SHIFTING SANDS: TEACHING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CLIMATE OF CHANGE

This article analyses influences which in recent decades have changed the way in which public administration has been taught in British higher education. Focusing mainly on the former polytechnics, the article argues that a curriculum shift away from the social sciences and towards management, and changes in the nature of the British public sector, have profoundly influenced approaches to teaching public administration. It suggests that learning strategies are closely related to debate about the nature of the discipline and its location within the academic spectrum. The article also raises questions about the extent to which public administration teachers in British universities are equipped to present the more applied and skills-based teaching which has often been adopted in recent years, and the tensions which this might pose particularly in the‘new’universities with the increasing emphasis upon academic research.     

ELITE ETHNOGRAPHIES: POTENTIAL,PITFALLS AND PROSPECTS FOR GETTING ‘UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL’

This article celebrates Rod Rhodes' use of ethnography to study political elites ‘up close and personal’. Initially Rhodes' work is contextualized within the development of political ethnography more generally, before his ethnographies of ‘Everyday life in a Ministry’ are reviewed, illustrating the potential of ethnography to research policy‐making elites. This review highlights epistemological and ontological questions which link to criticism of Rhodes' work as taking an anti‐foundational stance. In looking at future prospects for ethnography in governance settings, this article argues that researchers building on Rhodes' scholarship can choose whether to use ethnography as a ‘method’ or an ‘interpretive methodology’. In concluding, the case is made for a ‘constructivist modern empiricism’ which utilizes the ethnographic method alongside other research methods as being most useful for public policy and administration scholarship aiming to be practically useful for understanding either the processes of public policy‐making or its impact.     

NOT ODIOUS BUT ONEROUS: COMPARATIVE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This paper asks, first, how have comparative publications (academic ‘outputs’) developed during the past three decades; second, what theories have been in play, and, third, how can we best explain the picture of comparative PA that is thus revealed? The trajectories of themes and theories are set within a wider story of the development of networks and academic communities. Changes in practitioner concerns and networks have had significant impacts on the evolution of the academic sub‐field. Changes in ICTs – particularly the coming of the Internet and the growth of cheap air travel – have also had a pervasive influence. While there seems little prospect of convergence on any single theory or methodological approach, the vitality of comparative PA is nevertheless considerable. The volume, range and sophistication of publications have grown markedly since the late 1980s. Yet even if comparative studies are now mainstream, they remain hard to do well.     

EMERGING ISSUES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This article briefly examines five subfields of the public administration literature in the context of the major changes which have occurred in each of those fields since the 1940s. Major changes include: the alleged shift to‘globalization’affecting comparative public administration; the spread of‘economic rationalism’in policy analysis; the new wave of‘managerialism’affecting the study of the public service; the transformation of administrative technique by‘informatization’; and the rise of legal formalization in some fields redrawing the traditional boundary Unes between law and administration. For each of these subfields of public administration, three types of‘emerging issues’are identified. Some of the trends discussed - particularly managerialization and juridification - seem to be in tension with one another, suggesting alternative possible futures for public administration. Moreover, since many of the intellectual and doctrinal shifts seem to reflect a reaction against the shortcomings of an earlier orthodoxy, a counter-reaction in the longer run cannot be ruled out.     

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AS STORYTELLING

相似文献   

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE NETHERLANDS: EXPANSION,DIVERSIFICATION AND CONSOLIDATION

The rise of Dutch administrative sciences is related to the post‐war expansion of the country’s welfare state. The growing welfare state needed scientific support for policy‐making and planning. Legal expertise alone was no longer sufficient. After the initial separation from administrative law, the post‐war policy and administrative sciences in The Netherlands were strongly oriented towards our American ‘big brother’. Since the 1980s, a growing self‐identity and self‐confidence has developed. The period from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s witnessed a steady expansion and diversification of Dutch PA sciences. The subject is now taught at 11 of the 13 Dutch universities. The enormous growth of the early 1990s is over, and student numbers have now stabilized – and at a substantial level, thus consolidating the position of PA departments in most universities. From the mid 1990s onwards Dutch administrative sciences have gone through a process of internationalization. Dutch PA sciences have as a result acquired a status of recognized quality in the international scientific community.     

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.     

