Democracy,bureaucracy, and state capacity in Taiwan

Taiwan has long had a reputation for effective policy-making based on a highly skilled and educated bureaucracy. In addition, this capacity for technocratic leadership has not resulted in a huge, inefficient bureaucracy since the size of government remains comparatively small. This paper explores the implications of Taiwan's recent democratization for the effectiveness of the country's public administration. On the one hand, democratization reduced the power of regime conservatives, thereby expanding the role of technocrats in the government; on the other burgeoning corruption and policy gridlock have clearly undercut effective policy-making. Thus, the most fundamental challenge for public administration in Taiwan appears to be re-establishing the bureaucratic integrity of technocratic government.     

The agency perspective and the future of local government administration

Much of the recent political dialogue in the U. S. A. has included criticism of government bureaucracy.An especially significant response to this criticism was developed by Gary L. Wamsley and others in what has been c:alled the ‘Blacksburg Manifesto.’ They use the concept of the Agency Perspective to provide a basis for the legitimacy of a role in the governance process for public administration.

This essay explores the application of the concept of the Agency Perspective, which was developed primallly with reference to the national government, to local government and considers the implications of the Agency) Perspective for the future role of local government administration.

The essay concludes that the concept of the Agency Perspective fits local governments as well. If these arguments meet with widespread acceptance, this suggests a growing, more active role for public administration in U. S. local governments.     

Representative Bureaucracy in the Public Service? A Critical Analysis of the Challenges Confronting Women in the Civil Service of Ghana

In the public administration literature, the debate concerning the representation of minorities in the public bureaucracy continues to attract attention. The idea is that passive representation may lead to active representation with the later helping to develop policies and programs that will benefit minorities. Consequently, a number of governments have been implementing policies to enhance the involvement of minorities in public services. The Ghana government has not been left out in this endeavor. Since 1957, it has continued to institute measures to ensure a fair gender representation in the bureaucracy. This notwithstanding, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy continue to be dominated by males despite the over representation of women at the lower levels. What are the challenges confronting women in the public sector that make it difficult to achieve active representation? In this article, we examine the challenges confronting women to achieve active representation from a representative bureaucracy perspective.     

Public Employment: Attractiveness,Representativeness, and Performance

The functions of the public sector penetrate almost all aspects of social life. Considering the tremendous implications that government employment holds for economic health and other aspects, it is understandable that the processes controlling entry to these jobs are subject to widespread concern. Democratic norms call for a representative bureaucracy. The large size and increasingly mono-ethnic of the Malaysian civil service have caused concern for some time. This study suggests that job characteristics, some background and personal characteristics are significant determinants of graduating students’ job choice. The study also demonstrates how representative bureaucracy would affect performance of the public sector.     

Public Accountability in Malaysia: Challenges and Critical Concerns

Despite its laudable roles in steering the process of socioeconomic development, government bureaucracy in Malaysia has not escaped public criticisms for its inefficiency, corruption, and failure to guard public interests. The media, civil society groups, intelligentsia, and the political opposition have successfully utilized the major scandals to highlight the growing public concern over the poor performance of the bureaucracy and its lack of accountability and responsiveness. This has provided impetus for the “clean and efficient government” movement initiated in the early 1980s and a series of subsequent efforts aimed at promoting appropriate values and ethics among public officials. Numerous rules and regulations have been framed, major reforms have been introduced in various spheres of administration, and an extensive program of training and bureaucratic reorientation has been undertaken. Despite all this, recent evidence suggests that the public service continues to suffer from problems of corruption and other irregularities. Obviously, the performance of numerous reforms in public service and the institutional mechanisms put in place for tackling ethical problems, though positive in general, has fallen short of expectations. This paper seeks to examine and analyze the present approach to combating corruption and promoting accountability in the Malaysian public service. In particular, it focuses on institutional mechanisms currently available and identifies and analyzes their constraints and limitations in keeping the public bureaucracy under surveillance and control.     

Public administration in Marshall Dimock's textbooks

This article examines the relationship between Marshall Dimock's positive, broad-based concept of public administration and his approach to writing undergraduate textbooks. Analysis shows that both Dimock's American government and public administration textbooks provide a different slant on public agencies than that available in most current introductory volumes. In particular, his American government textbook is more positive in tone about agencies than are its modern counterparts. The public administration textbook has comparative material that rarely appears in introductory-level textbooks.

