Change dynamics and public management: Challenges and opportunities

With the growth of contemporary technology, communications, and transportation, infused with television, computers, and the information highway, all of us are quickly becoming aware of the linked consequences of change. As traditional boundaries are collapsing around us, there is a growing sensitivity to the need for change, along with the belief that we need to plan for it. As such, strategic planning, competitive positioning, and innovative management systems that involve longer-term perspectives, critical trade-offs, and opportunity-driven forecasting are being fashioned here in the United States, and around the world. To grasp the initiative to shape an organizational context that will ensure a competitive, vibrant, healthy, fiscally rigorous and humane decision making environment for the public sector is the analytical foundation on which this symposium is anchored. Public managers have no option but to respond to American and global events, and the accompanying cultural, economic and political developments with courage, innovations, and strategic perspectives. It is clear that a paradigmatic crisis is occurring in American society and in public administration. Therefore, the harbingers of new paradigms are being created and crafted, which provide “hard” methods of inquiry, “real” cases of success; sound “fiscal” measures of performance; and “clearer” professional/leadership redefinitions of responsibility.     

Traditions of governance: interpreting the changing role of the public sector

The role of the state is changing under the impact of, for example, globalization. The changes have been variously understood as the new public management (NPM), the hollowing–out of the state and the new governance. This special issue of Public Administration explores the changing role of the state in advanced industrial democracies. It focuses on the puzzle of why states respond differently to common trends.
This introductory article has three aims. First, we provide a brief review of the existing literature on public sector reform to show that our approach is distinctive. We argue that the existing literature does not explore the ways in which governmental traditions shape reform. Second, we outline an interpretive approach to the analysis of public sector reform built on the notions of beliefs, traditions, dilemmas and narratives. We provide brief illustrations of these ideas drawn from the individual country articles. Finally, we outline the ground covered by all the chapters but we do not summarize and compare their experiences of reform. That task is reserved for the concluding article.     

The future of professionalization and professionalism in public administration: Advancements,barriers, and prospects

This article examines the advancements, barriers, and prospects of the field of public administration as it seeks professionalism through professionalization. Overall, this essay delves into six broad areas of advancement and an equal number of obstacles. The milestones focus on the criteria of a profession and public administration's fulfillment of those standards, far-reaching credentialization, the expanding entry of women and minorities, the development of performance criteria, intergovernmental networking, and an expansion of associations. The impediments to the further evolution of the field toward professional development include the continuing value conflicts over the ultimate purposes of the field; the persistent politicization of the federal workforce; the inability of public servants to affect the uses of privatization; the erosion of national, state, and local governmental human-resource capacity; the confusion over the teaching of ethics and the promulgation of operational codes; and the prevalence of authoritarian administration without significant democratic inroads. The respective enumerations were not intended to suggest an exact symmetry between accomplishments and obstacles in the field--only that progress and deficiencies are prominent and substantial. Nor were these considered lists intended as exhaustive.

The central theme of this article is that, paradoxically, the prospects of this profession are encouraging because of the growing public need for its services despite persistent, widespread unpopularity. This research concludes that public administrators face an ambivalent future in which their emerging profession continues to prosper and expand amidst increasing alienation and frustration from the public whom they serve. This irony may not be alleviated until there is a socially and politically agreed-upon agenda for public servants to execute. If such a consensus is ever forged, then public administrators may become popular as well as professionally effective.     

Teaching public administration,public management and policy analysis: some international comparisons

This article compares the design and content of domestic and foreign programs for teaching public administration and management. At the Master's level, curriculum designers, irrespective of location, emphasize organization theory, personnel, policy analysis, and microeconomics. However, domestic programs place much more emphasis on research methods and budget management. International programs place more emphasis on public law and management information systems. At this time, neither domestic nor international programs report much required training in leadership, bargaining, or institutional design.     

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.     

