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.     

TRADITIONS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This article explores local government traditions in the UK. This task is an important one for scholars who wish to understand and appreciate the rich cultural complexity of local government organizations. In local government settings, traditions can be used in the study and evaluation of political and managerial practices. They provide lenses through which the routines, structures and processes of management and politics may be viewed. The delineation of multiple traditions heightens the sense that local government is not a unified homogeneous organizational entity, but rather a melange of voices, interests and assumptions about how to organize, prioritize and mobilize action. They can be used to engage practitioners with the idea that different traditions inform political and managerial practices and processes in local councils. The approach embraces the significance of participants' constitutive stories about local government rather than the search for essential truths about the politics and management of the public sector.     

THE SHIFTING STATE: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A TIME OF CHANGE

This is the keynote address given by the Right Hon The Lord Scarman, OBE, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and the RIPA's President, at the Institute's Conference on'The Shifting State: Rules, Roles and Boundaries in the 198s', held at the University of Aston, 14–15 September 1984.     

THE FUTURE OF PORTUGUESE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND A NEW AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SCIENCES IN THE 21st CENTURY

This paper addresses the changing role of the Portuguese state, the present priority assigned to the process of reform and the new challenges to be overcome by public administration. Such processes are demanding a new agenda for education and research in public administration sciences, shifting from the public law paradigm to an interdisciplinary problem‐solving approach and giving special attention to 10 key areas of study, which we describe in the final section of the paper. It should be noted here that the opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the position of their institutions.     

TRUTH IN GOVERNMENT AND THE POLITICIZATION OF PUBLIC SERVICE ADVICE

Recent controversies over intelligence in Iraq, to give one example, have raised problems about the politicization of official advice from government, particularly what we are led to believe is factual or ‘objective’ advice. Objectivity is a contested value and the lines are often hard to draw between fact, spin and misrepresentation. Public servants are held to higher standards of objectivity than politicians, a fact on which politicians trade when they seek to attribute assessments of evidence to their officials. The growing openness of government documentation is placing pressure on departmental officials who wish to be both loyal to their political masters and honest in their factual assessments. These issues are discussed with reference to recent Australian experience (and also with reference to the UK Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.     

WORKPLACE BULLYING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: UNDERSTANDING THE RACIAL DIMENSION

This paper reports the research findings of the experiences of public sector workers of bullying at work across 13 organizations in South Wales. The study explored the experiences of White and Ethnic minority respondents and found that there are significant differences in the type and frequency of bullying behaviours being experienced by the two groups. Ethnic minority respondents are more likely to label themselves as suffering from bullying behaviours than their White counterparts. The evidence presented in this paper demonstrates how line managers use different tactics when bullying Ethnic respondents compared to White respondents. Furthermore, when colleagues bully fellow colleagues, there are subtly different patterns of bullying behaviour towards White and Ethnic victims. Given the specific requirement to comply with the public duty for promotion of racial equality expected under the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000) , it is important that these findings are recognized by UK public sector organizations.     

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND THE INTEGRITY OF THE ELECTORAL PROCESS IN BRITISH ELECTIONS

Although Britain has often been held up as being a model of electoral integrity, recent controversies have suggested that this perception may not be wholly justified. This article explores overall standards of electoral administration across Britain, utilizing performance reporting data for returning officers in the 2010 general election to outline a comprehensive measure for the integrity of the administration of the electoral process. Discussion begins by outlining the question of electoral integrity and, most importantly, the issue of electoral administration. The second section considers recent British controversies, while also outlining steps taken to monitor the performance of electoral administrators. The third section introduces the performance standards and the index of electoral integrity developed from these, while the fourth section presents an analysis. The article concludes with discussion of the challenges facing electoral administrators, and highlights the utility of an index of electoral integrity in helping electoral professionals address these challenges.     

HOW THE REINVENTING GOVERNMENT MOVEMENT IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION WAS EXPORTED FROM THE U.S. TO OTHER COUNTRIES

From an academic point of view, Reinventing Government (RG) is a weak book. But the judgment of the academic community leaves with an interesting problem:How can we account for the relative influence that RG ideas have acquired over public management practices and for the enthusiasm with which those ideas have often been received by bureaucratic reformers in many countries? To answer this question, the article develops an analysis that proceeds in two stages. In the first section, I show how RG ideas gained ascendancy in political circles because they altered the terms of discourse about government management and made new kinds of coalitions possible. The second part looks at the structure of the global management consulting industry to show how the consultants who advised the Clinton administration were able to rely on already existing international network of American-based consulting organizations through which they could preach their Reinvention gospel around the globe. The American domination of the world management consulting market; coupled with the growing use by states of external consulting services as a source of advice on management issues, allowed consultants to carry RG ideas into the heart of the policy process.     

