Key concepts and principles in Public

Administration
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Public Administration is the management of the affairs of the
Definition government at all levels

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The definition relies on the definition of Administration
– A determined action taken in pursuit of a conscious purpose.
– It is the systematic ordering of affairs and calculated use of resources
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It is therefore the calculated use of public resources in order to
achieve the goals of government defined in the public interest
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Public Administration is tasked to implement policies.
Roles ●
In current times, it also concurs to decision-making

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It is practiced at central, intermediate and local level

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It is become a distinct profession requiring its own expertise:
– Civil service became specialized in providing for technical support
– The notion of civil service itself varies according to the country
considered
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Increasingly, in contemporary States, the public administration
Roles of the has assumed the following roles (not all of them for all States) :

Public –
–
Preservation of the polity
Maintenance of stability and order
Administration – Institutionalization of socio-economic changes
– Management of large-scale commercial services
– Ensuring growth and economic development
– Protection of the weaker section of the society
– Formation of public opinion
– Influencing public policies and trends
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In recent times, all these roles have been affected by the
emergence of populism
– Technocrats vs. populists
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Economy and efficiency (providing public services at the
Principles minimum cost) have traditionally represented the main goal of
public administration.

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Other values progressively developed:
– Responsiveness to public needs
– Accountability toward citizens
– Justice and equal treatment
– Transparency and citizen involvement in government decisions
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The contest for control over budgets, particularly in the Western
Budget world, represented the main relationship between monarchs and
their subjects.
Management – The tax issue has originated the most important revolutionary events in
Oversees –
history of western legal systems
The distribution of the budget has represented a traditional source of
mechanisms competition among administrative offices
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The budget control also shapes the relationship between levels
of government
– It is the principal vehicle for legislative surveillance of administration,
executive control of local authorities, and latter’s control of subordinate
programs.
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Many organizational principles originated with the military, a
Organizational few from private business.

strategies ●
They include:
– organizing departments, ministries, and agencies on the basis of
common or closely related purposes,
– grouping like activities in single units,
– equating responsibility with authority,
– ensuring unity of command (only one supervisor for each group of
employees),
– limiting the number of subordinates reporting to a single supervisor,
– differentiating line (operating or end-purpose) activities from staff
(advisory, consultative, or support) activities,
– employing the principle of management by exception (only the unusual
problem or case is brought to the top),
– having a clear-cut chain of command downward and of responsibility
upward.
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Public administration is not profit oriented
Economy and ●
The motive is the public service, which includes utilities (i.e.
efficency railways, post, hospitals) and services meant to answer a social
need

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It is subject to an external financial control realized by the
people’s representatives (Parliament)
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 The traditional forms of electoral and ministerial accountability
Development have increasingly been regarded as limited instruments for
controlling political power and making it responsive to the
of other wishes of the electorate.

principles ●
Demands for more effective accountability have therefore
tended to expand the instruments of political accountability,
looking for ways in which political control can be exercised
procedurally and in the course of decision making and not simply
ex post facto.
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It means the responsibility for actions
Accountability ●
In Public Administration, it is usually understood as the
(I) obligation of government officials to answer for performance to
some legitimate authority 

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Within liberal democracies, public accountability relationships
and institutions have also been framed within the overarching
structure of the government as accounter/agent answerable to
the people or citizen body as joint account holders/principals. 
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“vertical” accountability: to bureaucratic superiors and elected
Accountability leaders

(II) – Vertical bureaucratic accountability is clearly anchored to the democratic

authority of the elected leadership.
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“horizontal” accountability: to specialized accountability
agencies such as legislative committees and auditors, and
judicial accountability to constitutional courts court.
– Agencies of horizontal accountability, though lacking the power of
enforcement themselves, often provoke the elected executive to take
remedial action through the power of adverse publicity and potential
reputational damage.
– In this sense, they operate “in the shadow of hierarchy”, relying on the
background potential of democratically legitimated hierarchies to
enforce their assessments.
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Non-hierarchical networks collectively providing public services
Accountability pose problems for accountability

(III) – The sharing of responsibility between members of a network implies

that no one person or group takes overall responsibility for the collective
action.
– There is no obvious government agent acting on behalf of the public as
principals.
– This absence of a single point of authority means that there is nobody to
fulfill the various accountability functions for the network as a whole by,
for instance, by informing the public, offering explanations and, where
necessary, implementing remedies. 
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Public-private agreements for outsourcing also creates the same
kind of issues
Relationship ●
Ministerial responsibility

with politics (I) – The Minister lays down the main policy outlines, the bureaucrats then implement
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Whereas accountability in traditional public administration
and administrative law mainly worked procedurally, being concerned with
the regular and effective implementation of the substantive policies
decided at the political level, the revolution in public management has
shifted the emphasis to performance and policy output.
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This shift has blurred the distinction between political and
administrative competencies, a distinction that has further been
weakened by the way in which policy implementation has become
more autonomous from the legislative process in modern complex
societies, where social legislation takes a more substantive form.
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The new emphasis on the new public management, and on
public administration’s capacity to deliver good services to the
citizens, has inverted the roles of politics and administration in
relation to accountability.

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Whereas political accountability has become more procedural,
administrative accountability has become more focused on
Relationship output.

with politics (II) ●

In principle, this has meant a greater autonomy for the public
managers in the way they organize service provision, but it also
has led to a greater reliance on a quasi-market form of
accountability, where performance is judged, as in the market,
by customers’ satisfaction. 
Transparency It is one of the keywords of contemporary governance.
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(I) ●
It is often associated with democratic accountability, but it also carries
connotations of market efficiency.

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Its ideational roots lie in access to government information. We have
witnessed rapid global diffusion of information access laws. In debates on
public accountability, transparency appears as an element of both
deliberation and performance.
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Transparency is often assumed to lead to increased citizen trust in
Transparency government, but the relation of trust and transparency is more complex.

(II) – Transparency implies access to public information

– Through digitalization, public information has become a pressing topic of interest,
including as raw material for a knowledge-based economy.
– Public administration also manages significant amounts of personal data of
citizens, raising additional concerns for privacy.
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Transparency has become a measured element of governance indicators
that are themselves an instance of transparency.
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As a key concept of public administration, transparency is relevant for
both democracy and efficiency of governance.
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It deals with the need of ensuring equality among stakeholders
Inclusiveness – It is based on the idea that an inclusive public administration can better
represents the interest of all the stakeholders
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It assumes that Public Administration shall be open to all citizens
without discrimination
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It is connected to trend toward participatory democracy
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The term “femocrat” was invented in Australia as a derogatory
Femocrats term to describe feminists entering women's policy positions in
government.

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Subsequently it has been used more neutrally to describe
feminists in government, whether in women's policy agencies or
elsewhere, and whether at national, subnational, or
transnational levels of governance.

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Female bureaucrats are sometimes connected with state
feminism

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There is debate on whether femocrats increase the
representation of women’s interest
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It means that the hiring process follow rules not based on
Meritocracy patronage:
– The best individual is selected for each job,
– competitive examinations are held for entry,
– selection and promotion occurs on the basis of merit.
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According to this principle, attention has increasingly been given
to factors other than intellectual merit, i.e. personal attitudes,
incentives, personality, personal relationships, and collective
bargaining.