Introduction to Public

1
Administration
MMH3
22 May 2019

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2 Public administration defined

 Traditionally public administration is thought of as accomplishing side of the government. It is

supposed to compose all those activities involved in carrying out the policies of elected officials
and some activities associated with the development of those policies. Public administration is…
all that comes after the last campaign promise and election night cheer.
 Public administration is :
 A cooperative group effort in a public setting.
 Covers all three branches-executive, legislative, and the judicial – and their interrelationships.
 Has an important role in the formulation of public policy, and is thus part of the political process.
 It is different in significant ways from private administration.
 Is closely associated with numerous private groups and individuals in providing services to the
community,(Felix A.Nigro and Lloyd G.Nigro)

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 In ordinary usage, public administration is a generic expression for the entire bundle of
activities that are involved in the establishment and implementation of public policies.
 Public administration is the production of goods and services designed to serve the needs
of citizens-consumers.
 The practice of public administration involves the dynamic reconciliation of various
forces in government’s efforts to manage public policies nd programs.(Melvin J.Dubnick
and Barbara S.Romzek)
 Public administration in all modern nations is identified with the executive branch.

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 In Summary we can say that:
 It s the executive branch of government(yet it is related in important ways to legislative and judicial branches,
 The formulation and implementation of public policies,
 The involvement in a considerable range of problems concerning human behavior and cooperative human
effort,
 A field that can be differentiated in several ways from private administration,
 The production of goods and services, and
 Rooted in the law as well as concerned with carrying out laws. Trying to pin down pubic administration in
more specific detail becomes, a fruitless endeavor(Harold Stein).

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 What is public? 5

►Public domain is the arena in which public

choice is exercised in order to achieve a
collective purpose
► public refers to concerning the people as a
whole, ordinary people in general

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2 6

 A central problem of contemporary politics is to constrain powerful, over weening, and tyrannical
governments.
 States have to be able to govern, be able to provide basic public services.
 Many countries are poor as they do not have effective states where life could be insecure and chaotic,
as opposed to this, many better-off societies exists with reasonably good democratic institutions.
 States could have absence of rule of law, where courts could be clogged and slow
 States ensure education, health, safety and security of its citizens, but quality of education could be
problematic

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context 7
 and commerce, food supply, safe water, sanitation, human security, employment generation all become
key challenges to the government
 Governments have a role to provide public goods and regulate externalities
 Regulate elites and engage in a certain amount of redistribution- equal application of law

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 States should provide only the most basic of public goods, to those who think it should
actively shape the nature of society and engage in substantial redistribution
 Government performance depends on how well they are organized and the resources
human and material at their disposal
 Globalization, war, trade embargo, cross border issues, forced migration, political conflicts,
terrorism, natural disaster all pose serious governance challenges for the state
 A horizontal axis defining the scope of state functions, and a vertical axis defining the
capacity of the state to undertake a given function

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Meaning of Public administration 9

 Public administration is a sub-divisions of the broader concept of

administration
 Administration means to ‘serve, to look after people’ or ‘to
manage affairs’. In this sense, administration is the management
of affairs of an organization
⮚ When we add ‘public’ to ‘administration’, it becomes
governmental administration, management of governmental
affairs and activities
⮚ Dimock and Dimock defines it as” the accomplishment of
politically determined objectives’.

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 Dimock and Dimock (1969:3,11)argues 10

that:
 It is more than mere techniques or even orderly execution of programs, it is also concerned with
policy-
 It must be sufficiently practical to solve problems and attain society’s goals,
 Must be exploratory and innovative in its search for better methods based on broader
understandings of what is involved in effective group activity

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Woodrow Wilson(28th President of the United 11

States)
 Defined public administration as the “ detailed and systematic execution of public law.
Every particular application of general law is an act of administration”.
 In common usage it means, the activities of the executive branches of national, state, and
local governments(Simon, Smithburg, and Thompson 1950)
 According to L.D.White “ a system of public administration is the composite of all laws,
regulations, practices, relationships, codes, and customs that prevails at any time in any
jurisdiction for the fulfillment or execution of public policy”.
 Public administration is decision-making, planning the work to be done, formulating
objectives and goals, working with the legislature and citizens organizations to gain public
support and funds for government programs.

