Inequality,discrimination, and service delivery: A recapitulation for the public administrator

The equitable provision of urban public services has begun to receive increased attention from researchers, administrators, and the courts. Recent research has questioned the view that minority and low-income groups are systematically deprived in the distribution of public services, e.g. police and fire services, libraries, street quality and maintenance, and parks and recreational facilities. This paper reviews empirical studies in urban service distribution and judicial responses to municipal service claims. The research reveals that discimination in service delivery does exist. However, it is difficult to determine empirically in larger cities if a consistent pattern of discrimination exists and whether or not it bears a significant relationship to race or class. Discrimination and inequality on the basis of race has been subject to meticulous judicial prowess benefitting at one time or another the citizen and the municipality. The courts are requiring overwhelming statistical documentation to substantiate racial discrimination in the provision of urban public services.     

Reconciling public administration and democracy: the role of the responsible administrator

This article considers whether the individual responsibilities of bureaucratic officials provide a useful means for reconciling the tension between democracy and bureaucracy. Three questions central to the proper definition of bureaucratic responsibility are examined: (1) What is the relation of bureaucratic responsibility to the view that proper bureaucratic conduct is essentially a matter of ethics and morality? (2) If the appeal to moral values does not ordinarily offer an acceptable guide to proper bureaucratic conduct, upon what principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? (3) What issues arise in putting responsibility into practice within a complex organizational setting? The article concludes that a democratic, process-based conception offers the most useful way of thinking about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials.

The tension between democracy and bureaucracy has bedeviled public administration. However one defines democracy, its core demand for responsiveness (to higher political authorities, the public, client groups, or whatever the presumed agent of democratic rule) does not neatly square with notions of effective organization of the policy process and efficient delivery of goods and services, which are central to the definition of bureaucracy. Responsiveness need not guarantee efficiency, while bureaucratic effectiveness and efficiency often belie democratic control.

This tension between democracy and bureaucracy persists, but that it is the individual administrator who directly experiences the tension is especially important as a guide toward a resolution of this conflict. Since divergence is central to this tension between democracy and bureaucracy, speculation about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials—their individual places within the bureaucracy, particularly the administrator's thoughts, choices, and actions—provides fruitful terrain for resolving the question of bureaucracy's place within a democratic system of rule.

Three questions need to be addressed if one accepts the premise that individual responsibility is central to locating the place of bureaucracy in a democratic order. First, what is unique about bureaucratic responsibility, especially in contrast to the view that these are largely ethical problems that can be resolved by appeal to moral values? Second, if dilemmas of bureaucratic conduct are by and large not resolvable through appeal to moral values, upon what other principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? Third, what issues arise in putting responsibility into practice, especially within a complex organizational setting? This list of questions is not meant to be exhaustive but only a starting point for discussion.     

A deficit of democratic authenticity: Political linkage and the public in Andean polities

The article argues that Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela are political systems suffering from an acute deficit of democratic authenticity, that is, a loss of substance in democratic processes. The deficit in democratic authenticity is a product of malfunctions in the mechanisms of political linkage and multiple barriers that inhibit effective citizen participation in public life. Rather than acceding to minimalist interpretations of democracy that deemphasize the importance, of active citizen participation, the author stresses the importance of maintaining a rigorous normative definition of democracy as the standard by which to assess the state of democractic political development. Catherine M. Conaghan is a Queen’s National Scholar and professor of political studies at Queen’s University. She is the author ofRestructuring Domination: Industrialists and the State in Ecuador (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988) and co-author ofUnsettling Scatecraft: Democracy and Neoliberalism in the Central Andes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).     

In search of the new public management

Managing the New Public Services. Edited by David Farnham and Sylvia Horton. Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1993. Pp. 282. £35 hb, £11.99 pb.

Rediscovering Public Services Management. Edited by Leslie Willcocks and Jenny Harrow. McGraw‐Hill, London, 1992. Pp. 341. £18.95 pb.

Not For Profit, Not For Sale ‐ The Challenge of Public Sector Management. By Michael Starks. Policy Journals, Newbury, 1991. Pp. 168. £25 hb, £9.95 pb.

Public Sector Management. By Norman Flynn. 2nd edition, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1993. Pp. 203. £29.95 hb, £10.95 pb.     

Unlikely candidates for democracy: The role of structural context in democratic consolidation

Many contributors to the new literature on democratic consolidation overemphasize the role of political leadership, strategic choices about basic institutional arrangements or economic policy, and other contingent process variables. Their focus on political crafting has encounraged an undue optimism about the possibility of consolidating democracies in unfavorable structural contexts. This article critiques the current literature and asserts the primary importance of structural context in democratic consolidation. The powerful influence of structural context is illustrated by using just two structural variables, economic development level and prior authoritarian regime type, to indicate a group of thirty-eight countries in which democracy has failed to consolidate during the third wave of democratization (1974-present) and is very unlikely to do so in the near or medium-term future. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. J. Mark Ruhl is Gleen and Mary Todd Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. He has written extensively on Latin American politics and has specialized in the cases of Colombia and Honduras. Recent publications by Professor Ruhl includeParty Politics and Elections in Latin America (Westview, 1989), coauthored with R.H. McDonald of Syracuse University, and “Redefining Civil-Military Relations in Honduras”Journal of Intermerican Studies and World Affairs (Spring 1996).     

