Public Administration - Rosenbloom, Kravchuck, and Clarkin Flashcards
Rosenbloom’s Three Part Theory of PA
ASSUMPTIONS: constitution, sovereignty, market (public goods, gov’t uniquely positioned to provide education, nat’l defense, roads/bridges, and LE), public interest. MANAGERIAL APPROACH: traditional NPM (three “e’s”, more competitive, more business like, customer/client orientation), efficiency/effectiveness, economy (budget), ideal type is bureaucracy, rational/scientific, and managerial approach is represented in Executive Branch. POLITICAL APPROACH: responsiveness, representation, accountability, transparency, and pluralism. LEGAL APPROACH: fairness, equity, due process, constitutional integrity, distinct individual vested with certain rights, vesting creates conflict that necessitates an adjudicatory process.
Administrative Procedures Act (1946)
Congressional effort to reassert its institutional role vis a vis bureaucracy. APA delegated congressional (law making) authority to administrative agencies. It included a notice and comment requirement and provided authority to conduct adjudications (ALJ). CFR is the document that contains the rules. According to Rosenbloom, this was Congress’ way of “load shedding” by pushing rule/law making ability onto administrative agencies of the federal government.
New Public Management
Focus on results. Marketizaation where gov’t uses market like competition in the provision of goods and services. Customer driven. “Steering not Rowing” - Government’s job is to assure that public goods and services are provided, not necessarily by producing them itself. Deregulation by moving away from traditional bureaucratic and centralized control to more market like conditions that drive competition, customers, and accountability for results to make the best use of their employees and budgets. Employee empowerment to promote employees to use their creativity to perform their jobs better and teamwork. Flexibility to promote a culture in PA that is flexible, innovative, problem solving, entrepreneurial, and enterprising as opposed to rule-bound, process-oriented, and focused on inputs rather than results.
Federalism
Refers to the division of political authority between a central government and state or provincial governments. Its three central features include state sovereignty, bicameralism, and multiple layers of representation. 10th Amendment specifies that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” New federalism (1972 - 1988) focused on consolidation and reduction of grant programs; federal fiscal disengagement; and, increasing devolution of power and responsibility to the states.
Organization Theory
The structure of an organization affects its behavior. The structure of an organization affects the behavior of its workers, participants, and perhaps even causal members. Organizational processes also affect organizational and individual behavior. Organizations can be rationally or scientifically designed structurally and procedurally to achieve their goals in an effective and efficient manner. Organizations can be usefully conceptualized as systems that respond to and affect their environments and seek to gain information about the efficacy of those responses. Organizations may have cultures that partially define how their members conceptualize organizational activity and the environment.
Expectancy Theory
Assumes that workers have a variety of goals and that the strength of their preferences for those goals varies. It proposes that their motivation on the job will depend on the extent to which they expect a certain activity to lead to some degree of satisfaction of these goals.
Public Administration
PA is an activist part of government. It is a means by which government seeks to intervene in aspects of the economy, society, and polity. E.S. Savas advocates for governments to delegate programs to the private sector (hollow state; see Milward and Provan). Savas suggests: governments contract with private parties or other governments; franchise; grants; vouchers; voluntary services; self service relies on private individuals to produce desired conditions; and, markets are often juxtaposed to government in the production of goods and services.
The Future of Public Administration
Complexity is here to stay. Public administration will be defined by politics. Law will continue to be central to public administration (Leonard White, 1926, wrote “the study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law”). The predominance of NPM will continue to push agencies to measure performance. Disaggregation in PA will continue through privatization and decentralization. Disaggregation will lead to the decomposition of the civil service. PA management will change, as a result of NPM, by placing more management responsibilities with subordinates than upon supervisors. Public administrators will be increasingly personally liable for their conduct (personal responsibility). A new “administrative culture” will emerge where public administrators will have to be at ease with flexibility, complexity, and law; “They will be performance-oriented, have a strong service ethic, span boundaries, and be adroit at conflict avoidance and resolution.”
