The public board as public administration (and citizens as administrative participants)

Service on public boards is described in a normative model of public administration. Further, public boards, such as the historic architectural review boards discussed here, provide unique oppportunities for students of government and public administration. The public board serves an important balance within the local government. Public boards provide expertise not easily purchased by government; public boards provide an important interface for citizens to their elected government and their career public administration; and public boards provide an important opportunity for citizens to involve themselves with their government. This citizen as administrative participant is not typically schooled in government or in public administration, but an opportunity exists for aggressive public administration programs.     

Constitutional values and civil servant recruitment: The principles for filling revenue service positions in Poland

The functioning of public administration should be consistent with the general interest, common to all citizens, and independent from the particularized interests of changing political forces. A condition for the proper functioning of administration is the selection of appropriate personnel to perform the duties defined by the state. According to the premises of this paper, the recruitment of personnel based upon objective criteria is of fundamental importance for the effective realization of the administration's mission. This article analyzes the weaknesses of personnel policy in fiscal administration in Poland after 1989 against the background of the broader process of creating a Polish civil service. The study aims at determining the extent to which the actual relations between politics and administration reflect legal regulations. The article focuses on personnel policy with regard to senior positions in fiscal administration, whose occupants have leverage over decision-making processes and human resources policy in various agencies. It turns out that after every parliamentary election there is major turnover in the personnel occupying senior positions in the fiscal administration offices, that is, the persons associated with the previous governing team are replaced with individuals enjoying the confidence of those who have just come to power. In light of these findings one can infer that, contrary to the constitutional principles guiding the functioning of the government administration in Poland, its politicians have deliberately designed legal regulations in such a manner as to enable them to assume control over fiscal administration.     

Serving the homeless: public administration as science,Process and Art

This paper highlights a three-year odyssey working with the City of Memphis and nonprofit agencies to assess the extent of homelessness and identify gaps in care. It is suggested that working with the homeless is a classic example of what is meant by the concept of public administration as a science, process, and art. Even the most sophisticated scientific understanding of homelessness is necessary but not sufficient; the ability to bring together a diverse and fragmented provider population also requires expert process skills and an understanding of the art of persuasion and high-trust leadership.     

The new public personnel and the new public service

The New Public Administration sought a public service whose legitimacy would be based, in part, on its promotion of “social equity.” Since 1968, several personnel changes congruent with the New Public Administration have occurred: traditional managerial authority over public employees has been reduced through collective bargaining and changes in constitutional doctrines; the public service has become more socially representative; establishing a representative bureaucracy has become an important policy goal; more emphasis is now placed on employee participation in the work place; and legal changes regarding public administrators’ liability have promoted an “inner check” on their behavior. At the same time, however, broad systemic changes involving decentralization and the relationship between political officials and career civil servants have tended to undercut the impact of those changes in personnel. The theories of Minnowbrook I, therefore, have proven insufficient as a foundation for a new public service. Grounding the public service's legitimacy in the U.S. Constitution is a more promising alternative and is strongly recommended.

The New Public Administration, like other historical calls for drastic administrative change in the United States, sought to develop a new basis for public administrative legitimacy. Earlier successful movements grounded the legitimacy of the public service in high social standing and leadership, representativeness and close relationship to political parties, or in putative political neutrality and scientific managerial and technical expertise. To these bases, the New Public Administration sought to add “social equity.” As George Frederickson explained, “Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. “⁽¹⁾ Social equity was defined as “includ[ing] activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well being of … [disadvantaged] minorities.” It was necessary because “the procedures of representative democracy presently operate in a way that either fails or only very gradually attempts to reverse systematic discrimination against” these groups.⁽²⁾

Like the Federalists, the Jacksonians, and the civil service reformers and progressives before it, the New Public Administration focused upon administrative reform as a means of redistributing political power.⁽³⁾ Also, like these earlier movements, the New Public Administration included a model of a new type of public servant. This article sets forth that new model and considers the extent to which the major changes that have actually taken place in public personnel administration since 1968 are congruent with it. We find that while contemporary public personnel reflects many of the values and concerns advanced by the New Public Administration, substantial changes in the political environment of public administration have frustrated the development of a new public service that would encompass the larger goals and ideals expressed at Minnowbrook I. Building on the trends of the past two decades, this article also speculates about the future. Our conclusion is that ultimately the public service's legitimacy must be grounded in the Constitution. Although its focus is on macro-level political and administrative developments, the broad changes it discusses provide the framework from which many contemporary personnel work-life issues, such as pay equity and flexitime, have emerged.     

Evaluating public policy: The administrative role

If public administrators are not heavily involved from the beginning in the development of public policy, policy implementation and program evaluation may not be possible. The tasks and people needed for organizing policy change are identified and the roles of the public administrator in these efforts are discussed. This article describes three legislative efforts in which public administrators were heavily involved at the beginning stages of policy development; administrators helped to create programs that were subsequently more amenable to evaluation.     