The Modernization of the French Civil Service: Crisis, Change and Continuity

This article examines the policy of Fifth Republic governments towards the modernization of the French civil service, with particular reference to the period since 1989. It has three main objectives. The first is to clarify the terms of the French debate about the crisis of the state, which is necessary to an understanding of the intellectual context of reform. The second is to describe and analyse the various strands of 'administrative modernization' policy. The third is to provide an interim assessment of the impact on the structure and culture of the civil service of what is an on-going programme of administrative reform. The origins and development of modernization policy are examined from a 'regulationist' perspective which emphasizes that modernization is intended to re-assert the legitimacy and effectiveness of state action, most notably by deconcentrating the manaement of public policies to the 'local' civil service.     

The temporal,social, and responsiveness dilemmas of public personnel administration

Public personnel administration is confronted by three intertwined dilemmas. Responsiveness to political leadership is essential to a democracy. Yet placing responsibility for personnel administration in the hands of political appointees introduces a transcience that is incompatible with a sustained commitment to organizational improvement through applications of the behavioral sciences. Vesting careerists with personnel administration authority is the best way to address the three dilemmas. Doing so will require a rapprochement with political leaders, one that establishes a normative orientation to personnel administration in which responsiveness to policy leadership is asserted along with other essential values associated with public service.     

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.     

Science,technology, and public administration: the government-university nexus

The relations between governments and universities, particularly with respect to science and technology, is traced from the agricultural period and the land-grant era to the research and development era involving particularly the fields of medicine and defense, to the modern era which is lacking a coherent national policy.

Among the institutional relations that are critical to science, technology, and public administration, those involving government-university linkages stand out. In the past, there have been two major eras of government/university relations: the land-grant era and the federal mission agency era. More recently, a third era has emerged—what we call the new federalist era. The first period featured a decentralized institutional model focused on a single economic sector: agriculture. The second was characterized by a more centralized federally dominated approach. This third era is still evolving. Its primary ingredients include university ties with many segments of industry. And government includes that as well as federal agency roles.

During the land-grant era, dating from 1862, a large number of universities, devoted initially to problems of agriculture and the mechanical arts, were created. The era was characterized by a research system involving a federal agency, state government, universities, and an industry of individuals with little or no research capability. It was a highly decentralized system, responsive to multiple needs throughout the country, with a heavy emphasis on technology transfer. It gave the initial impetus to the university in fashioning an applied role. Whatever else may be said about this system—good or bad—it certainly made the American agricultural industry more productive.

In the federal mission agency era, dating from World War II, federal agencies spent vast sums to pursue national goals in defense, space, energy, and other fields by creating programs supporting universities. On the expectation there would eventually be practical payoffs, federal agencies supported basic research largely on the universities’ terms. States were not involved in any significant degree. Industry was, of course, very much a part of this system, but in the case of defense and space, it was primarily as developers of technology for government rather than users of technology for civilian goals.

This system worked unevenly. The greatest continuity was the Department of Defense (DOD) as a sponsor of research and development, including research in universities. That is what was seen as a problem in the era of Vietnam. For many critics, it is a problem today, with Star Wars merely the most dramatic example of a too close university involvement with DOD.

There were discontinuities in most of the areas of federal mission agency support. At the time of Minnowbrook I, the desire was to redeploy science and technology to other mission areas that would improve the human condition. The process was difficult, as various domestic agencies had problems establishing and maintaining relations with science and technology. In the 1980s, most of the civilian programs were cut back and the energy program was slated to be eliminated altogether.

Today, the United States research system, and thus the government-university partnership, is in a new-federalist era of science and technology. Here, the federal government, state governments, industry, and universities cooperate and collide as each tries to make the most of several new technologies now emerging with a perceived high economic potential. Meanwhile, the university-DOD relationship has been rebuilt after a decade of rupture. In an environment of increasing global competition, the old institutional models are giving way to novel arrangements.

