administration was rife with nepotism, favoritism &
political patronage (spoils system)
 Public administrators, eyes & ears of rulers
 Expert civil servants necessitated legal record-keeping,
paying & feeding armies & levying taxes

Why the need for a sophisticated public administration grew?

Lorenz von Stein, an 1855, German professor from Vienna is

considered the founder of PADMINI
 He taught that PAdmin relies on sociology, political science,

administrative law & public finance

 He stated PAdmin is about theory & practice
In the USA:
 Woodrow Wilson is considered father of PAdmin
He wrote that:
 Administrative study to discover what government can

properly & successfully do

 Do with possible efficiency & least possible cost

Wilson was more influential than Von Stein due to an article he

wrote in 1887 advocating four concepts:

 Separation of politics & administration

 Comparative analysis of political & private organization
 Improving efficiency with business-like practices
 Training of civil servants & merit based assessment
 USA IN THE 1940s
Luther Gulick & Lyndall Urwick are two second generation scholars

Gulick developed a generic theory of organization that emphasized:

1. The scientific method
2. Efficiency
3. Professionalism
4. Structural reform
5. And executive

Gulick summarized the duties of administrators with an acronym

POSDCORB which stands for:
i. Planning
ii.Organizing
iii. Staffing
iv. Directing
v.Coordinating
vi. Reporting
vii. Budgeting
POST-WORLD WAR 11 TO THE 1970s
 The politics-administration dichotomy remained the center

of criticism
In the 1960s & 1970s
government itself came under fire as ineffective, inefficient &
largely a wasted effort:
a) The American intervention in Vietnam
b) Citizens called for efficient administration to replace

ineffective, wasteful bureaucracy

c) Public administration distanced itself from politics to

remain effective
1980s TO 1990s
 David Osborne & Ted Garbler proposed a new theory called

New Public Management in their book Reinventing

Government
The NPM advocated the use of:
a) Private sector style models
b) Organization ideas & values to improve the efficiency

& service-orientation of the public sector

NPM is splitting large bureaucracies into:
I. Smaller & more fragmented agencies
II. Encouraging competition between different public agencies
III. Encouraging competition between public agencies & private
firms
IV. Using economic incentives lines e.g. performance pay for
executives & user pay models
v. NPM treats individuals as customers or clients, rather than as
citizens

LATE 1990s TO 2000s:

Janet & Robert Denhardt proposed a new public service model called Digital
Era Governance
Digital Era Governance focuses on themes such as:
1. Reintegration – brining issues back into government control e.g. like US
airport security after 9/11
2. Needs – based holism – reorganizing government around
distinct client groups
3. Digitalization – fully exploiting the potential of digital storage &
internet communications to transform governance
SESSION TWO

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN PERSPECTIVE

Administration deals with gathering, processing, & communicating
information.
Politicians formulate policies through the legislative process
Public administrators are messengers of policy decisions
Public administration putts personnel systems to carry out government

activities
Public administrators evaluates policies to determine successes,

failures, & goodness of public policies

From the above analysis public administration:
Has a society service orientation
Is orientated towards policy execution
Has to be answerable to the executive, the legislature, the courts & the

public
Needs to manage government personnel, programs & projects to

benefit society
Should have concern for public rather individual self-interest
To be concerned for socio-economic & political well being of citizens
 Is concerned with the maintenance of law & order
in line with constitutional provisions
 Is concerned with national development & social

progress
The Scope of Public Administration
 Public administration as a field of practice & as a

field of study
As a field of practice, public administration focuses
on six fundamental functions:
 1. Public Admin policy-making

 2. Organizing

 3. Financing

 4. Staffing

 5. Determining work methods & procedures and

 6. Controlling
Public Admin as a field of study

Public admin derives its academic content &

theoretical framework from:
 a) Political science
 b) Management science
 c) Law
 d) Sociology, and
 e) Economics
What do we focus on when we study public
admin?
A. A focus on its evolution as a field of
practice.
Evolutionary process help us understand:
 How it has changed with different regimes
 How it energizes itself to remain part of the

government system
 How it responds to threats from the political
General patterns & elements of public admin activities:

 How the bureaucracy is appointed

 How is it compensated
 How it organizes itself
 How it is given tasks, executes or effectuates these
tasks
 How its controlled & disciplined
 How it relates to the governmental system &
society its expected to serve
The evolution of public admin as a field of practice is
important to us as this information:

 Help governments to adjust their public admin systems

 Helps rescue governments from operational confusion
 Provides the public admin academic or practitioner with
knowledge
 Helps generalizing problems within administration
 Discern public admin’s relationship with policy &
politics in different regimes
 See how regimes adapt elements or functions of
public admin to their systems
B. A focus on its intellectual heritage & theoretical underpinnings
These paradigms are:
The Politics/Admin Dichotomy
The principle of admin
The challenge to orthodox theories of public admin
Reactions to this challenge
Public admin as political science
Public admin as management
Public admin as public admin

Public admin organizational focus on:

Structural configuration of public organizations
People in organizations & their behaviours
Decision processes of administrative organizations
Processes of policy execution, staff & resource utilization & control
Administrators use of delegated regulatory powers
Accountability for the faithful execution of the laws of the land
Responsiveness to the people
C. A focus on the external forces that
impinge upon public admin:
 Constitutional & legislative controls
 The role of the judiciary in controlling the

exercise of the power of public admin

 Public admin interactive process with private

admin
 Relationship between political & administrative

bureaucracy
 Socio-economic & political factors

 International forces
The role of the public administrator
The following responsibilities can be enumerated:
 1. Setting for the purposes, aims, &

objectives of the organization

 2. Structuring organizations
 3. Recruiting & organizing the staff

 4. Delegation & allocation of authority &

responsibility
 5. Seeing that delegated activities are carried

out
 6. Positions standardization & establish

quality performance
Why study Public Administration?

 To understand administrative operations & the

behavior of administrators
 Gather information & public opinion on
administrators conduct & bureaucratic excesses
 To understand administrative environments for
improving occupational skills in the field
 To link public administration to other disciplines
& show connections between them
 To understand the theoretical framework of
public administration
 Improve participation in public affairs
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: Art or science?
 Public administration is both a science and an art
 Public admin requires scientific analysis to arrive at

certain conclusions
 A science is a corpus of verified knowledge, based

on theorems, paradigms & axioms

This Knowledge is obtained through scientific
method that involves:
 i. Making propositions
 ii. Describing a situation
 iii. Observing its manifestations
 iv. Explaining it
 v. Drawing conclusions & generalizations to justify

or reject initial propositions

Conclusions & generalizations are used to make future predictions

Scientific method involves the following steps:

 1. Identifying a problem
 2. Obtaining preliminary information on the

problem
 3. Posing a tentative solution to the problem
 4. Investigating the problem area
 5. Classifying the information
 6. Stating a tentative answer to the problem
 7. Testing the answer
Problems in the study of public administration
 Efficiency
 Public context
 Political context
 Government powers

The Problem associated with whole

governmental context
 Reconciling liberty & the duty to govern
 Striking a balance between achieving the common good &
demands from multiplicity of interest groups
 Balancing present actions with long term plans
 Balancing traditional attitudes with current scientific
findings that can describe governmental action
Administrative problems
 Macro-administrative problems
 a. Globalization
 b. Political

 c. Economic
 d. Social factors

Micro-administrative problems
 a. Interpersonal relationships

 b. Management styles

 c. Administrative skills
 d. Dedication to duty within organizations

 e. Decision making skills

I THANK YOU!!