YANGON UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS

DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED ECONOMICS

MASTER OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
BATCH-19
FIRST YEAR, FIRST SEMESTER

Submitted to:
Dr. Kyaw Min Htun
MPA 113: Public Administration in Theory and Practice, Semester 1/2022
Assignment

By:
Khine Mon Swe
EMPA I-9
Submission Date: 29th August 2022
According to the ‘Public Administration in a Globalizing World’ by Bidyut Chakrabaryt
Prakash Chand, here is the summary of the part Evolution of Public Administration as a
Discipline concept of what I understand the author said pages from 16 to 27.

The evolution of public administration as a discipline from the end of the nineteenth century
to the late 1990 has taken place in the following 5 stages.

Phase 1: The politics administration dichotomy (1887-1926).

During the first stage (1887-1926) scholars like Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow tried
to separate the subject from political science. The emphasis was on efficient administration
for the rational implementation of goals. Woodrow Wilson’s thought provoking and
revolutionary paper ‘The Study of Administration’ in the Political Science it along and that’s
why he is considered the founder of this discipline. He emphasized the need for a scientific
approach to studying public administration. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the subject
received increasing recognition in American academics. In 1920, Leonard D. White
published the first textbook on the subject, ‘Introduction to the Study of Public
Administration.’ He underlined the politics and administration dichotomy with a note that
administration is linked with politics via its involvement in policy matters.

Phase 2: Principles of public administration (1927-37).

The second stage of administrative theory was known for the quest for scientific principles of
administration and to establish the subject as an independent discipline. Willoughby’s book
‘Principles of Public Administration’ important works during this phase. Luther Gulick and
Lyndall Urwick in their ‘Papers on the Science of Administration’ stated that Administration
is a science. They argued for the discovery of objective principles of human organization, just
like laws governing the physical world, which can be discovered by the scientific inductive
method and have universal applicability.

It was believed that there are certain principles (guiding/basic ideas) of administration that
are common to all organisations and will work for all bringing out optimum efficiency.
Since, we are talking about the Classical theorists of Administration we have to make a very
important mention of Max Weber. His conceptual framework of bureaucracy deserves special
mention as it brought about a paradigm shift in the theory of public administration. He was
the first to provide the discipline with a solid theoretical base. He viewed bureaucracy as
national rules based central system that regulated the organization's structure and process
accordingly to technical knowledge and maximum efficiency. He was concerned about the
evolution of modern civilization with bureaucracies. All the three theorists mentioned above
laid emphasis on the physiological and mechanistic aspects of public administration and that
is why this school of thought apart from being called the Classical school of thought is also
known as the Mechanical theory of organization/administration.

Phase 3: Era of challenge (1938-1947).

The third stage in the evolution of the theory of public administration is known as the era of
challenge because the above-mentioned principles and iron cage view of administration and
workers were challenged. It emphasized on the human aspects of administration that sprung
from the Hawthorne experiments conducted by Elton Mayo and his colleagues at Harvard
Business School in the late 20's and early 30's of the twentieth century.
Robert Dahl summarized this opposition stating that administration is value-laden while
science is value-free; human personalities differ and so do the social frameworks within
which organizations inevitably operate and there is a need to take into account normative
considerations, human behavior, and sociological and other factors while defining the
parameters of public administration.

Phase 4: Crisis of Identity (1948-1970)

The next stage that is the crisis of identity stage is set in the late 20th century where many
parts of the world were just out of wars and colonization called the developing nations. This
phase marked a debate for the return of values in Public administration and cross cultural as
well as cross national study of administration. Thus, grew a need to reinvent public
administration and lead to a question as to whether public administration that had been
known as it is till then was relevant anymore.
To overcome from this identity crisis, public administration came to be seen as an
interdisciplinary subject. In this phase, several sub-topics emerge in the subject matter of
public administration.

Phase 5: Public Policy Perspective (1971 onwards)

Beginning with the 1968 Minnow-brook Conference, the New Public Administration
Movement began to take on new forms and dimensions in both theory and practice. This was
the beginning of the New Public Administration Movement. Public policy is an attempt by a
government to address a public issue by instituting laws, regulations, decisions, or actions
pertinent to the problem at hand. It is policy that is made for the welfare of the people and
their development. As a discipline public policy perspective is the study of government. Here
it has come closer to political science again and also has incorporated many management
principles to help public administration cope up with the dynamics of its discipline and
conduct.

Conclusion
From the above discussion on 5 Stages of The Evolution of Public Administration, it can be
concluded that when the journey of public administration as an academic discipline began in
the late nineteenth century, there was a tendency to separate public administration from
politics and make public administration a science as like natural science.
But the great challenge to this division of public administration and politics came in the
1930s. As a result, there is an identity crisis in public administration. However, in the
aftermath of the Second World War, huge changes took place in public administration. This
time there is a deep connection between politics and administration. As a result, the concepts
like new public administration, development administration, and comparative public
administration are developed.
This change lasted until the 1980s. In the post-1980s, ideas such as New Public Management,
governance, took place in public administration to make public administration more
transparent. With the advancement of information technology, digital governance or E-
Governance as well as environmental issues (disaster management) has taken place in public
administration.
So, it is seen that as the age of public administration has increased, its subject matter has
become wider and the subject has become more prosperous.

Bibliography

Chand, B. C. (2012). Public Administration in a Globalizing World. SAGE Publication.

Dr.ChandrasheelTambe, D. P. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://old.mu.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/MA-Politics-SEM-1-public-
administration.pdf