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 To Corson and Harris, “it is the action part of the government, the means by which the
purposes and goals of government are realized”
 According to Pfiffner and Presthus(1953), public administration is mainly concerned with
the means for implementing political values…. they define public administration as “ the
coordination of individual and group efforts to carry out public policy. It is mainly
occupied with the routine work of the government.

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Felix A.Nigro ( 1965,1971)describes 13

 Public administration is a cooperative group effort in a public setting;

 Covers all three branches –executive, legislative, and judicial- and their relationships;
 Has an important role in the formulation of public policy and thus a part of the political
process;
 Is different in significant ways from private administration; and
 Is closely associated with numerous private groups and individuals in providing services to
the community

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Hardly any agreeable definition of Public 14

administration
 Despite pervasiveness of public administration in our daily lives, there is hardly any
mutually agreed definition of it.
 At the Third Minnowbrook Conference(2008) attempts have been made by scholars to
define public administration in the context of twenty-first century.
 The definition as given in the conference is “ that public administration is a socially
embedded process of collective relationships, dialogue, and action to promote human
flourishing for all”.
 Implicit in the definition was the recognition of an emerging globalized and multicultural
order, within which public administration was supposed to work.

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 Nature and Scope of Public Administration 15

 There are two broad views regarding the nature of public administration: Managerial and
integral view
 According to Managerial view- administration comprises the work of only those persons who
are engaged in performing managerial functions in an organization( Luther Gullick, Henry
Fayol, Herbert Simon, Donald W. Smithburg, and Victor Thompson are the main exponents of
this view). Gullick has summed up the managerial activities as the POSDCORB – planning,
organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. According to the
managerial view those who perform these managerial functions are only part of administration-
administration is concerned getting things done, not doing things. This view is a narrow view of
administration.


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Integral view of administration 16

 The integral view proposes that administration is the sum total of all the activities-
manual, clerical, or managerial- which are undertaken to realize the goals of an
organization,
 As per this view, all the acts of the government officials from peon to the secretary are part
of the public administration. The successful accomplishment of any task in an organization
requires contribution from all employees. The main supporter of this view is Woodrow
Wilson, L.D. White, Marshall E.Dimock, and John M. Pfiffner. This view is a wider
perspective of the organization and takes it as a whole in the fulfillment of its objectives.

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Scope of Public administration 17

 Traditional scholars view public administration with regard to the functions of the
executive branch of the government
 The modern scholars have extended the scope of public administration to all three
branches of the government- according to them Public administration is the whole
government in action, the activities of legislature and the judiciary also affect and shape
the functioning of public administration considerably. Therefore, it needs to be studied as a
part of the larger political processes in a country.

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 Significance of Public administration 18

 It is an instrument for providing or implementing a policy or certain services to the people

 Perhaps it would not have been possible to think of without public administration
 It is also responsible for implementing the laws of the country and by delivery of services it
maintains cohesion and harmony in the society.
 Public administration is also an instrument for socio-economic change
 In the era of liberalization and privatization, there is a decrease in the scope if the functions of the
state. It brings about shrinkage in the administrative apparatus as well as the size of the
bureaucracy. The role of the bureaucracy has also changed.
 Public administration plays an important role in a modern society.

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 Approaches to the study of Public administration19

 Public administration consists of relatively distinct approaches that grow out of the
different perspectives that shape its structure and functions
 A number of approaches are there:
 Institutional approach, Structural approach, Behavioural approach, System approach,
Ecological approach, Comparative approach to Public administration, Public policy
approach, Political economy approach, Public choice approach

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 Institutional approach 20

 The approach is based on the legal rights and obligations of the government
 It tends to emphasize formal relationships and the separation of powers among the braches of
the government.
 Policy and administration are seen to be separated with the assumption that the role of
administrators is confined to merely carrying out policies designed by the political arms of the
government
 Delegation of authority an responsibility to the three branches of the government
 A major emphasis of this approach is the normative question of responsibility.
 The focus is keeping pubic administration responsible to the elected branches of the government
and to the citizens