The information-based organization: new dimensions for the public manager

Public management education should reflect the tremendous organizational changes brought about by information technologies and their applications. Increasing penetration of information technologies and the need for well-considered approaches to use those technologies will pose new opportunities and obstacles for public managers. This paper describes three key skill areas for curriculum consideration: information technology management, information management, and human resource management.     

Roward a public philosophy of public administration: a civic perspective of the public

The thesis of this article is that a publicphilosophy of public administration needs to be formulated. It must not be based upon romantic and technocratic approaches as past efforts have been. It must rest instead upon a revitalized concept of the public that stresses the importance of public interdependency, public learning, public language, and a critical evaluation of the relationship between the role of the state and public administration. This emphasis has important implications for the respective responsibilities of both academicians and practicing administrators.     

Decentralisation and government provision of public goods: The public health sector in Uganda

While many developing countries have devolved health care responsibilities to local governments in recent years, no study has examined whether decentralisation actually leads to greater health sector allocative efficiency. This paper approaches this question by modeling local government budgeting decisions under decentralisation. The model leads to conclusions not all favourable to decentralisation and produces several testable hypotheses concerning local government spending choices. For a brief empirical test of the model we look at data from Uganda. The data are of a type seldom available to researchers–actual local government budgets for the health sector in a developing country. The health budgets are disaggregated into specific types of activities based on a subjective characterisation of each activity's ‘publicness’. The empirical results provide preliminary evidence that local government health planners are allocating declining proportions of their budgets to public goods activities.     

Drug testing in the public sector: The role of unions

Not surprisingly, unions have traditionally played an active role in employee drug testing. And, although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of drug testing in two 1989 decisions, unions have continued to wage challenges to urinalysis under the U.S. Constitution and in the labor arena. As this research shows, federal as well as state and local government unions have had some success in challenging the categories of employees targeted for testing, good faith bargaining over drug testing, and due process and equity violations around testing.     

The 2011 presidential election in Peru: a thorny moral and political dilemma

The 2011 presidential elections in Peru was the third one held in the post-Fujimori era. A perusal of the campaign's political dynamics reveals pervasive anti-democratic behaviours, attitudes and rhetoric on the part of key political actors, showcasing the degree to which Peru remains an unconsolidated, precarious democracy. The second round presented a moral and political dilemma insofar as two unsavoury candidates of highly dubious democratic credentials vied for the presidency: Ollanta Humala, a former army lieutenant burdened by accusations of human rights violations who, additionally, led or supported two military uprisings; and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a convicted and jailed dictator who unabashedly touted the legacy of her father's authoritarian regime and surrounded herself with tainted fujimoristas. The paradox of this undesirable electoral outcome, which can be read as a popular rebuke of the status quo, is that it took place in the Latin American country posting the fastest economic growth over the past decade.     

Purpose and practice in public administration education: The place of substantive public policy areas

Public administration's early identification with the concept of a strong executive has resulted in an emphasis on staff functions in its graduate education programs. In the practicing world, staff functions are viewed as tools employed in the actual practice of public administrators, namely the delivery of substantive public services. Although public administration is characterized as an applied field, it does not focus its theory building and educative efforts on that which practicing public administrators actually do. The field necessarily imports other disciplines, but it does not provide the unique focus that would justify this borrowing; its current research agenda and training curricula are available in other disciplines. Public administration graduate students should concentrate in individual substantive policy areas, and the field should focus on optimizing organizational arrangments for delivering societal knowledge as public services. Interorganizational theory can provide the common theoretical framework necessary to mitigate the centrifugal effects of a variety of “administrations” within the field. The approach developed by J. Kenneth Benson is outlined; it provides a unique theoretical niche for public administration, yields a framework for comparative analysis, and defines the field's relationship to political science.     

Introduction: the politics of public justification

ABSTRACT

Introducing the special issue, this introduction sketches a broad frame for studying public justification. Addressing the relevance of studying this phenomenon, we contend that justificatory processes are very much at the core today’s politics. Defining the concept inclusively, we highlight the relevance of communicative agency and, at the same time, the salience of communicative contexts that enable this agency. Casting our net widely, we show how public justification is related to other, more thoroughly studied concepts, such as legitimacy, authority and power. Encouraging students of public justification to add to our understanding of justificatory processes, we highlight multiple fruitful methodological avenues for studying the concept.     

The democratic polity's search for the knowledgeable public administrator: an argumentative essay

Today public administrators, as many others, desire to be known as professionals or those knowledgeable enough to carry out their tasks without outside interference. By examining their claims to have expertise to carry out their public tasks, we provide a critical evaluation of the professionalism of public administrators. Our argument is that public administrators may not have sufficient knowledge to carry out their public tasks without the knowledge (help) of others. Suggesting that public administrators need to have more “public” knowledge of the public interest, we suggest ways that they can become more knowledgeable and more compatible with the tenets of political democracy.