INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - Deneme Sınavı - 3

Waldo made a persuasive argument that at a fundamental level administration is a powerful form of politics and that any attempt to separate the two is likely to fail.

Decision theory is associated with the early work of Herbert Simon and particularly his Administrative Behavior (1947).

The most promising framework in which to coherently distinguish and link the administrative and political elements of government is agency theory.

In the public sector, Simon argued, decisions are made in the context of organizations that tend to stability and equilibrium. In an organization, “the controlling group, regardless of its personal values, will be opportunistic—will appear to be motivated in large part at least by conservation objectives”. In decision theory, therefore, it is rational for organizations to minimize risk and to regard collective institutional survival as an end or a value.

The architect of the bureaucratic politics movement was, of course, Waldo.

In its rudimentary form, rational decision theory sought to (1) clarify and put in priority order organizational values and objectives; (2) consider the available alternative or alternatives that might achieve those objectives; and (3) analyze alternatives to find the alternative or group of alternatives most likely to achieve preferred objectives. In its most simplified form, rational decision theory describes  goal-oriented behavior.

Institutional theory in public administration is concerned with the organization and management of contained and bounded public institutions.

The decision logic of consequences is more suited to modeling, cost-benefit analysis, performance measurement, risk analysis, and quantitative methodologies.

In public administration, the term “institution” typically refers to a public organization that can invoke the authority of the state to enforce its decisions

The decision logic of appropriateness is more suited to institutional analysis, historical analysis, contingency theory, population ecology, case analysis, and narrative-deductive methodologies.

Decision-theoretic modeling usually includes at least some assumptions, such as agreement regarding objectives or values; perfect or, at least, highly developed knowledge of alternatives; and the known consequences of applying alternatives.

Institutional theory is premised on the assumption that collective outcomes and individual behavior are structured by institutions.

These normative elements do raise some concerns; NPM is closely associated with conservative political ideology and tends to equate corporate values with democratic values.

Anchoring simply means that past decisions disproportionately affect future decisions.

Postmodern theory is a subjective approach to studying social phenomena that focuses heavily on language, the context of human interactions, and the social construction of reality.

As can been seen by this description, decision theory following the logic of appropriateness is deeply contextual. Contexts can be highly complex and decision-making heavily informed by contextual rules and identities filled with ambiguity, uncertainty, risk, imperfect information, and limited attention.

The father of decision theory is Simon, who laid down the basic concepts and logic in his classic work Administrative Behavior

To deal with complex, confusing, inconsistent, and ambiguous environments, complex organizations decentralize, delegate, and contract out. In the language of decision theory, this is loose coupling.

Garbage can theory (March and Olsen) also owes a considerable debt to the concept of bounded rationality

In formal decision theories, preferences are assumed to be observable, consistent, stable, and exogenous. In the sense-making perspective, preferences may or may not be revealed, and, when they are revealed, are contradictory, volatile, ambivalent, and both exogenous and endogenous.

The intellectual roots of rational choice date back at least to the work of Adam Smith, whose The Wealth of Nations (first published in 1976) is the intellectual rock on which neoclassical economic theory is constructed. Smith’s great insight was that people acting in pursuit of their own self-interest could, through the mechanism of the “invisible hand,” produce collective benefits that profited all society. These basic elements—the self-interested actor, competition among producers, and a relatively unregulated market—are the hallmarks of neo- classical economic thought and central to rational choice theory. The answer is D.

Anthony Downs wrote the book  An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957).The answer is A.

Tullock sought to explain what a bureaucracy would look like if bureaucrats were self-interested utility maximizers. He argued that a rational, self-interested bureaucrat maximizes utility through career advancement, and that advancement in the merit-based systems of public bureaucracies often depends upon the favorable recommendations of superiors. If this is so, Tullock reasoned, the rational bureaucrat will seek to please superiors and put himself in as favorable a light as possible. Thus, a rational bureaucrat will highlight information that reflects favorably upon himself and repress (perhaps even suppress) information that does not. Distorting information in this way will create a host of problems. The net result is an agency prone to mistakes, difficult to manage, and hard to control.The answer is A .