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.     

The county administrator and productivity improvement: An examination of contrasting styles

The study examines productivity improvement efforts among a sample of United States County Administrators. Administrators' actions were divided into “tough” and “soft” approaches which were then examined in light of external and internal environment, governmental actors, duties of the office, management and policy actions and roles, and personal and demographic characteristics. Strong correlates were found in the areas of external environment, managerial role, and personal characteristics.     

Recent state initiatives: The governor as policy leader; the governor as chief administrator

Innovative accomplishments of governors are a vehicle for analyzing state governors' performance as policy leaders and as chief executives. Analysis of survey data describing state innovations reveals governors fostering an almost even mix of programs (initiatives directly serving clienteles) and administrative innovations (changes in internal procedures), with innovations tending to be reported from agencies where the governor is involved in selection of the agency head. The implications are that governors interested in instituting and institutionalizing innovation can do so through their appointments and that the appointive power can be a vehicle for change as well as control. Program initiatives tended to concentrate in various functional policy areas, such as economic development or education. Management innovations, on the other hand, tended to be system wide in that they were reported in agencies that serve the entire state bureaucracy or they emanated from the governor's office.1     

Minnowbrook: the search for a new reality

The search for a public administration reality begins with issues of theory as a substitute for reality. These illusions of theoretical construct have not corrupted public administration, in part because of Minnowbrook I. In a time of national crisis the papers of Minnowbrook I set out an ethic and perspective seriously informed by the reality of the 1968 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) and in 1988, Minnowbrook II is informed by the Commission on the Cities (a twenty year update of the Kerner Commission Report). The Minnowbrook I papers are an example of the whole being more important than the sum of its parts. Both conferences as well as the papers they produced are grounded in reality, in a shared commitment to making democratic self-government work, and in achieving sensible notions of effectiveness, equity, human dignity, and trust free from the corrupting effects of theory.

What can we possibly say that would in any pertinent way bridge the gap of time that would persuasively relate 1968 to the present day? The kindest comment would seem to be that, thus far at least, compared to 1968, we enjoy a degree of relative tranquility. Consider for a moment the sequence of spasmodic convulsions which relentlessly shocked virtually all segments of our society in 1968 with such numbing intensity that even the gentle September solitude of the Adirondacks could only soothe but not erase the emotional impulses that were generated by those who attended the 1968 Minnowbrook Conference in upstate New York.

To mention just a few of the traumatic events of that fateful year one might begin in February when the Kerner Commission report was released. The tone of the report was as bleak as its temper; America faced a domestic crisis situation of major proportions. In March, the political system was given a severe jolt when Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection as President in the November 1968 general election. This set into motion multiple political machinations within the Democratic party, all of which seemed to blur into a surrealistic nightmare as a result of the assassinations of, first, Martin Luther King in April, and then, Robert F. Kennedy in June. But the real shock waves were yet to come. Hardly thirty days had passed following the assassination of Robert Kennedy when the nation and the world were hit with the debacle of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the release of the Papal encyclical, Humane Vitae.

It was within this context that a group of conferees gathered together at Minnowbrook in September to discuss and reflect on, figuratively speaking, what it meant to be a democrat in a global society in which the party of Jefferson, the followers of Marx, and the apostles of Christ all seemed to embrace the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” as a categorical imperative of the first magnitude. Whatever the original intention of those who planned the 1968 Minnowbrook conference, the tone and temper which surfaced at the onset, and never receded, were a seemingly unconscious testimonial to the German sociologist, Robert Michaels. Writing in the last 1920s, Michaels argued that,

It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors, of the mandatories over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization says oligarchy.⁽¹⁾

Michaels concluded that all existing organizations, when faced with the demands for bold, aggressive innovations, must respond with defensive, even reactionary decisions to retain their power. “That which is oppresses that which ought to be.” But this time-worn trope is much too simplistic to explain the complex intricacies of the current public policy process and organizational behavior. Certainly no one was more aware of this than the conferees at Minnowbrook in 1968, as well as anyone else who has followed the ebb and flow of our political and policy systems to the present day.     

The forgotten worker: Neglected aspects of public service in an information age

One of the most consistent themes among contemporary administrative theorists is that the workplace of the future will be a more hospitable environment for public workers than is currently the case. Decentralization, participative management, and intrinsically satisfying work are commonly forecast. Using survey data from state employees, this study identifies a large class of civil servants that has not yet, and probably will not, enjoy the enriched jobs that are so often predicted. The discussion identifies a number of factors in the work environment of these workers that are likely to frustrate attempts to make their jobs more meaningful and pleasant. Having acknowledged their existence and assessed their plight, the study concludes with a summary of measures that can be taken to address the needs of these “forgotten workers.”