Public Administration Theory Primer Flashcards
The need for theories of Public Administration
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
It is argued that civilization requires the elemental features of PA. The features (Weber) include 1) Formal authority with claims to obedience 2) universally applicable laws/rules 3) specific spheres of individual competence including task differentiation, specialization, expertise and/or professionalization 4) organization of people into groups based upon specialization 5) coordination by hierarchy 6) continuity through rules and records 7) organizations distinct from the persons holding office 8) the development of particular and specific organizational technologies.
The need for theories of Public Administration
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
PA theories provide greater conceptual clarity and theoretical reliability in the treatment of PA. The validity or usefulness of a theory is in its ability to describe, explain, and predict. PA researchers must do their best to provide reliable theory to make democratic government as effective as possible.
Theories of Political Control of Bureaucracy
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
Control of bureaucracy theory is associated with matters of compliance or responsiveness. Assumption that there is a politics-administration dichotomy. “Does the bureaucracy comply with the law or with the preferences of lawmaker or elected executives?” This theory helps to make distinctions between actions that are either administrative or political. The council-manager form of gov’t is uniquely suited to this theory.
Theory of Bureacratic Capture
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
Largely focused on the federal government, and particularly to studies of the regulatory process and the independent regulatory commissions. Another slant on this theory includes policy actors such as interest groups, congressional committees, and government agencies (i.e. policy subsystems).
Agency Theory
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
Principle-Agent theory, or simply Agency Theory. The main assumption is that bureaucracies are either out of control, or are at least very difficult to control. A meta-analyis by Wood and Waterman (1994) found Agency Theory: 1. Bureaucratic responsiveness to political control is the norm rather than the exception. 2. Political control mechanisms are important especially presidential appointments, congressional appropriations power, hearings, and congressional staff effectiveness. 3. Organization matters. Agencies in executive or cabinet departments are more responsive, whereas independent agencies are less so. 4. Presidential statements and statements of senior congressional leaders are influential.
Theories of Bureaucratic Politics
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
These theories seek to explain the policymaking role of administration and bureaucracy. Such theories generally reject the politics-administration dichotomy. Waldo (1948) argued that efficiency and democracy were compatible and the work of government could be neatly divided into separate realms of decision and execution. Also, Waldo argued that administrative scholarship was itself driven by a particular philosophy of politics. Early scholarship sought to address political cronyism and graft.
Theories of Bureaucratic Politics
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
Graham Allison (1971) created a theory to explain why the US and Soviet Union governments did what they did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Model 1: proposes that gov’t decisions can be understood by viewing them as the product of a single actor in strategic pursuit of his own self interest. Model 1: argues that numerous actors are involved in decision making, and decision making processes are highly structured through SOPs. Model 3: the “bureaucratic politics paradigm” explains government actions as the product of bargaining and compromise among the various organizational elements of the executive branch.
Theories of Bureaucratic Politics
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
Two key organizational dimensions to bureaucratic politics theory. The first, behavior, attempts to explain why bureaucrats do what they do. The second, institutional structure and distribution of power, is to understand how bureaucracy’s formal lines of authority, its relationship to other institutions, and the programs/policies placed within its jurisdiction all combine to determine the relative political influence of a broad range of political actors.
Theories of Bureaucratic Politics
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
For PA, Networks are interdependent actors, groups, organizations, that share goals, interests, resources, or values. Laurence O’ Toole (1997) argued networked administration is not only common, but increasingly important for five reasons: 1. Wicked policy problems. 2. Political demands for limited gov’t, but without reductions in demands for action, give rise to networks that include non-state actors through contracting. 3. The need for bureaucracy to be responsive to the public naturally leads to the inclusion of citizen and industry in decision making. 4. As sophisticated program evaluations have revealed indirect or second order effects of policies, implementation networks have been established to reflect those relationships. 5. Many mandates have multiple layers that essentially require networked program management.
Theories of Bureaucratic Politics
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
A theory of representative bureaucracy holds that a bureaucracy reflecting the diversity of the community it serves is more likely to respond to the interests of all groups in policy making decisions. This theory rejects the politics-administration dichotomy. It begins with the assumption that there are good reasons for public agencies to be organized the way they are, and that these undemocratic agencies exercise considerable political power. Lipsky’s (1980) SLB is an example. Non-elected officials protected by civil service mechanisms wield political power. A further development is the inclusion of symbolic representation where there is shared identification, experience, or characteristics.
Public Institutional Theory
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
The two essential parts to the modern study of public organizations are: 1) the organization and management of contained and bounded public institutions, now generally comprehended by institutional theory; and, 2) interinstitutional, interjurisdictional, and third-party coupligs and linkages, now generally comprehended by network theory or governance theory.
Public Institutional Theory
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
Institutionalism in New PA is not a theory in the formal sense; it is instead the framework, the language, and the set of assumptions that hold and guide empirical research and theory-building in much of PA. It argues the salience of collective action as a basis for understanding political and social institutions, including formal political and bureaucratic organizations. Institutional theory is the critical intersection at which the vantages of the disciplines meet in their attention to complex organizations. It captures and comprehends scholarship on coproduction, multiple stakeholders, public-private partnerships, privitization and contracting, the fuzzy relationships between public and private organizations.
Public Institutional Theory
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
March and Olsen (1995) assert instiutionalists work from a few key ideas: 1) Institutions are understood to be a formal bounded framework of rules, roles, and identities. 2) with the formal frameworks, preferences are inconsistent, changing and at least partly endogenous, formed within political institutions. 3) Institutional theory emphasizes the logic of appropriateness based on institutional structures, roles, and identities. 4) the logic of appropriateness is based on marched patterns of roles, rules, practices, and structures on the one hand, and a situation on the other (Burns and Flam 1987). 5) one group of institutional theorists give importance to the idea of community and the common good. 6) another group work from the rational choice perspective tend to use deductive assumption-based models and computer simulations (Moe and Shorts 2001). 7) others tend to focus on order, and particularly structures that impose order.
Organizational Theory
Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
Organization Theory is the body of knowledge to which scholars turn to understand the structures and relationships between structures and outcomes. The term “institution” is used to include public organizations that stand in a special relationship to the people they serve. Richard Scott (1985) defines institutions as “cognitive, normative, and regulatory structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior. Institutions are transported by various carriers - cultures, structures, routines - and they operate at multiple levels of jurisdiction.” PA embodies the constitutional and legal basis of authority and power.
Hierarchy
Fredrickson, Smith, Larimer, and Licari 2012
A well functioning hierarchy structures people in a way that meets these organizational needs: to add value to work moving through the organization; to identify and fix accountability at each stage; to place people of necessary competence at each organizational level; and to build a general consensus and acceptance of the unequal segmentation of work and the necessity for it (Jaques 1990). If uncertainty is the dominant contextual problem for institutions, interdependence is the primary internal problem.
