CHAPTER-1-INTRODUCTION

Meaning of Public Administration.

Public Administration though practiced through time immemorial (it is as old as humanity) on all parts of
the earth, recently carved an identity for itself a few decades back as a separate discipline.
It swirled into the limelight through Woodrow Wilson's controversial paper in the Political Science
Quarterly (Journal) in 1887 that advocated a separate field of study for the art and science of Public Administration
since Political Science did not have the answers to many questions of Public Administration.
He advocated a comparative study of public administration with other nations to know our strengths and
weaknesses of Public Administration as being practiced in US at that point in time. He asserted that if US wanted
to become the best then it had to get skilled in the art and techniques of public administration by making it more
businesslike and totally cut off from the interference of the political executive who knew nothing about the
technicalities of implementation of public policy.
This was called the era of the politics-administration dichotomy (divide) that continued till the 1920's.
Thus began a spate of theories that helped in the evolution of Public Administration as a separate discipline and
matter of great research and analysis.
Definition:
Public Administration is the State Administration or Government Administration. Here Public is used as a
synonym for Govt/State and not in the traditional sense of the word 'public'. So it is the govt's administration
activities in process i.e. implementation of all its programmes and policies as well as other routine jobs.
It is the management of the state/govt affairs at all levels - national, state and local. It is the govt. in action
that implements and realizes the purposes and goals. It is run by bureaucrats working under various
ministries/departments.
Nigro sum up Public Administration as follows:

It is a co-operative group effort in a public setting.

Has an important role in public policy formulation
Covers all three branches of the govt./state - i.e. executive, legislature and judicial.
Different from private administration(profit oriented businesses)
is closely associated with private groups and people in providing services to the community smoothly and
directly.
Is non-political though operating in a political system.
Deals with goal achievement of the govt, the sovereign will of the people's interests and laws.
It is interdisciplinary in nature as in it draws from many other social sciences and their theories like
sociology, psychology, economics, law, etc.
NATURE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRAION:
Nature means the type or main characteristic of something and what is to be expected from it as per its
behavior/nature.
Public administration's nature and the study concerning it approaches it through two views: Integral view
and Managerial view.
Both are quite plain to understand.
The Integral view states that Public Administration is each and every activity that is performed in an organization
working towards a particular goal of the state/govt. This means right from the top managerial officers to the very
bottom manual workers, all are part of public administration as a process.
On the other hand the Managerial view only takes into account the managerial activities of an organization.
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It is bothered only about the activities that get things done instead of doing things (as stated in integral
view).
The integral approach is suited for the postal deptt. since over there everybody from the top job to the post
man's job is of importance.
Whereas the managerial view can be applied to each and every organization, since POSDCORB (Planning,
organizing, staffing, directing, co-ordinating, reporting and budgeting) activities as prescribed by Luther
Gulick are present in every organization.
SCOPE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:
As a activity and a discipline(area of study) Public Administration entails the following processes:

Luther Gulick's POSDCORB(already explained above) activities of an organization.

Walker's Administrative theory - that studies the structures, organisations, functions and methods of all
types of public authorities at all levels. And the APPLIED ADMINISTRATION which studies the exec-legislative
relationship and minister-official relationship, delegated legislation, preparation of budget by officials, educational
administration, military administration, social policies, economic activities of the govt.,foreign policy, problems
and techniques of imperial domination over other nations and local administration.

Pfifner - he talks about management of personnel, public financing and administrative accountability to the
people through their ministers along with the above mentioned.

Subject Matter View: Certain organizations cannot follow the straight jacket formula and way of
functioning as listed above as their subject matter is totally different, like for example the police department and
intelligence bureaus have their own procedures and techniques followed to gather intelligence and protect the
people.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ADMINISTRATION:

Public admin is bureaucratic whereas private administration is businesslike.

Public admin is political (ministerial responsibility) whereas private admin is non-political.
There are high instances of red tapism in public admin whereas private admin is free from it.
Public admin follows uniform laws whereas private admin follows dynamism in its way of working.
Public admin is controlled financially from outside through the legislature, private admin is free from such
processes.
No profit motive/marginal return policy of public admin whereas private admin is built for profit
Breadth and scope of public admin is mammoth.
Public admin is accountable to the public.
Public admin acts an agent of change and transformation in society.
Anonymity of officials in public admin.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ADMINISTRATION:

Common skills and techniques for management process.

Both serve people and be informative toward them.
In modern times profit motive is not peculiar even to public administration.
Private organisations have taken a lot from the personnel management practices of the public admin
organizations.
Similar type of hierarchy and management systems.
Both carry on continuous efforts to better themselves and provide efficient delivery of
services to
people or customers.
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IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

It is the basis of govt. - A govt. can exist without a legislature or even an independent judiciary but not
without administration.
An instrument for providing services to people.
Instrument to implement policies through qualified and skilled officials.
Stabilizing force in society.
Instrument of social change and upliftment and economic development.
It has a technical character to it.

