Chapter 7

New Public Administration

: Awakening of value rationality

Chen Fangfang (6310114006)

Emergence of
New Public Administration

⬩ Occurred in 1968, 1988, and 2008.

⬩ Old and new academic elites gathered
to offer a platform and opportunities to study
what Public Administration is,

⬩ Sees Public Administration development

in each of the conference.

 
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Minnowbrook I
Starting time of PA

⬩ Public Administration it was invented in late

1960s-1970.
⬩ Dwight Waldo (American politician and scientist)
described this period of time as the time of turbulence.
⬩ Protest against war, race discrimination, inequality issues
happening in the developed countries.

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 Starting time of PA
⬩ Government’s bureaucracy system is seen as too much
conservatism, too much red tape.

⬩ Inflexible rules and rigid regulations which causing the

administrative delays.

⬩ Bringing corruption, arrogance, inefficacy and

inefficiency in the organization.

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The United States in 1968
⬩ After the world war II United States was having a movement of
Vietnam War.
⬩ Chaos with assassination of Martin Luther King civil rights
leader,
⬩ Movement of Soviet Union that invaded Czechoslovakia.

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 Dwight Waldo
⬩ Professor of Public Administration at
Maxwell School of Syracuse University
organized the first Minnowbrook
conference.
⬩ PA should be more responsive to the
incidents and especially in time of
turbulence.

⬩ Aim is hoping for the new “best and

brilliant” age of PA.

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MinnowbrookI

Public Administration at time that is still analyzing from the

perspective of political science.

For this conference it is being describe as

Mau-mauing movement the reason they called it like this
is because the conference were often got interrupted.

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 Theme of Public
Administration
1. The practically of Public Administration
2. Democratic grounding of Public Administration
3. PA as moral enterprise
4. Democratic internal administration (politics of love)
, (if change institution you can change the men).
5. Social equity

George
Frederickson

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Toward a New Public
Administration (Marini 1971)
⬩ Marked the birth of New Public
Administration.
⬩ What should be the scope of Public
Administration research?
⬩ What should be the logic of Public
Administration research?
⬩ What are the social concerns of Public
Administration?
⬩ What are the prescriptive and ethical contents
of Public Administration?

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Toward a New Public
Administration (Marini 1971)
⬩ Conclusion of the book:

1) “Relevance”
2) Advocating postpositivism
3) Adapting to the turbulent environments
4) New organizational structures
5) Customer-oriented organizations

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 “New Public Administration” as too oriented
toward political philosophy and insufficiently
attentive to the need to operate government
bureaucracies in more efficient and effective
ways.

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Minnowbrook II
 MinnowbookII

⬩ In 1988 the conference was held by

George Frederickson, professor at university of Kansas.

⬩ 1970s and early 1980s the political situation is changing into the
antigovernment and bureaucratic mood.

⬩ People can see no improvement and effectiveness in

government ,decide to reduce the size of the government

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 Difference of MinnowbookII

⬩ More people attended, half of them were women when the first
conference was all men.

⬩ Involving almost half of participants who are younger Public

Administration scholars

⬩ The conference went in the peaceful and less controversial mood

as compared to the first conference.

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1. More technicist
2. More individuals
3. The social equity including gender and age
4. Importance of productivity and performance measurement
5. Connection of social science and positivist.

⬩ Minnowbrook II missed the coming significant point of reinventing government

movement which is the emergence of the New Public Management

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⬩ Public Administration on the academic field no longer as a part of political science
department

 Include the citizen’s participation in the communities

 Seeing the importance of personal values rather than the personal gain.
 The civil servant that linked with solving social issues.

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Minnowbrook III
⬩ Influence of government and the citizen participation.

⬩ The 21st century global issues :

⬩ population, resources, environment, climate change,
transnational crime, terrorist attacks
⬩ Requires government to play more active role.
⬩ Conference was organized by Rose Mary O’Leary who’s the
professor at Maxwell school.

⬩ First phase scholars who had completed the PHD program

within the previous 8 years.
⬩ Second phase for young scholars and practitioners at all ages
and degree experience.

⬩ Third conference is more similar to the first Minnowbrook

conference as it has the familiar background of turbulence time
in 1968.
⬩ Globalism in United States adds to its weakness
and offers astonishing opportunities.
⬩ Economy, fiscal systems
⬩ Health security, energy systems, safety control
requirements, and the environmental issues
continue to exist in the world are increasingly
comprehensive and dependent on each other.

