UNDERSTANDING THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The word ‘administer’ is derived from the Latin word administere, which means to care for or to look
after people, to manage affairs. Administration may be defined as “Group activity which involves
cooperation and coordination for the purpose of achieving desired goals or objectives'

● Nature, Thrust, and Field of Public Administration

Integral View

- The activities of the person who are engaged in the administration in order to implement
policies.

Managerial View

- The activities of the persons of the organization who performs managerial activities to get things
done.

They explain these seven elements of administration in the following way-

P- Planning– It is the task of managers of every administration to plan everything that needs to be done
and the methods for doing them to accomplish the purpose set for the enterprise.

O- Organizing- Every organization needs to be well organized. Managers should allocate the task to their
employee and other subordinates by the proper techniques.

S- Staffing- Staffing refers to the whole personnel function of bringing in and training the staff and
maintaining favorable conditions for work.

D- Directing- It refers to the continuous task of making decisions and embodying them in specific and
general order and instructions and also serving as a leader to the enterprise.

CO- Coordinating- It is the important duty of the manager to coordinate between coworkers and
executives.

R-Reporting- It is referred to inform every report of the work to the executives.

B- Budgeting- All that goes with budgeting in the form of fiscal planning, accounting and control.

Fields of Public Administration

• Local and regional governance and administration

• Fiscal administration

• Public policy and program administration

• Organizational and personnel management

DEFINING PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE

The word “public” is a broad subject to address; it refers to a large group of people, regardless of their
gender identity, role, living situation, or phase, and it has to do with caring for and serving the public's
welfare. In the terminology of public administration, it is a specialized field of administration that deals
with public policies and programs, government activities, and the provision of different services to the
general public.

Private administration is the management of private organizations, most of which are business entities.
Private administration is a non-political business or commercial activity that includes a variety of
activities and management processes such as planning, production, marketing, financing, controlling,
coordinating, and so on.

PHILIPPINE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM: POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY

Philippine Administrative System (PAS) (Alfiler, 1999)

• A network of public organizations with specific goals, policies, structures, resources, and programs;

• A process of and interaction between and among these public organizations;

• Organizations constituted to implement, help formulate, monitor, or assess public policies;

• These organizations’ relationship with their immediate public-in-contact as well as their reaction to or
how the greater socio-politico and economic environment within which they operate affect them; and

• The greater socio-politico and economic environment

Sources of Power of the PAS:

1. Instrument of the state government functions are exercised legitimately, supported by enabling state
policies and authority

2. Enforcer and implementor of public policy discretion in policy implementation

3. Service delivery system discretion to determine the quantity, quality, adequacy, and timeliness of
services it provides

4. Participant in policy formulation advice is sought on legislation and policy-making

5. Technical expertise professional training of civil servants in areas of competence on policy issues

6. Nationwide presence expansive reach to mobilize support for programs all over the country.

Characteristics of PAS:

 Just and Fair Enforcement of Law

 Participatory and Consultative
 Accessible
 Decentralized
 Efficient and Service-Oriented
 Accountable
  Pro-Equity

Accountability

 The construction of a system of checks and balances in an organization by which an

administrator is held accountable for his management of resources or authority.
 A state in which persons in positions of power are bound by both external and internal
standards.

Accountability is commonly applied to positions of public office. These include both:

1. Political positions - where representatives or persons in other institutional roles interact with public
affairs on behalf of and in the interests of citizens.

2. Administrative positions - where the government acts as a middleman between the citizens and the
government.

Political-administrative Continuum

• Politically, elected officials are responsible to the electorate or constituents who elected them to their
posts. Regular elections and other mechanisms, such as recall and referendum, are used to hold elected
authorities accountable.

Constitutional Provision on Public Accountability

The 1987 Constitution is explicit on the accountability of every public official. Article XI on Accountability
of Public Officers, particularly Section 1 provides:

Section 1. Public office is a public trust. Public officers and employees must, at all times, be accountable
to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency; act with
patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives.

Code of Ethics for Public Officials

Republic Act 6713 also known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and
Employees. The formal title of the law is an Act Establishing a Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for
Public Officials and Employees, to Uphold the Time-honored Principle of Public Office being a Public
Trust, Granting Incentives and Rewards for Exemplary Service, Enumerating Prohibited Acts and
Transactions and Providing Penalties for Violations Thereof and for Other Purposes.