This article analyzes how Marshall Dimock's conception of public administration as an important area of study with links to policy and leadership anchored his textbook writing. In the 1950s Dimock co-authored two popular textbooks for basic undergraduate courses, one in American government and the other in public administration.⁽¹⁾

Scholars still debate what textbooks in either field should teach students about public agencies. Cigler and Neiswender argue that current American government textbooks portray administration in a negative light. All authors see bureaucracy as a problem of some sort, few explain the role administrators play in shaping policy and none discuss reasons to enter the public service.⁽²⁾ Cigler and Neiswender suggest that American government textbooks must change to aid accurate perceptions of the administrative role. In particular, they believe the texts must add material on the public service as a profession and compare American agencies with those in other nations.

Since public administration textbooks are a key way that majors in the field learn material, debate ensues on what material they should contain. Recent articles explore how textbooks define key terms such as policy and how they integrate the work of various theorists.⁽³⁾

While all widely-used textbooks deal with both the political environment and internal agency functions (e.g., personnel, finance), no consensus exists on how to allocate space between political and managerial concerns nor on exactly which subtopics should be covered. No consensus exists on how much space should be devoted to policy making and policy analysis with some textbooks covering this topic and others skimming it lightly.

One often cited problem with contemporary texts is the lack of a comparative focus and a concomitant need to internationalize the curriculum.⁽⁴⁾ The thrust of current proposals is that students need a more broad-based education to prepare them for global leadership.

Interestingly, Dimock's approach to public administration led him to write textbooks that in some ways surpass what is available today. While the majority of the topics he presents (and their ordering) are similar to current efforts, he offers unique emphases that deal with the above mentioned criticisms. Far from being an exercise in academic nostalgia, examining Dimock's textbooks is a useful way of giving current writers new insights.

To appreciate Dimock's approach to textbook construction we first have to identify the core concepts behind his approach to public administration education. Afterwards, we can analyze the treatment of public agencies in American Government in Action, relating it to Cigler and Neiswender's critique of contemporary textbooks, and -examine how various editions of Public Administration conceptualize the field.     

Representative bureaucracy,international organizations and public service bargains

Academic interest in the administrative aspects of international organizations is on the rise. Yet, an issue that has received little attention is bureaucratic representation—the extent to which international bureaucracies are representative of the polity that they serve. The article theorizes the rationales for and forms of representative bureaucracy in international organizations by combining insights from the representative bureaucracy literature with the ‘public service bargains’ framework. It argues that bureaucratic representation is highly relevant in international organizations, given the diverse polity these organizations serve and their precarious legitimacy. It distinguishes three types of representational ‘bargains’ between international organizations and those they serve, centred on power, equal opportunities and diversity, and discusses under which conditions each type of bargain is likely to be struck. The argument contributes to discussions about representative bureaucracy in international organizations and to broader theoretical debates about international public administration.     

On the Relationship between Political Science and Administrative Science in Germany

The theoretical and empirical analysis of administrative activities has been an important area of research since the establishment of political science as an academic discipline in Germany at the end of the 1960s. But is administrative science still a significant part of political science in Germany today? I argue here that in Germany a political science oriented administrative science has developed from a science focused on public administration, that is, on organizational questions, to one focused on public policies and thus on questions concerning the conditions and consequences of political problem solving and control (Steuerung). The question of the internal organization of government is increasingly regarded as an irrelevant one; in addition, the institutional promotion and funding of political science administration research has dramatically decreased since the 1970s. Today's new challenges (economization and internationalization) for both government and public administration seem to exceed the capability of political science administrative research. These challenges open up new opportunities, however, since, in the search for solutions beyond the dichotomy of market/managerialism on the one hand and traditional bureaucracy and state government on the other, political science in particular regains more importance. As will be shown, there are now tendencies which indicate that political science administrative research might encounter a stronger political demand. If the consequent research is able to find a new mixture of theory and practice, this in turn could help revitalize political science administrative research in Germany.     

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE: REFORMS,REGIMES, AND REALITY IN BANGLADESH

Bangladesh, a relatively young country, emerged with expectations of charting a new course in departing from its traditional and rigid system of public administration that prevailed during its existence as a part of British India and later as a province of Pakistan. The evolution of public administration in Bangladesh was profoundly influenced by the legacy of Pakistani rule, and subsequent efforts at reform hardly had any impact in breaking up the domination of the bureaucracy, which thrived under a pseudo-democratic and military-led government. Several factors contributed to the breakdown of administrative governance and the problem was reflected in poor performance, high incidence of corruption, and a lack of direction in the administrative system. A number of internal and external factors have exerted pressure for improving the system, but all efforts have yielded little result. Consequently, the achievement of good governance remains a distant dream in the absence of a vital and effective tool of public management.     