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⬩ The future depends on the globalized ways of
thinking about systems and public administrative
affairs,

⬩ Old thinking on organizational structures, forms,

and powers has been obviously rejected.
⬩ “Public Administration is not only reviving but
also becoming stronger.”

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⬩ Searched for a way to relate democracy and
bureaucracy democracy.

⬩ Government’s responsiveness to the people.

⬩ Public organizations’s performance to pay more

attention to democratic values, include legitimate
procedures, equity, integration, citizenship, and
transparency.

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 Agreement of 3 respects
 Integration between New Public Management & New Public
Administration.
New Public Management = embracing the market
New Public Administration = embraces equity, justice, and democratic
administration.
Balancing the efficacy of economics and equity and justice.
 Age of globalization, attention to topic of globalization
 Pay more attention to comparing the administration of different
countries.
 
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Outcomes of the three conferences
I. Reconstruct public philosophy&public theories
II. Advocating normative research
III. Advocate social equity& justice
IV. Civic participation
V. Administrative ethics and responsibility
VI. Seeking changes and constructing new
organizational forms.

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Criticism in
Leadership
Leadership is a very complicated challenges and contradictions between
different stakeholders, conflicting values, and limited resources.

⬩ Researches in the leadership of public organizations focus on the following

3 aspects:
 How to ensure public interests and public service value with public
leadership
 How to protect democratic values, public trust, and promote public service
 Theoretical and practical researches should be conducted on the nature of
public leadership and expected outcomes.

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 Value rationality of NPA
Core value: Social equity

Assumption about Human Nature: Moral man

Methodology: Postlogical Positivism

Government role: Implementer

Disciplinary positioning: Public Administration

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Core value: Social equity
the traditional objectives and principles of public
administration, serving as the core value of public
administration.

public administration’s nature is its

publicness.

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1.A main feature of NPA is that it reanalyzes the concept of
“public,” stresses the publicness of public organizations, and
identifies it to be the basic attribute of public organizations.

2. attention should be paid once again to the publicness of

public administration 。

3. government should offer equal and impartial services to

citizens or customers

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What is social equity?
• the equity of government services
• the responsibilities of public managers in
decision making and project implementation,
• the changes in public management,
• the response to citizens’ demands instead of
public organizations’ demands, and
• the discussion about Public Administration
research and education.
• includes activities designed to enhance the
political power and economic well-being of the
minorities.

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 • inject value and meaning into public
administration.
• failed to make effective institutional
arrangements.
• “The NPA movement has not gone beyond the
Evaluatio series of institutional arrangements on equity
n issues made by welfare states. In other words, it
has failed to put forward its own operable plans.
Therefore, its pursuit for equity was not
recognized as the theme of this academic
movement, nor did it have a practical impact on
government” (Zhang K. 2008:179).

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Assumption about Human Nature: Moral
man

Scholars’ new assumption about human

nature—self-fulfillment man.
(3) The need for
(2) People will exercise
respect and the need
(1) The average human self-direction and self-
for self-realization may
being does not control toward
drive people to work
inherently dislike work. objectives to which
hard at organization’s
they are committed;
goals;

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 Assumption about Human Nature:
(4) the average person
learns, under proper
conditions, not only to
accept responsibility but
also to seek it.
Moral man
(5) the capacity to
exercise a relatively high (6) under the conditions of
degree of imagination, modern life, the
ingenuity, and creativity in intellectual potentialities
the solution of problems
of the “average” person
is widely, not narrowly, are only partially used
distributed in the (McGregor 2008:46–47).
population;
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Assumption about Human Nature: Moral man
• Civil servants not only possess noble personalities and
administrative ethics but also are highly competent in
dealing with public affairs;
• the general public not only have the consciousness to
actively participate in public affairs but also the actual
ability to participate in public affairs.
• Civil servants should be brave to shoulder moral
obligations and moral responsibilities to organization.
• Establish new organizational patterns oriented toward
decentralization and participation.
• Encourage the public participation in public affairs, and
conduct self-management.

