INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - Deneme Sınavı - 6

Certainly, decision theory is the most obvious multidisciplinary body of theory in public administration, influenced as it is by economics, organizational sociology, social psychology, and political science.

Theories of political control of bureaucracy, then, have a basic objective to explain and ensure how administration can be accountable and subordinate to the formally designated institutions of democratic decision-making. This objective implies the key challenge in this project: conceptually and empirically separating administration from politics.

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. This theory is grounded in economics and describes a contractual relationship between elected and appointed government actors.

In the public sector, Simon argued, decisions are made in the context of organizations that tend to stability and equilibrium.

Agency theory is grounded in economics and describes a contractual relationship between elected and appointed government actors. Elected officials are the principals in this relationship—they seek to persuade bureaucracy (the agents) to follow through on their policy preferences. Bureaucratic agents do occasionally resist the control of their political principals, but when this happens, it is as likely to be resistance in the name of the public interest as it is an attempt to undermine the superior policy role of principals.

Decisions made under conditions of the rational conserving efficiency concept will be guided by preferences for institutional order, stability, predictability, and survival.

In rejecting the politics-administration dichotomy, advocates of theories of bureaucratic politics were deliberately removing the keystone supporting the intellectual edifice of traditional public administration. The architect of the bureaucratic politics movement was, of course, Waldo.

In its most simplified form, rational decision theory describes goal-oriented behavior.

In practice, administration is not about efficiency, or even effectiveness. It is about politics, and once that basic fact is grasped, the confusing jumble of agencies and their roles and relations to the rest of the polity becomes much easier to understand.

Rational decision theory was challenged early on because it was considered unrealistic and out of touch with actual patterns of organizational decision-making.

In public administration, the term “institution” typically refers to a public organization that can invoke the authority of the state to enforce its decisions. In this context, institutions are generically defined as the social constructs of rules and norms that constrain individual and group behavior.

Decision theorists coming from the perspective of the logic of consequences tend to be associated with economics and political science.

New Public Management (NPM) is closely associated with conservative political ideology and tends to equate corporate values with democratic values.

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

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. Postmodernists believe that there are no absolute truths and therefore that any given question will have several possible answers, all of which may be equally valid.

Instead of seeing the individual or the organization as intendedly rational, they emphasize Simon’s “satisficing” concept that, rather than finding the best course of action, decisionmakers usually search for actions that are good enough.

The father of decision theory is Simon, who laid down the basic concepts and logic in his classic work Administrative Behavior. At the heart of Simon’s argument was the proposition that the basic objective of any purposive organization was to discover or define those purposes and take the necessary actions to fulfill them.

Anchoring simply means that past decisions disproportionately affect future decisions.

Rational choice (also known as public choice) is premised on the belief that the central behavioral assumption of neoclassical economics is universal, that is, that rational self-interest is the primary motivator of purposive action.

Following Max Weber, the elemental features of public administration include:
(1) some basis of formal authority with claims to obedience;
(2) intentionally established laws and rules, which apply to all;
(3) specific spheres of individual competence, which include task differentiation, specialization, expertise, and/or professionalization;
(4) the organization of persons into groups or categories according to specialization;
(5) coordination by hierarchy;
(6) continuity through rules and records;
(7) the organization as distinct from the persons holding positions or offices in it; and
(8) the development of particular and specific organizational Technologies.

Applications of post-positivism to public administration were informed by phenomenology, the philosophical argument that reliable scientific inquiry cannot be based on external observation by outside researchers. The actions of persons in collective settings can be understood only from the standpoint of the actors themselves. The phenomenological approach seeks to determine how actors interpret their circumstances, the meaning they attach to those circumstances, and the patterns of interpretation between actors in collective settings. The answer is A

As a separate and distinct approach to public administration theory, the interpretive/action theory concept had limited traction. The ideas and concept upon which interpretative action theory is based, however, became central to what eventually became postmodern public administration theory. The answer is C.

All the great human events in history were probably achieved by what we today would call public administration.

The public administration theory is the language of public administration. The reflective language paradigm is, following David John Farmer, “a process of playful and attuned dialogs with the underlying content of the language of public bureaucracy . . . an art that seeks to draw out and use the consequence of hermeneutic, reflexive and linguistic character of the way in what we should understand and create public administration phenomenon”.

The feminist perspective in public administration probably traces to the work of Mary Parker Follett. Parker Follett argued that administrative processes are more important than hierarchy and authority, that the exercise of power is a central feature of bureaucratic behavior, and that the analyst view of reality is more an interpreting function of practical experience than a pursuit of objective findings

Virtually all the aspects of the application of science to public administration were debated over fifty years ago by the two giants of the field at the time: Dwight Waldo and Herbert Simon. The answer is B.

The validity or usefulness of any theory depends on its capacity to describe, to explain, and to predict.

