INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The politics-administration dichotomy traces to the origins of modern public administration. Woodrow Wilson (1887) set out the most formal and rigid version of the dichotomy by arguing in his seminal essay on modern public administration that politics should not meddle in administration and administration should not meddle in politics.

Because the politics-administration dichotomy is the primary assumption in the control-of- bureaucracy theory, the next section defines and describes the logic of bureaucratic control using the dichotomy.

Svara sets out the four-part model, which uses four categories of governmental activity (mission, policy, administration, management) and describes illustrative tasks for political officials and bureaucrats in each category.

In one form of this theory, the industries regulated or licensed (airlines, railroads, telephones, electric, gas, and other utilities) come, through time, to heavily influence or even to control their regulators.

First, the seminal research on client responsiveness theory was done by Michael Lipsky in his classic Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services.

According to Gruber’s research, the bureaucrats believe in democratic government and in political and policy control over their work, although they tend to define the legitimate range of these controls rather narrowly, limiting it to winning elections, passing statutes, making policy, and approving budgets.

This chapter closes with a review of the most popular contemporary theory of political control of bureaucracy: principal-agent theory or, more simply, agency theory. This new framework has been widely applied to studies in the influence of principals, particularly parliament and the president, and agents, namely, the civil service. The initial premise in this theory was that bureaucracies are either out of control or at least very difficult to control. The bureaucracy as if it were a maximizing or self-seeking individual or firm in a market. In this premise, the bureaucracy hoards information (information asymmetry), seeks autonomy, and shirks.

The assumption is that bureaucrats either cooperate or resist. Martino Golden argues that this assumption is too simplistic.

How do bureaucracies respond to political control? In their review of agency theory research of federal agencies, Wood and Waterman conclude that there are dynamic bidirectional relationships in which legislators signal preferences to bureaucrats and bureaucrats signal preferences to legislators.

Functional Description: Public administration is the work required by law and the processes and activities involved in implementing public policy decisions.

Control-of-bureaucracy theory is an approach to public administration theory particularly associated with matters of compliance or responsiveness.

The politics-administration dichotomy traces to the origins of modern public administration. Woodrow Wilson (1887) set out the most formal and rigid version of the dichotomy by arguing in his seminal essay on modern public administration that politics should not meddle in administration and administration should not meddle in politics.

First (Policy-Administration Dichotomy Model), there is and should be a clear distinction between the elected officials and its responsibility to set law and policy, on the one hand, and the role of the professional manager the elected officials employs to lead the bureaucracy and carry out policy, on the other.

Svara sets out the four-part model, which uses four categories of governmental activity (mission, policy, administration, management) and describes illustrative tasks for political officials and bureaucrats in each category.

In a council dominant model, there is a wide space of council involvement at all four levels. This could also be called a council control-of-bureaucracy model. The important point in the strong-manager and council dominant models is the across-the-board character of power and influence.

Clients are typically nonvoluntary; partly as a result, clients for the most part do not serve as a primary bureaucratic reference group.

The assumption, of course, is that the relationship between elected leaders (principals) and civil servants or bureaucrats (agents) is hierarchical and could be understood as a series of contracts or transactions between a buyer of services and a provider of services. In the public context, the elected “buyer” attempts to shape the service to his or her preferences by laws, regulations, executive orders, appropriations, hearings, and all manner of co-management. The bureaucratic “seller” of services is a mixture of professional education and expertise, responds to laws and constitutions, and attempts to serve its clients.

Hierarchy: It is the ranking of the employees in the organization in the form of subordinate-superior in terms of authority and duties, starting from the top manager to the lowest level of employment.

Structural Definition: Public administration is the organizational aspect of the executive branch of the state.

Principles of Traditional Public Administration: 1) It is based on bureaucracy organization model. 2) It is based on the fact that public services should be carried out directly by the state's own organizations. 3) It is based on the fact that political and administrative issues are separate from each other. 4) It is based on the fact that public administration is quite different from business administration.

Principles of New Public Management 1) In the public sector, it gives the manager wide freedom to manage. 2) It attaches importance to performance measurement. 3) Gives more importance to results than procedures. 4) Discipline and frugality are important in resource use. 5) Increasing competition in the public sector and giving importance to market mechanisms. 6) Implementation of private sector management techniques in the public sector.