Rather than concentrate on career advancement, Downs sought to accommodate a wider variety of individual goals in conceptualizing the motivations of the self-interested bureaucrat, and systematically ordered these goals into a typology of bureaucratic personalities. In Downs’s classification, “climbers” are bureaucrats who want to maximize their power, income, or prestige. In contrast, “conservers” are bureaucrats who want to maximize security and convenience, and they will more likely defend existing prerogatives and functions rather than try to invent new ones. “Zealots” are bureaucrats motivated to pursue particular policies, even in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Other categories included “advocates,” who, like zealots, aggressively pursue favored policies but are more open to influence from peers and superiors, and “statesmen,” bureaucrats seeking to promote the public interest through the promotion of broad policy goals. The answer is E. Zealots.

Rather than concentrate on career advancement, Downs sought to accommodate a wider variety of individual goals in conceptualizing the motivations of the self-interested bureaucrat, and systematically ordered these goals into a typology of bureaucratic personalities. In Downs’s classification, “climbers” are bureaucrats who want to maximize their power, income, or prestige. In contrast, “conservers” are bureaucrats who want to maximize security and convenience, and they will more likely defend existing prerogatives and functions rather than try to invent new ones. “Zealots” are bureaucrats motivated to pursue particular policies, even in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Other categories included “advocates,” who, like zealots, aggressively pursue favored policies but are more open to influence from peers and superiors, and “statesmen,” bureaucrats seeking to promote the public interest through the promotion of broad policy goals. The answer is B . Conserves.

It was Niskanen who really thrust rational choice theory into a central role in explaining bureaucratic behavior. Niskanen’s great achievement was to create the first formal economic theory of bureaucratic behavior (i.e., his theory was based on mathematical derivations concerning the utility and productivity functions of bureaucrats and bureaucracies). The answer is A.

The most forceful and best-known articulation of this argument comes from Vincent Ostrom in his book The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration (1973). Ostrom argued that the intellectual foundations of public administration were built upon a set of seven theoretical propositions formulated by Woodrow Wilson. First, there is, and always will be, a dominant center of power in any system of government. Second, the more power is divided, the more irresponsible and difficult to control it becomes. Third, the structure of a constitution determines the composition of central power. Fourth, the process of government can be separated into two parts: determining the will of the state (politics) and executing the will of the state (administration). Fifth, although the institutions and processes of politics vary widely from government to government, all governments share strong structural similarities in administration. Sixth, “good” administration is achieved by the proper hierarchical ordering of a professional public service. Seventh, perfection of “good” administration is a necessary condition for advancement of human welfare. The answer is C.

Ostrom argued that the intellectual foundations of public administration were built upon a set of seven theoretical propositions formulated by Woodrow Wilson. First, there is, and always will be, a dominant center of power in any system of government. Second, the more power is divided, the more irresponsible and difficult to control it becomes. Third, the structure of a constitution determines the composition of central power. Fourth, the process of government can be separated into two parts: determining the will of the state (politics) and executing the will of the state (administration). Fifth, although the institutions and processes of politics vary widely from government to government, all governments share strong structural similarities in administration. Sixth, “good” administration is achieved by the proper hierarchical ordering of a professional public service. and not   

IV. “good” administration is achieved by the dysfunction of  hierarchical ordering of a professional public service. Seventh, perfection of “good” administration is a necessary condition for advancement of human welfare.

Tiebout argued that a competitive market for public services could be created if mobile citizens could shop across local jurisdictions for the package of public services and attendant tax burden that best suited their preferences. If citizen-consumers shopped around for preferred tax-service packages, competitive pressures would force producers—that is, local governments and public agencies—to respond to citizens’ preferences. The result, at least in theory, would be efficiently produced public services that reflected public demand for those services. Tiebout model prescriptively implies the exact opposite of orthodox approaches to supplying public services. The answer is D.

For Ostrom, the key factors are trust, reciprocity, and reputation. Trust and trustworthy reputations create opportunities for cooperation between individuals, cooperation that in turn tends to be reciprocated. A reputation as someone who is untrustworthy causes the breakdown of cooperation and ultimately suboptimal outcomes. The answer is B.