BUREAU SHUFFLING? THE REVIEW OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN NORTHERN IRELAND

The Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998 resulted in the return of devolved government to Northern Ireland and, with it, a decision by the Executive and Assembly to conduct a radical review of public administration. The review is now reaching its final stages and this paper considers the likely outcomes. It both argues that the parameters of the review will limit its impact and describes the reform proposals as either structural changes or administrative rationalization, both devoid of a wider modernizing approach to improving public services. In Northern Ireland, the on/off nature of devolution could result in ‘one of the major tasks for devolved government’ (according to the Northern Ireland Executive) being implemented by Direct Rule ministers.     

PROFESSIONALISM AND PUBLIC POLICY MAKING IN GREECE: THE INFLUENCE OF ENGINEERS IN THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORMS

The influence of Professionals in the formulation of public policies has been an issue of scientific research in the past decade. In this article we deal with a less examined as of this issue. Professional influence is analysed in the context of Greek public policy, where the intensely centralized administration is dominated by the demands of political clientelism. Focusing on the case of the influence of peers in local government reform between 1974 and 1989, the article reveals the role of Trofessiondism in the hesitant decentraiization of functions and resources to local authorities and the initiation of institutions that have allowed the birth and development of new organizations at the central and the local level. Given the shift towards partydirected patronage and the intense party politiciza-tion of professional and trade organizations, the central state aparatus and the local authorities in post-dictatorship Greece, professional influence in putlic policies is seen to be closely related to the rise of professionals in party hierarchies. The catalytic role of professionals in the promotion of reform policies reducing organizational diversity and fragmentation is understood within the context of the contradiction between the need to adapt state structures and practices in a rapidl changing international environment and the preservation of traditional political and acyministrative forces in key positions of the power structure.     

BRINGING THE POLITICS BACK IN: PUBLIC VALUE IN WESTMINSTER PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT

We challenge the usefulness of the 'public value' approach in Westminster systems with their dominant hierarchies of control, strong roles for ministers, and tight authorizing regimes underpinned by disciplined two-party systems. We identify two key confusions: about public value as theory, and in defining who are 'public managers'. We identify five linked core assumptions in public value: the benign view of large-scale organizations; the primacy of management; the relevance of private sector experience; the downgrading of party politics; and public servants as platonic guardians. We identify two key dilemmas around the 'primacy of party politics' and the notion that public managers should play the role of platonic guardians deciding the public interest. We illustrate our argument with short case studies of: the David Kelly story from the UK; the 'children overboard' scandal in Australia; the 'mad cow disease' outbreak in the UK; the Yorkshire health authority's 'tea-parties', and the Cave Creek disaster in New Zealand.     

THE RISE OF THE INTERMEDIATE LEVEL INSTITUTION IN BRITISH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: THE CASE OF THE ARTS AND TRAINING

During the 1980s there was both centralization and decentralization in the British policy process. The centre was to be responsible for broad policy whilst the institutions in closest contact with those who consumed or used a service were to be responsible for implementation. This style was, in part, a reaction to the perception that organized interests acted as a severe restraint on the centre. Experience, however, demonstrated government's dependence on the cooperation of organized interests and their intermediate organizations. This article argues that effective policy-making requires the formation of intermediate organizations linking macro- and micro-institutions. These organizations are vital for communication, representation and negotiation and therefore they inevitably constrain the centre's freedom. Effective policy requires a partnership between the centre and sub-centre via intermediate institutions and these institutions are likely to become more important as decentralization continues. The role of intermediate institutions are explored via case studies of training and arts policy.     

REVIEW ARTICLE: THEORY AND METHOD IN THE STUDY OF DELEGATION: THREE DOMINANT TRADITIONS

This article focuses on the theories and methods that have been developed and deployed by scholars in order to understand both the cause and effect of delegation within state systems. It identifies three dominant traditions in the study of delegation, each of which reflects a certain disciplinary lineage as well as great variety in terms of ontological, epistemological and methodological positions. The aim of this article is not to make any normative claims about the innate superiority of any particular approach but to instead argue in favour of a pluralistic methodology which is sensitive to the layered quality of knowledge. By way of forging a sense of a shared enemy or weakness, the article concludes by arguing that all three traditions are united by their relative failure to study the logic of delegation and the power of ideas. In essence, each of the traditions has focused too heavily on what could be termed the politics of delegation (that is, the secondary consequences of delegation) and has, as a result, failed to focus attention on the politicization of delegation in terms of locating the basic logic of delegation back within the contours of public contestation.     

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.