Particularism in postmodernity is overly preoccupied with efficiency, leadership, management, and organization. It is everywhere evident that science has had a lot to do with developing contemporary public administration theory. Science is also used more casually in public administration, simply as a word to lend importance to an idea or to cover a hypothesis or perspective with what are presumed to be the qualities of science. Public administration has always been associated with ways to organize and ways to manage. Defined in its broadest sense, this is the technology of public administration. All modern social systems tend to wish to find technological answers to social, economic, and political questions. Postmodernists describe modern life as hyperreality, a blurring of the real and the unreal. Mass media, information systems, and technology are new forms of control that change politics and life. Postmodernity is the process of destroying meaning. The ideals of truth, rationality, certainty, and coherence are over because, for Baudrillard, history has ended. Postmodernity is characteristic “of a universe where there are no more definitions possible”.Answer is E.

In public administration, the descriptive features of theory help us see; the explanatory features of theory help us understand.

Virtually all the aspects of the application of science to public administration were debated over fifty years ago by the two giants of the field at the time: Dwight Waldo and Herbert Simon. Thus, it is argued that public administration theory is, in fact, the language of public administration. The reflective language paradigm is, following David John Farmer, “a process of playful and attuned dialogs with the underlying content of the language of public bureaucracy . . . an art that seeks to draw out and use the consequence of hermeneutic, reflexive and linguistic character of the way in what we should understand and create public administration phenomenon”. The answer is A.

At a loose and almost casual level, theory is simply an orientation, framework, technique, or approach.

One of the more interesting characteristics of postmodern public administration theory has to do with its approach to methodology. The most complete description of this methodological perspective is naturalistic inquiry which is as follows:

Theory in the social sciences and in public administration means the ordering of factual material (history, events, cases, stories, measures of opinion, observation) so as to present evidence through definitions, concepts, and metaphors that promote understanding. This theory is based on the rigorous and intuitive observation of social behavior, organizational behavior, institutional dynamics, political systems and behavior, patterns of communication, and culture.

Particularism in postmodernity is overly preoccupied with efficiency, leadership, management, and organization. The current emphasis on performance measurement is illustrative of the functional nature of modernist public administration. Especially interesting is that measures of performance seldom ask the fairness question, performance for whom? The postmodernist would insist on asking that question.

The answer is B)

Organization and management practices in collective or public settings are certainly as old as civilization, and significant changes in those practices tend to accompany historical shifts in mass-scale social organization and operation. For example, the transition from feudal society to the extended nation-state was made possible by the centralization of policy, on the one hand, and the decentralization of policy implementation, on the other.

Although the practice of public administration is very old, the formal study of public administration and the elaboration of public administration theory are very new. As a separate self-conscious or self-aware academic and intellectual thing— a body of knowledge, a field of professional practice, an academic subject, a form of politics, a social construction of reality—public administration is young.

are the core ideas,Technology is considered as often dehumanizing, but in option B. the idea that Technology  enhances a citizen’s community and political involvement is not correct, therefore the answer is B.

Following Max Weber, the elemental features of public administration include:

(1) some basis of formal authority with claims to obedience;

(2) intentionally established laws and rules, which

apply to all;

(3) specific spheres of individual competence, which include task differentiation, specialization, expertise, and/or professionalization;

(4) the organization of persons into groups or categories according to specialization; 

(5) coordination by hierarchy;

(6) continuity through rules and records;

(7) the organization as distinct from the per- sons holding positions or offices in it; and

(8) the development of particular and specific organizational Technologies.

Adherents to the phenomenological approach to research and theory in public administration tend to be grouped into the interpretive theorists’ camp, represented by Michael Harmon, and the critical theorists camp, represented by Robert Denhardt and Ralph P. Hummel. The answer is A.

A theory, to be useful, should accurately describe or depict a real-world event or phenomenon. Most theories do this at some level of abstraction. Most important public administration phenomena are complex, and therefore description is an abstract representation of phenomena. All descriptions require that the analyst decide which elements in a complex phenomenon to emphasize. All descriptions are distortions of reality and are relative to the circumstances prevailing at the time of the description. Descriptions are often like a still photo or a series of still photos—and often fuzzy photos at that. Description is less often like a videotape.

The feminist perspective in public administration probably traces to the work of Mary Parker Follett. Parker Follett argued that administrative processes are more important than hierarchy and authority, that the exercise of power is a central feature of bureaucratic behavior, and that the analyst view of reality is more an interpreting function of practical experience than a pursuit of objective findings. All these theoretical perspectives are thought to be more feminine than masculine. Professions are important features in the evolution of the public service public engineers being mostly men, teachers mostly women, for example. From the feminist perspective, images of the public administrator as guardian, hero, or high-profile leader are masculine. The application of fairness, compassion, benevolence, and civic-mindedness are thought to be more feminine. The administrator is citizen rather than leader in feminist logic.

In public administration, according to postmodernists, the concern for others needs to be shifted from the abstract idea of nonspecific “others” to concrete, live, actual “others.” The answer is B.

At a loose and almost casual level, theory is simply an orientation, framework, technique, or approach.