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 • 1. understand the important documents upon
which state relies and to put moral philosophy
into practice;
Frederickson’ • 2. firmly believe that the value of the American
regime is authentic and correct and should be
s ready to sacrifice their own personal interests
Requirements for it;
• 3.be able to shoulder personal moral
on public responsibilities, and, whenever the value of the
administrator regime is damaged, all virtuous citizens must
take action to defend its value;
s • 4.maintain high standards of personal conduct
such as being tolerant, ready to do charity, and
caring the intergenerational concept of public
administration

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Methodology: Postlogical Positivism

A postlogical positivistic research method

• based on phenomenology, textualism, and philosophy of language,
emphasizes the significance of critical theory and moral philosophy
on Public Administration research, puts value rationality in a
prioritized position, and proposes that Public Administration
scholars should make judgments of “good” or “bad” and “yes” or
“no” with professional knowledge and talents.
• Public Administration research should be prescriptive and joint
efforts should be made to formulate correct norms and seek
approaches that may implement these norms (Tan 2008:210).
• NPA works out a correct norm or guiding ideology—“social equity”—
and provides a method for implementing this norm or guiding
thought—“Democratic Administration.”
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 Influence
Greatly expanded the scope of Public Administration research,

Paid more attention to meaning and value,

Enriched and developed Public Administration theories.

Compared with its predecessors, NPA is more “public” and less “generic,”
more “prescriptive” and less “descriptive,” and more “value-focus” and
less “neutral”.
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 Politics and
administration are
interpenetrative to
each other.
Government Role:
Implementer
Public administration
not only executes
policy but also
participates in the
formulation of policy.

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The execution tools of New Public Administration
have the following features:
• 1. The execution enjoys relatively big discretionary space. New
Public Administration advocates decentralization and delegating
powers to lower levels so that public administrators may enjoy
more room and exercise their powers according to actual needs.
• 2. Public administration no longer maintains value neutrality
during policy execution. It should have safeguarding social
equity as its target and should be accountable to citizens.
However, participation in partisan activities by public
administration is still forbidden; just because it no longer insists
on value neutrality, public administration departments may
affect the formulation of public policies but do not get directly
involved in the policy formulation process.
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The execution tools of New Public
Administration have the following features
• 3. A large number of decisions are made during the
execution process. Unlike political decision, most of
these decisions are technical decisions, decisions
on details, or decisions designed to accomplish
political tasks in a better way.

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 Critique
⬩ NPA is against politics-administration dichotomy, it does not
oppose to bureaucracy.
⬩ It continues to provide services to the public through the
organizational form of bureaucracy.
⬩ NPA has failed to provide a satisfactory explanation about how
to deal with the relationship between “democratic
administration” and “democratic politics.

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 Disciplinary Positioning:
Public Administration

Administration should be
“public administration,” an
important component of
Establish and develop public
democratic governance, and
theories on Public
the main task of Public
Administration.
Administration is to establish
and develop public theories
on public administration.
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 Publicness must be
composed of four
elements:
• (1) established based on the
constitution;
Frederickson‘s • (2) established based on
viewpoints on enhanced idea of civic spirit;
• (3) being able to hear collective
publicness or noncollective demands for
public interest, and being able to
respond to them; and
• (4) established based on interest
in charity and a loving heart

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 Disciplinary Positioning: Public
Administration

NPA is a Public Administration

theory that adopts such research
methods as phenomenology,
ethnomethodology, symbolic
interactionism, hermeneutics, and
critical theory with the “public
part” of public administration as
the research focus.
The reconstruction of public
theories and public philosophy of
administrating are both the logical
starting point and the final
destination of New Public
Administration.

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 2. Some
beautiful values
1.Many goals of such as equity
Criticisms of NPA are old and democracy, 3.No solutions to
NPA ideas are all abstract old problems.
repackaged. ideas that are
not operable at
all.

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Questions pertaining the theory

“ The New Public Administration as too oriented toward

political philosophy and insufficiently attentive to the need to
operate government bureaucracies in more efficient and
effective ways "
 According to what critics said what is you opinion towards
politics involvement in Public Administration?
 What is the effective way to separate role-playing between
political and administrative departments ?
 
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 What is your opinion towards
the assumptions about human
nature of TPA and NPA?

Based on your understanding,

how do you think the
assumption about human
nature can influence current
public administration?

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Thanks

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