HUMAN NATURE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

HUMAN NATURE

 All too often the idea of human nature is employed is a “generalized and simplistic fashion”
 Human nature is to make a number of assumptions about human being and the society they
lived.
 Human nature refers to the “essential and immutable character” of all human beings. It
highlights what is “innate” and “natural” about human life as oppose to what human beings
have gained from education or though social experience.
  Those who believe that human behavior is shaped more by society than its by unchanging and
inborn characteristics have abandoned the idea of human nature altogether.
 According to a French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) he argued that there
was no such thing as a given “human-nature” that determine how people act or behave. In
Satre’s view, existence comes before essence.

CONCEPT OF HUMAN NATURE

The concept of human nature does not conceal or overlook this complexity so much as attempt to
impose order upon it by designing certain feature as” natural” or “essential”. It would seem reasonable,
moreover, that if any such this as a human core exists it should be manifest in human behavior.

NATURE VS NURTURE

The most recurrent, and perhaps most fundamental debate about human nature relates to what factors
or forces shape it. Is the essential core of human nature fixed or given, fashioned by ‘nature’, or is it
molded or structured by the influence of social experience or ‘nurture’. ‘Nature’, in this case, stands for
biological or genetic factors, suggesting that there is an established and unchanging human core.

INTELLECT VS INSTINCT

The second debate centers upon the role of rationality in human life. The issue is the degree to which
the reasoning mind influences human conduct, suggesting a distinction between those who emphasize
thinking, analysis and rational calculation, and those who highlight the role of impulse, instincts or other
non-rational drives.

Freud himself emphasized the therapeutic aspect of these ideas, developing a series of techniques,
popularly known as psychoanalysis, others have seized upon their political significance.

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), one of Freud’s later disciples, developed an explanation of fascism based
on the idea of repressed sexuality. New Left thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and feminists such as
Germaine Greer (1985) have drawn upon Freudian psychology in developing a politics of sexual
liberation.

COMPETITION VS COOPERATION

Competition - Essentially self-seeking and egoistical.

Cooperation - Naturally sociable and cooperative.

THEORIES AND CONCEPTS

Individualist – human beings are naturally self- interested, the competition among them is an inevitable.
The ideas such as natural rights and private property.

Sophist (Ancient Greeks) – portray human nature as self-interested. Suggested that each individual has
been invested by God with a set of inalienable rights.

Utilitarianism – developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, attempted to provide an objective,
even scientific, explanation of human selfishness.
Jeremy Bentham – he painted a picture of human beings as essentially hedonistic and pleasure –
seeking creatures. In his view, pleasure or happiness are self – evidently ‘good’, and pain or unhappiness
self-evidently ‘bad’.

Darwinian Ideas – scientific support for human self-interestedness has usually been based upon Darwin
the idea of some kind of struggle for survival.

Lorenz and Ardrey – hold that each individual member of a species is biologically programmed to ensure
the survival of the species itself. In other words, individuals will exhibit cooperative and sociable
behavior to the extent that they put the species before themselves.

Richard Dawkins (1989) – he argued that every gene including those unique to the separate individual
and has a selfish streak and seeks its own survival. Such a theory suggests that selfishness and
competition amongst individuals is essentially a form of biologically programmed behavior.

MAJOR WORLD RELIGION

Monotheistic Religions

• humankind is a product of Divine Creation

• the human essence is the soul

Eastern Religions

• oneness of all forms of life (common humanity)

• philosophy of non-violence

Protestant Ethics

• individual salvation and moral value

• self-help and the free market (where prices are set by supply and demand and are not interfered by
the government)

Secular Theories

• social essence of human nature

• importance of social being; individuals live and work collectively

• selfishness and competition are not natural; they are the result of a capitalist society

• the human essence is actually sociable and cooperative

Peter Kropotkin

• debunked the doctrine of "survival of the fittest"

• mutual aid (capacity to cooperate) is what distinguishes humankind from all other species

• the evolutionary process (as per Darwin's Theory of Evolution) has made cooperation a practical
necessity of mankind rather than just a mere religious ideal
• combination of a communism and anarchism: people share common wealth but are free to

manage or deal with their own affairs cooperatively

THE INDIVIDUAL

• An individual is a single human being. Nevertheless, the concept suggests rather more. First of all, it
implies that the single human being is an independent and meaningful entity, possessing an identity in
himself or herself.