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 Structural approach 21

 The focus is on formal administrative structures, their functions and the limitations imposed on their
activities.
 It treats public administration as non-political and a purely technical organization based on certain
scientific principles
 It believes that public administration has nothing to do with politics and policy making, its main
function is to carry out politically determined policies effectively and efficiently.
 It views that organization tasks are predetermined and that employees have to adjust themselves to
the tasks assigned to them , to some extent the role of the informal organization was neglected.

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 Behavioral approach 22

 It focuses on the actual behavior of individuals and groups within an organization. It argues that
one can not understand the actual functioning of organizations without understanding why
people act as they do.
 It incorporates the knowledge from social psychology, anthropology, psychology and many
other disciplines in an effort to secure a better understanding of the actual human behavior
within organizations
 It focuses on the human aspects of administration and decision making.

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 System of approach 23

 Administration is seen as a system of interrelated and interdependent parts and forces. The
administrative system receives ‘inputs’ in the form of demands from the people and
converts them into ‘outputs’ which takes the form of goods and services
 The system approach is widely used in organizational analysis
 The system approach facilitates information exchange between parts of the system.

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 Comparative approach to public 24

administration
 It seeks to compare the administrative structures of different nations with different cultural
settings. The Comparative Administrative Group has defined it as the public
administration applied to diverse cultures and national setting and the body of factual data
by which it can be examined and tested.
 Such comparisons facilitate to find out universal elements in public administration and
build a theory of public administration

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 Public Policy approach 25

 It aims at improving the public policy process, it is a systematic and scientific study of
public policy. The main concern of this approach is to understand and improve the public-
policy making system. Te concept was first formulated by D.Lerner and Harold Lasswell in
their work, the Policy Science in 1951.
 Public policy deals with public and their problems and to shape the society for betterment
 W.Parsons argues that the wider purposes of public policy is involving enlightment, the
fuller development of individuals in society and development of consensus, social
awareness and legitimacy, rather than simply delivery of goods and services.
 Public policy involves improving the democratic and political capacities of the people, and
not simply the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of services

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 Political economy Approach 26

 It is concerned with the moving of political science closer to economics in the interest of greater
theoretical coherence and better policy guidance
 Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics,
law, and political science in explaining how political institutions , the political environment , and
the economic system influence each other.
 Issues pertaining to political economy are influence of elections on the choice of economic policy,
determinants of electoral outcomes, the political business cycles, redistributive conflicts in fiscal
policy, politics of delayed reforms in developing countries and excessive deficits.
 In narrower terms it analyses public policy as monopoly, market protection, institutional
corruption, and rent seeking

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 Public Choice Approach 27

 The Public Choice approach to the study of public administration emerged in the early 1960s.
Early reference to this theory is found in the writings of Vincent Ostrom. The other supporters of
this theory are James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, William A.Niskanen, and William C.Mitchell.
 Public choice theory is a method to study to decisional processes for the allocation of scarce
resources in the society. It lays emphasis on the element of choice, with the citizen in the role of
consumer. It is in favor of the citizens’ choice in the provision of public goods and services.
 It is argued that individuals can make rational decisions about their needs and demands. An
individual will act on in accordance with his self interest in order to maximize his decision.
 Vincent Ostrom suggests that public administration scholars to turn away from traditional
bureaucratic approach towards the public-choice approach

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 Public administration as Governance 28

 Formulation of public policy, implementation of public policy and enforcement of law

impartially
 The apolitical stance of public employees and civil servants are often considered no more valid
for governments
 Governance from state centric to citizens centric and also rolling back or hollowing out of the
state explains the mimetic nature of governance.

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 Questions: 29

 Definition and scope of Public administration

 Nature and scope of Public administration
 Discuss the various approaches to the study of public administration
 Discuss any two approaches and relate it public administration in Bangladesh

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