INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Theories of bureaucratic politics seek to explain the policymaking role of administration and bureaucracy.

Waldo did not construct a theory of bureaucratic politics in this book, but here and in later writings he made two critical contributions that have supported all subsequent efforts to do so.

As Waldo pointed out, this [maximized outputs for a given set of inputs] is a concept fundamental to businesses operating in capitalistic markets, but it is not nearly so important to democratic government.

The main question is: How do we construct a theory that accommodates the hierarchical and authoritarian nature of the bureaucracy, the foundation of the modern administrative state and a seemingly necessary component of contemporary government, with the seemingly contradictory egalitarian, inefficient ideals of democracy

The significant claim generated by these studies [examining decision-making in the executive branch] was that government decisions were products of bargaining and negotiation among interested political actors.  As these studies focused on the executive branch, the central player in these bargaining frameworks was the president.  The president, however, was argued to have little unilateral decision-making power; he had to accommodate the interest of the various institutional factions in the executive branch. Bureaucracies and bureaucrats, in short, played high-level politics, and usually played the game very well. Bureaucracies and executive branch officials were not portrayed here as neutral agents of implementation, but as active participants in determining the will of the state.

A bureaucratic environment, Merton argued, pressures people to conform to expected patterns of behavior—to follow rules, to be methodical and detailed. Given these pressures, bureaucracies will often substitute rules for ends, and they will adhere to standard operational procedures even when those procedures clearly interfere with the organization’s main mission.

 

Wilson concluded that successful bureaucracies are those in which executives have created a clear sense of mission, identified the tasks that must be achieved to fulfill that mission, distributed authority within the organization according to those tasks, and provided subordinates (particularly operators) with enough autonomy to achieve the task at hand, a fairly tall order given the complex environment of public agencies. Wilson’s argument suggests that agencies given clear objectives and high levels of autonomy are more likely to be successful in achieving those objectives.

Contracting with a private firm to perform various public functions has its advantages. Private companies, for example, are subject to lower levels of oversight and accountability, which gives them an operational flexibility public agencies frequently lack. Using private companies also helps reduce the number of civil servants on the public payroll, an important consideration for presidents dealing with the size of the public bureaucracy, always a politically sensitive issue. The downside to these arrangements is the loss of accountability and the high resistance of private firms to changes in the public bureaucracy because their livelihoods are dependent upon preserving the status quo.

Some recent research has identified a “dark side” of networks — that network managers respond to elements of the network that are more politically influential, and thus the result is that networks may actually exacerbate already present inequality.

The central tenet of the representative bureaucracy theory is that a bureaucracy reflecting the diversity of the community it serves is more likely to respond to the interests of all groups in making policy decisions.

Politics is generically defined as the authoritative allocation of values, or the process of deciding “who gets what, when and how”.

The question of who should rule is one of the five key issues.

Waldo argued that administrative scholarship was itself driven by a particular philosophy of politics.

Graham Allison wrote the book Essence of Decision in 1971.

Allison articulated three theoretical models.

The bureaucratic politics paradigm (Model III): Model III explains government actions as the product of bargaining and compromise among the various organizational elements of the executive branch.

The theory of representative bureaucracy thus begins with the assumption that there are good reasons for public agencies to be organized the way they are (i.e., undemocratically) and that these undemocratic agencies exercise considerable political power.

Robert K. Merton argued that institutions structured as classic bureaucracies shape the personalities of the people who work for them.

Accountability: It is the obligation to explain and justify the reasons for the decisions taken, works and expenditures made in the management.

Administrative centralization is the determination of policy regarding public services, making decisions, supervising their execution, and execution of financial management and personnel policies regarding services by the central government.