INDIVIDUALISM

• it refers to a belief in the primacy of the individual over any social group or collective body, suggesting
that the individual is central to any political theory or social explanation.

Political thought is deeply divided about the relationship between the individual and the community.

Anti-individualism is based upon a commitment to the importance of community. It is the belief that
self-help and individual responsibility are a threat to social solidarity.

Socialists have often rejected individualism, especially when it is narrowly linked to self-interest and self-
reliance.

THE INDIVIDUAL POLITICS

The role of the individual in history is of no less importance to the study of politics. Two fundamentally
different approaches to this issue can be dismissed. One holds that history is made by human individuals
who, in effect, impress their own wills upon the political process.

SOCIETY - characterized by regular patterns of social interaction, suggesting the existence of some kind
of social ‘structure’.

Collectivism refers to the actions of the state and reached its highest form of development in the
centrally planned economies of orthodox communist states, so-called ‘state collectivism’.

THEORY OF SOCIETY

as important as the conception of human nature; politics is more than a reflection of social tensions and
conflicts; interaction between politics, the society, and individuals is a matter of ideological controversy

Individualist Conception - assumes that society is a human artefact made by individuals to serve their
interests and purposes

Classical Liberalism - dedicated to the goal of attaining the greatest possible individual freedom

Atomistic Theory - implies that society is nothing more than a collection of individual units or atoms;
founded upon a strong belief in consensus

Organic Analogy - society operates as an "organic whole"; holistic approach to society; societies are
complex networks of relationships which maintain the whole

Body Politics - assumes that all social activity help maintain the basic structures of society and each has
a function (as in the parts of a physical body)
Pluralist Theory - open and competitive political systems ensure social balance

Elite Theories - concentration of power in the hands of a small minority; underlines the conflict between
the "elite" and the "masses"; explains social order in terms of organizational advantage

Marxism - roots of social conflict lie in the existence of private property; workers are exploited to
property owners but are not compensated fairly; fundamental class conflict influences every aspect of
social existence.

A ‘social cleavage’ is a split or division in society, reflecting the diversity of social formations within it.

Identity refers to a sense of separate and unique selfhood, but it also acknowledges that how people
see themselves is shaped by a web of social and other relationships that distinguish them from other
people

There is little doubt that the cleavage that has traditionally been most closely associated with politics is
social class. Class reflects economic and social divisions, based upon an unequal distribution of wealth,
income or social status.

‘Gender’ refers to social and cultural distinctions between males and females, in contrast to ‘sex’ which
high-lights biological and therefore ineradicable differences between men and women.

The term ‘ethnicity’ is therefore preferred by many because it refers to cultural, linguistic and social
differences, not necessarily rooted in biology.

Politics has been portrayed as the exercise of power or authority, as a process of collective decision-
making, as the allocation of scarce resources, as a deception or manipulation, and so forth.

Athens - is the largest and most influential city-state.

David Easton (1981) American political scientist. Defined politics as the ‘authoritative allocation of
values.

Bernard Crick - In Defense of Politics ([1962] 2000), in which politics is seen as ‘that solution to the
problem of order which chooses conciliation rather than violence and coercion.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton - British historian and famous aphorism: ‘power
tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) - The son of a civil lawyer, Machiavelli’s knowledge of public life was
gained from a sometimes-precarious existence in politically unstable Florence. He served as Second
Chancellor, 1498–1512, and was dispatched on missions to France, Germany, and throughout Italy.

HANNAH ARENDT (1906-1975) - German political theorist and philosopher, Arendt was brought up in a
middle-class Jewish family. She fled Germany in 1933 to escape from Nazism and finally settled in the
United States, where her major work was produced.

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1831) - German philosopher, Hegel was the founder of
Modern Idealism and developed the notion that consciousness and material objects are in fact unified.
Feminism is characterized primarily by its political stance: the attempt to advance the social role of
women.