PUBLIC LAW

Traditionally, both the academic study and the practice of UK public administration have drawn very little inspiration from the discipline of public law. In contrast to most other European countries, in which public services are subject to extensive administrative-legal codes, and in which administrative disputes fall under the jurisdiction of separate and specialized administrative courts, UK administrative law remains – recent reforms notwithstanding – significantly undeveloped. There is a marked contrast also with the United States, where the founding scholars of the discipline of public administration saw it as being firmly rooted in public law. There is no codified British constitution and no counterpart of the US Supreme Court; and there is no British counterpart of the US Administrative Procedure Act 1946. However, there are three factors which underline the urgent need in the UK for greater collaboration and convergence between the disciplines of public law and public administration: first, the accumulation in recent years of a substantial body of research-based, academic literature on public law, which provides important insights into the changing landscape of UK public administration; secondly, the continuing development of machinery for the redress of citizens’grievances against the state – in particular, the substantial growth of judicial review proceedings and the development of ombudsman systems; thirdly, the continuing transformation of the agenda of UK law and politics by developments in the European Union.     

APPRAISING PUBLIC VALUE: PAST,PRESENT AND FUTURES

Despite the increasing popularity of the concept of ‘public value’ within both academic and practice settings, there has to date been no formal review of the literature on its provenance, empirical basis, and application. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It provides a critical introduction to public value and its conceptual development before presenting the main elements of the published literature. Following this, a series of key areas of disagreement are discussed and implications for future research and practice put forward. The authors argue that if the espoused aspirations for the public value framework are to be realized, a concerted process of research, debate and application is required. Although some criticisms of public value are argued to be unwarranted, the authors acknowledge ongoing concerns over the apparent silence of public value on questions of power and heterogeneity, and the difficulties in empirically testing the framework's propositions.     

INTRODUCTION: EXPLOITING IT IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - TOWARDS THE INFORMATION POLITY?

This introduction to the theme issue on Towards the Information Polity? Public Administration in the information age presents the case for the systematic academic investigation of the changing relationships which characterize the ‘information polity’. This perspective on the information polity focuses on the significance of new kinds of informational resources and flows in government, and their interaction with broad directions of reform in contemporary public administration, including the new public management. It is argued that, whereas the literature of business strategy has emphasized the economic logic by which ‘informatization’ encourages organizational transformation, the articles in this issue demonstrate the importance of wider cultural, organizational and political factors to understanding processes of informatization and the changing nature of the emergent ‘information polity’.     

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORM IN SRI LANKA

In 1996, the government of Sri Lanka enlisted the help of international consultants to address significant weaknesses in the countr's public administration. Their study focused on reorganization of public administration structures, rationalization of public sector cadres and introduction of results-based management systems and procedures. The analysis focused on five main topics: consolidation of core strategic functions in the President's office; improvement of the policy coordination process at cabinet and ministerial levels; separation of policy-making, service delivery and regulatory functions of public administration; enhancing the effectiveness of line ministries through realigning tasks; and introduction of a results-based management system that links resource inputs with well-defined outputs of departments and offices. The urgency of public service reform has been an issue on the national agenda for some time. Until the institutional capacity and effectiveness of the public administration system is upgraded, the credibility of government efforts to bring about a more liberal and competitive market environment will be seriously in doubt. The recommendations in this article can be extended beyond Sri Lanka, serving as a general model of civil service reform for other South Asian nations.     

THE DIFFICULT TRANSFORMATION OF STATE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN PORTUGAL. EUROPEANIZATION AND THE PERSISTENCE OF NEO‐PATRIMONIALISM

Portugal has been characterized by a late discontinuous democratization process. This contribution discusses the case of state and public administration reform in Portugal by using approaches from democratization, modernization and Europeanization theories. In order to understand the Portuguese case, the concept of ‘neo‐patrimonialism’ is used. We characterize Portuguese public administration as still having ‘neo‐patrimonial’ features, and therefore is still in transition from old closed‐minded practices such as particularistic decision making or clientelistic relationships to new open‐minded ones. The ‘new’ governance agenda combines new public management instruments and a growing flexibilization of public administration towards networks with non‐statal actors and has certainly led to some improvement in the quality of the services associated with public administration. Although is still too early to assess, top‐down and horizontal Europeanization processes, particularly since the late 1990s, may have contributed to a more reflexive approach in moving towards a more endogenous strategic vision based on the needs of the Portuguese state and public administration.     

THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES

The study of public administration in the United States is large in terms of the number of academic programmes, the range of journal publications, and the number of scholars. Its scholarship attracts attention from all over the globe. At the same time it is a public administration that is clearly embedded in a specific national culture, just as anywhere else. Three of the main challenges include the strong increase of quantitative‐statistical methods, the decline of practitioner authors, and substantive specialization to the extent that generalists' perspectives are losing ground.     

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'.     

STRUGGLING WITH AMBIGUITY: PUBLIC MANAGERS AS USERS OF NPM‐ORIENTED MANAGEMENT INSTRUMENTS

Improving public sector performance involves both ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ problems. With the emphasis on the ‘doing’ problem, this study examines public managers as users of management instruments (MI) in attempts to improve the performance of public services. The article explores uses of three MIs in Finnish local government by using the conceptual framework of ambiguity. The article demonstrates why and how the use of MIs does not always simplify the public management exercise. It may become even more ambiguous. It is important to comprehensively understand the ways in which uses and users of MIs intervene in the process of public service delivery. It is argued that understanding MI uses in public administration necessitates a more profound theoretical approach acknowledging the ways in which ‘rational intentions' for performance improvements turn into situated, boundedly rational, managerial practice. In the context of productivity programmes, such understanding is essential to researchers and practitioners of public administration.     

PUBLIC POLICY

Public policy is not simply a subset of public administration, but draws on and contributes to a number of aspects of public administration, political science and other disciplines. This article traces the growth of interest in a policy focus in Britain during the 1970s and early 1980s, and its subsequent partial displacement by the emphasis on public management. Despite this partial displacement, the policy focus is now institutionalized in academic research, textbooks, journals and teaching. The recent lack of interest in generic policy analysis by British central government is reflected in the way in which the policy aspects have been an afterthought to managerial and organization changes. There is plenty of scope for further refining the skills of those who research, teach and are taught in public policy.     

ENTREPRENEURIAL EXIT RESPONSE TO DISSATISFACTION WITH PUBLIC SERVICES

Following Hirschman's seminal Exit, Voice and Loyalty, an exit response to dissatisfaction with public services is often portrayed as a replacement of one service provider with another, depending on the availability of alternatives. This article enriches Hirschman's typology by conceptualising an ‘entrepreneurial exit' response referring to citizens who exit proactively by creating a viable alternative themselves. The practical aspects of entrepreneurial exit are analysed based on five manifestations: planned homebirth, homeschooling, urban self‐defence groups, children with disabilities, and claim clubs in the American West. Whereas citizens' roles within the public service sphere are referred to as ‘participators’, ‘customers’, and ‘co‐producers', entrepreneurial exit indicates the entrepreneurial role citizens may play. Similar to the additional forms of exit, entrepreneurial exit becomes meaningful if the newly introduced form of service gains social acceptance, especially when it reflects policy non‐compliance within which laymen are transformed into providers of professional services.     

QUEER(Y)ING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Queer theory, understood here as a set of political/politicized practices and positions which resist normative knowledge and identities, has emerged as a theoretical perspective having important emancipatory and explanatory power in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Queer theory resists definition ipso facto, residing as it does within a postructuralist paradigm. It has not hitherto featured within the discipline of public administration and we argue the case for its utilisation in this field by first explicating the theory. Here we develop a way of using queer theory to analyse data, notably through the identification of the ‘moments’ of a queer theory analysis: identification of the norms that govern identity, analysis of what is allowable within those norms, and exploration of what is unspeakable. We demonstrate its use via an empirically‐based case study. The lessons from this exercise are then applied to some of our earlier work which we re‐read through a queer theory lens. This shows the great explanatory power offered by the theory, in that it can develop insights that previously have been inaccessible. We conclude with recommendations for its broader application and wider use within public administration.     

INTERPRETING INTERPRETIVISM INTERPRETING INTERPRETATIONS: THE NEW HERMENEUTICS OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This article seeks to gauge the nature, distinctiveness and significance of the ‘interpretivist turn’ in public administration and political science more broadly. It considers the various interpretations and, indeed, misinterpretations to which this new hermeneutics of public administration has given rise, its relationship to (genuinely and seemingly) cognate perspectives (notably constructivism, the new institutionalism and critical realism) and its strengths and weaknesses – both as an analytical perspective and as a developing research programme. In the process it argues for a broadening of the interpretivist research agenda to accord a greater role to the institutional contexts in which the ideas and beliefs that actors hold acquire and retain resonance and for the value of exploring more thoroughly the synergies with constructivist variants of the new institutionalism.