The Study of Public Administration in Hong Kong and Macao: Evolutionary Paths and Implications

Comparatively speaking, the birth and the growth of public administration programmes, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in Hong Kong and Macao have been a response to the increasing need for the training of students and civil servants in the discipline of public administration. Since the 1990s, the proliferation of Master of Public Administration (MPA) programmes in both the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions can be explained by the demand for local people to govern the two places in accordance with the principle of ‘one country, two systems’. The content of various MPA programmes also reflects the changing political and administrative circumstances; its public administration focus has been accompanied by core courses training students from a variety of disciplines, ranging from public finance to economics, from public policy analyses to globalization, and from regional planning to a deeper understanding of mainland Chinese government and politics. In both Hong Kong and Macao, some graduates from both the Bachelor and Master programmes have joined the civil service or enhanced their skills in public sector management and governance. Although the medium of instruction varies from one university to another, their programme objective shares one thing in common: the imperative of training existing civil servants and students to join the governments of Hong Kong and Macao. This paper compares and contrasts the development of public administration programmes in Hong Kong and Macao and examines its theoretical implications for the changing relations between politics and public administration.     

The impacts of the revolution of 1978-1979 on the iranian bureaucracy and civil service

This paper deals with the complex relationship between bureaucracy and revolution. It explains some of the major impacts of the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 on the civil service and the bureaucracy of the country. Three major phases of the revolution are identified: the Provisional Government (February-November 1979), the turbulent radicalization (November 1979-1982), and the institutionalization, stabilization, and Islamization (1983- ).

The revolution was not only against the Shah, but also aimed at altering Iran’ bureaucratic machinery which, as a power instrument, served system- (regime-) enhancement. During the first and second periods, a debureaucratization of society and a democratization of the administrative system was begun. While the bureaucracy increased as a result of nationalization, its functions declined as more and more activities of public administration were taken over by the non-bureaucratic, independent grass-roots organizations that sprang up during and after the revolution.

This trend has been reversed during the third phase by the policy of consolidation, centralization, control and system-maintenance pursued by the Mousavi administration. A rebureaucratization of society commenced and application of most of the old laws and regulations was resumed. Patronage and many patho-logical behaviors, includinf corruption, of the bureaucracy are becoming pervasive again, resulting in the dissatisfaction of the general public. In short, despite some initial revolutiohary attempts to change its structure and nature, the bureaucracy has prevailed as a well-entrenched, established institution of power and administration in Iran.

Finally, the author briefly describes the sources of public dissatisfaction and suggests conceivable remedies. These involve major reforms in the Iranian bureaucracy to achieve both administrative efficiency and popular responsiveness.     

New Technologies and the Modernization of Local Government: an Analysis of Biases and Constraints

In emerging structures of local governance the institutions of elected local government have the potential to fulfil three complementary roles: those of local democracy, public policy making and direct service delivery. Although ICTs (information and communication technologies) could effectively develop all three roles there is a systemic bias which favours service delivery applications and ignores others. This bias can be explained by reference to a network of actors who determine ICT policy in relative isolation from the other policy networks active at the local level. The ways in which this bias is perpetuated are explored through a case study of ICT policy making in UK local government. The implications of the systemic bias for the long-term future of local government, and indeed public administration, are both severe and profound. They suggest an over-emphasis upon performance measurement, a decline in democratic activity and a diminishing capacity among elected bodies to effect broad public policy initiatives.     

Networks, Management and Institutions: Public Administration as 'Normal Science'

How does network analysis fit into the development of public administration as an academic discipline? This article tries to bridge theoretical developments in public administration between the middle of the 1970s and the first half of the 1990s. The benchmarks being used are (1) the now classical account by Vincent Ostrom of The Intellectual Crisis in (American) Public Administration - published 25 years ago this year - and (2) Christopher Hood’s reconstruction of core values in (British) new public management. Rather than representing analytical developments as an endless succession of different or even mutually exclusive approaches, this contribution tries to reconcile different foci for analysing public administration. Administrative theory provides us with a rather stable meta-theoretical framework for studying the meaning of quality in government, governance and public administration at various levels of analysis. By relating the emergence of network analysis in PA to parallel developments such as the resurgence of (neo-)managerial and (neo-)institutional analysis, it also becomes clear that network analysis is useful as an analytical device, but that it needs to be linked to theoretical perspectives that provide us with operational assumptions about ‘networks’. Network analysis in itself only provides split ground for reinventing government and refounding public administration.     