Mary Wollstonecraft - She argues that women's education ought to match their position in society, and
that they are essential to the nation because they raise the children and could act as respected
companions" to their husbands.

Simone de Beauvoir - A French novelist, playwright, and social critic (1906–86) helped to reopen the
issue of gender politics and foreshadowed some of the themes later developed in radical feminism.

Kate Millett US writer and sculptor, developed radical feminism into a systematic theory that clearly
stood apart from established liberal and socialist traditions.

Juliet Mitchell - A New Zealand-born British writer most influential theorists of socialist feminism.

Shulamith Firestone - A Canadian author and political activist, developed a theory of radical feminism
that adapted Marxism to the analysis of the role of women. She argues that sexual differences stem not
from conditioning but from a natural division of labor within the ‘Biological family.

Catherine A. MacKinnon - US academic and political activist, made a major contribution to feminist legal
theory.

Thomas Hobbes – In Leviathan ([1651] 1968) - he advanced the view thatrational human beingsshould
respect and obey their government ‘of every man against every man.

Thomas Aquinas - ‘The Treatise of Law, part of Summa Theologiae (1963), begun in 1265, Aquinas
portrayed the state as ‘the perfect community and argued that the proper effect of the law wasto make
its subjects good.

William Godwin - An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice gave the first clear statement of anarchist
principles, declaring: ‘Man is perfectible, Or in other words susceptible of perpetual improvement’.

A 'political system' is an organized or complex whole, a set of interrelated and interdependent parts
that form a collective entity. David Easton's seminal work in this area was The Political System, 1953]
1981. The political system is thus a dynamic process, within which stability is achieved only if its output
bears some relationship to its input.

The term 'state' can apply to a wide variety of things, including a group of institutions, a territorial unit,
a historical entity, a philosophical concept, and so on.

The concept of sovereignty was born in the seventeenth century, as a result of the emergence in Europe
of the modern state.

Sovereignty means absolute and unlimited power.

Jean Bodin argued for a sovereign who made laws but was not himself bound by those laws.

Two concepts of sovereignty

Legal Sovereignty is based upon the right to require somebody to comply, as defined by law.
Political sovereignty, therefore refers to the existence of a supreme political power, possessed of the
ability to command obedience because it monopolizes coercive force.

Types of Sovereignty

Internal sovereign is a political body that possesses ultimate, final and independent authority; one
whose decisions are binding upon all citizens, groups and institutions in society.

External sovereignty is independence, or freedom from interference, not only in relation to any would-
be higher, that is, international or supranational, authority, but also in relation to other states. As
independence, external sovereignty is the freedom of self-governance.

The nation, on the other hand, is a group of people which shares the same culture but do not promote
sovereignty.

Political and cultural nation

Politically, it entails the ancestry or race of a group of people, known also as a fully mobilized or
institutionalized ethnic group. While cultural nationalist is defined simply by culture or an ethnic group
that shares a common language.

Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state.

Nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and
maintaining the nation's sovereignty over its homeland to create a nation state.

Types of nationalism

Language nationalism – A dominant culture's use of language to exercise its dominance, see Linguistic
imperialism

Religious nationalism- Is the relationship of nationalism to a particular religious belief, dogma, or

affiliation. This relationship can be broken down into two aspects: the politicization of religion and the
influence of religion on politics.

Post-colonial nationalism- The historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of
Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and
rethink the history.

Cosmopolitanism - In political theory, it is the belief that all people are entitled to equal respect and
consideration, no matter what their citizenship status or other affiliations happen to be.

Supranationalism A supranational body is one which exercises jurisdiction not over any single state but
within an international area comprising several states.

Intergovernmentalism is the weakest form of supranational cooperation; it encompasses any form of

state interaction which preserves the independence and sovereignty of each nation.

Federalism is a system of government in which the same territory is controlled by two levels of
government. Generally, an overarching national government is responsible for broader governance of
larger territorial areas, while the smaller subdivisions, states, and cities govern the issues of local
concern.

federation may be defined as a political system in which at least two territorial levels of government
share sovereign constitutional authority over their respective division and joint share of law-making
powers.