What has happened is that a new mission—a new problem or opportunity—has become more salient in the 1980s. This is the mission of economic development and competitiveness. Economic competitiveness is a broad and diffuse mission. The juxtaposition of this mission with science and technology is because a good part of this competition is expected to be waged on the frontier of new technology. Japan, in particular, has made technological leadership in the cluster of fields cited above a national imperative, and other nations are following suit.⁽¹⁾

No federal mission agency is clearly identified with, much less in charge of, a mission. Indeed, the mission has not been officially proclaimed but exists only as a rallying cry. The question to be resolved is whether the present scattered response is enough, or if a more comprehensive national policy should be established. If established, should a new federal mission agency be set in motion to lead the assault—perhaps one modeled after the Japanese MITI? If so, how would it relate to the other players? Given the role of the states in particular, it would seem that a cooperative model drawing on federal and state resources might be designed.     

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.     

Change in state power,international conditions and peasant producers: The case of Kenya

Arguments for food self‐sufficiency at the level of small‐scale farms invariably refer to the need for national self‐sufficiency. This article shows that state‐inspired attempts to impose self‐sufficiency upon specialised middle peasant producers in Kenya have had the effect of reducing the supply of marketed food and increasing food imports. A change in the character of presidential power has also inhibited food production by large‐scale farms and this, together with imported price shocks, has reduced the supply of food for commercialised peasants who produce for international markets. Only very specific political conditions make it possible for international and internal circuits of capital and exchange to be harmonised through the power of a nation state.     

Patents and pills,power and procedure: The North-South politics of public health in the WTO

Developing countries have limited control over the distributional and substantive dimensions of international institutions, but they retain an important stake in a rule-based international order that can reduce uncertainty and stabilize expectations. Because international institutions can provide small states with a potential mechanism to bind more powerful states to mutually recognized rules, developing countries may seek to strengthen the procedural dimensions of multilateral institutions. Clear and strong multilateral rules cannot substitute for weakness, but they can help ameliorate some of the vulnerability that is a product of developing countries’ position in the international system. This article uses the contemporary international politics of intellectual property rights (IPRs) as a lens to examine North-South conflicts over international economic governance and the possibilities of institutional reform. Lacking the power to revise the substance of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), developing countries, allied with a network of international public health activists, subsequently designed strategies to operate within the constraining international political reality they faced. They sought to clarify the rules of international patent law, to affirm the rights established during the TRIPS negotiations, and to minimize vulnerability to opportunism by powerful states. In doing so the developing countries reinforced global governance in IPRs. Ken Shadlen is lecturer in development studies at the London School of Economics. He is the author ofDemocratization without Representation: The Politics of Small Industry in Mexico (Penn State University Press, 2004). His work on the politics of intellectual property has appeared inWorld Economy, and is forthcoming inInternational Studies Quarterly, Journal of International Development, andReview of International Political Economy. In preparing this paper I have benefited from discussions of the material with a number of people, including Tom Callaghy, Meghnad Desai, Tim Dyson, Christopher Garrison, Marcus Kurtz, Susan Martin, Christopher May, Monique Mrazek, Andrew Schrank, and Robert Wade. I also wish to thank the journal’s reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments. Financial support was provided by STICERD, LSE.     

The Nation-State: Durability Through Change

The nation?Cstate has recently come under attack as an institution incompatible with liberal democracy, or under ridicule as being a faked representation of a virtual invention, the nation. This study shows the historical reality and durability of the nation?Cstate as adapted to a modern perception of the nation and to the profoundly changed conditions in which it functions. It shows the transformation of the romantic ideology of nationalism of the early nineteenth century to a mere principle of political organization, according to which the nation?Cstate combines the cultural identity and the democratic will of a people. It shows also the resulting changes in the understanding of national identity and belonging for the individual. This study also examines some of the rival theories offered in this connection, such as the preference for the so-called civic nationality over an ethnic one and also the strong case for multiculturalism often voiced. The conclusions from these examinations are that the democratic nation?Cstate with a cultural identity of its own, with equal citizenship for all and extensive recognition of the cultural rights of minorities, has legitimately survived into a new era of globalization, of increasingly mixed populations, of cultures crossing borders and of increased international intervention. As an example of the problems faced by relatively new nation?Cstates, an epilogue presents the case of Israel which demonstrates the centrality and complexity of the minorities?? problem in the process of shaping a modern and normal nation?Cstate.     

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.