Innovating Public Service Delivery in Transitional Countries: The Case of One Stop Shops in Kazakhstan

This article analyses the implementation of managerial ideas in Kazakhstan using the case of a combined public service delivery called “One Stop Shops”. Several public services are provided in a single building rather than different government offices in a business-like style of service delivery and in a modern physical environment. The service integration policy is an attempt of Kazakhstani government to improve the quality of public services and reduce corruption. Some positive progress in improving the accessibility of public services has been noted. However, as this article argues, the country-specific model of “alternative-access” service delivery was not able to implement in-depth changes in the work of the public sector and improve service quality. Implementation of the managerial ideas has been limited and constrained by the institutional framework and culture prevailing in the Kazakhstani bureaucracy. The main conclusion is that the governments of transitional countries need to critically analyze the pros and cons of the new policies and reflect on their cultures before making further steps to adopt Western managerial initiatives.     

New Technologies and the Modernization of Local Government: an Analysis of Biases and Constraints

In emerging structures of local governance the institutions of elected local government have the potential to fulfil three complementary roles: those of local democracy, public policy making and direct service delivery. Although ICTs (information and communication technologies) could effectively develop all three roles there is a systemic bias which favours service delivery applications and ignores others. This bias can be explained by reference to a network of actors who determine ICT policy in relative isolation from the other policy networks active at the local level. The ways in which this bias is perpetuated are explored through a case study of ICT policy making in UK local government. The implications of the systemic bias for the long-term future of local government, and indeed public administration, are both severe and profound. They suggest an over-emphasis upon performance measurement, a decline in democratic activity and a diminishing capacity among elected bodies to effect broad public policy initiatives.     

The partisan–professional dichotomy revisited: Politicization and decision‐making of senior civil servants

Politicization has an ambivalent reputation among public administration scholars. While considered an effective instrument to safeguard political control over ministerial bureaucracy, partisanship of senior civil servants is likewise associated with patronage and is deemed detrimental to professionalism and meritocracy. To scrutinize this contradiction, the article examines how the party‐political background of senior civil servants influences their decision‐making behaviour. Two theoretically derived conceptions of loyalty are therefore put to the test: responsiveness and responsibility. Effects are captured by using the vignette technique in 40 in‐depth interviews with former senior civil servants from ministerial departments at federal and state level in Germany. The results are surprising in so far as they reveal that politicized senior civil servants act neither more responsively nor less responsibly than their non‐politicized peers. These findings challenge common assumptions and call for a more refined analysis of the conditions under which politicization leads to negative effects.     

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND THE INFORMATION POLITY

Within the debates in Britain about changes in contemporary public administration insufficient attention has been focused to date upon the significance of new information and communication technologies. In particular, the operational importance of computer networks to government organizations, and of the information flows supported by them, have hitherto been given scant attention. A primary focus for understanding the current transformation processes in both services and organization occurring in public administration should be upon the role and significance of these new information flows. Informational capabilities are increasing throughout government organization and have considerable implications for the reforging of that set of organizations which comprise British public administration and for the relationships between and within them, as well as for the quality of publicly provided services. The shifts occurring in contemporary public administration can be usefully analysed and understood by reference to the new concept of the 'information polity'.     

From-Long Term To Short-Term Contracting

One can look at the arrival of New Public Management and the extensive public sector reforms inspired by this theory from many angles. Here we examine the shift from long-term contracting, typical of bureaucracy and traditional enterprises, to short-term contracting, borrowed from private sector governance methods. Short-term contracting has three principal uses in the governance of the public sector: (a) contracting with service providers after a tendering/bidding process; (b) contracting with the CEOs of the incorporated public enterprises; and (c) contracting with executive agencies about what they should deliver. Theoretical analysis, supported by substantial empirical evidence, suggests that short-term contracting eliminates the extensive post-contractual opportunism connected with long-term contracting, but is vulnerable to precontractual opportunism. Short-term contracting is not just another public sector reform fad, but constitutes a new tool for government which increases efficiency when handled with prudence.