REASONS FOR THE GROWTH OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

Industrial revolution that brought in socio-economic disparities and made the rich richer and poor poorer
and so the govt. had to assume a new role to protect workers and the weaker sections of society.
Emergence of Welfare and democratic State: To serve all sections of society and reduce the disparity of
socio-economic status of people in society due to the above and other factors by controlling private
enterprises and meeting state objectives.
Economic Planning- very important in developing countries for socio economic development.
Scientific and technological development for betterment of people and society.
Population growth, warfare, increased natural and manmade disaster, communalist activities causing
violence, terrorism, etc.

WILSON's VIEW OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION,NEW PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION,PUBLIC

CHOICE APPROACH,GOOD GOVERNANCE,NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
WILSON's VIEW OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:
Wilson is regarded as the founder/father of public administration courtesy his special attention to the art of
public administration in his seminal essay mentioned above.
In the U.S during the last two decades of the nineteenth century there was a movement started that was a
response to increasing Urbanization, immigration, the seeming loss of traditional values, inefficiency, Corruption,
etc. The spoils system in administration was given the patronage of president jackson and thus loyal supporters of
the victorious party were given plum administrative posts whether they merited it or not.
Woodrow Wilson was influenced by this movement and thus published his essay that insisted on major
reforms in the govt. and administration to make it efficient and also this gave birth to the thought of public
administration holding enough substance in itself to be a separate study/discipline independent of Political Science
which was popularly referred to as ' politics - administration dichotomy'.
He defined public administration as the detailed and systematic application of law. He believed that politics
is about policy formulation and public administration is concerned with the execution of the same. And if both are
mixed up then it will only lead to confusion, overlapping, inefficiency and not a stable administration.
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He stated that public administration was businesslike and mechanistic and not laced with the ups and
downs of politics. He asserted that politics did not have answers to most of the questions of administration and
thus is to be out of the sphere of administration and vice versa
According to him administration is to be technically competent and politically neutral for a democracy.
Politicians were elected by people whereas civil servants were trained for the job and were technically
sound to carry out the job in the best possible way.
Thus for Wilson, it is said, the Study of public administration, derived from the Study of politics, was to be
distinguished from it, but never divorced from its maxims and truths. To Wilson, public administration was
much more than technical detail and it was to be conducted in a political context .Thus he treated politics and
public administration as two sides of a coin.
NEW PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:
New Public Administration through the Minnowbrook Conferences was the response to the world wars and
social upheaval in the 20th century and how traditional public administration was not equipped to respond to this
and the societal needs.
It put a lot of emphasis on having values in public administration instead of just bothered about production
and profit all the time and make policies for the underprivileged and society.
It was a humanist approach to traditional public administration being practiced at that time.
Its themes were:
1.
Relevance: Traditional public administration has too little interest in contemporary problems and
issues. Social realities must be taken into consideration.
2.
Values: Value-neutrality in public administration is an impossibility. The values being served
through administrative action must be transparent.
3.
Social Equity: Realization of social equity should be a chief goal of public administration.
4.
Change: Skepticism toward the deeply-rooted powers invested in permanent institutions and the
status quo.
5.
Client Focus: Positive, proactive, and responsive administrators rather than inaccessible and
authoritarian "ivory tower" bureaucrats.
Since it was very prescriptive(instructive) and not descriptive ( detailed and practical) as in very preachy
without any means to practically implement them, it could not prevail for long or have a bang on impact as
scholars were unsure and confused because of the above mentioned.
It was criticized that though it brought public administration closer to political science, it was criticized as
anti-theoretic (not having any theory and not following any pre-existing theory) and anti-management (not
businesslike). Robert T. Golembiewski describes it as radicalism in words and status quo in skills and
technologies. Golembiewski considers it as temporary and transitional phenomena. Further, it must be counted as
only a cruel reminder of the gap in the field between aspiration and performance. So, NPA is important for the
change in thought it brought about viz. the practice of traditional public administration.
PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH:
Public choice approach is the use of modern economics tools to study problems that traditionally are in the
province of political science.
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Please note that 'public' here refers to the administrators and the choices they make while implementing and
formulating policies.
From the perspective of political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that models voters,
politicians, and bureaucrats as mainly self-interested. In particular, it studies such agents and their interactions in
the social system either as such or under alternative constitutional rules and on what basis do they take decisions
while implementing policies and also formulating policies.
These can be represented in a number of ways, including standard constrained utility maximization, game
theory, or decision theory.
Public choice analysis has roots in positive analysis ("what is") but is often used for normative purposes
("what ought to be"), to identify a problem or suggest how a system could be improved by changes in
constitutional rules, the subject of constitutional economics.
Public choice theory is intimately related to social choice theory, which uses mathematical tools to study
voting and voters. Much early work had aspects of both, and both use the tools of economics and game theory.
Since voter behavior influences the behavior of public officials, public choice theory often uses results from social
choice theory.
GOOD GOVERNANCE:
Governance describes "the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are
implemented (or not implemented)".The term governance can apply to corporate, international, national, local
governance or to the interactions between other sectors of society.
It looks to reform governance through a variety of ways like comparative studies and democratization and
decentralisation, transparency, etc. All international organisations like the UN, IMF & World Bank have put their
weight behind this movement.
The criticism it has invited is that these very same international organisations who are behind it should not
arm twist governments in all countries especially underdeveloped and developing ones into following their ways
of functioning because there is a sea of difference.
NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT:
It advocates the incorporation of more management practices into public administration to reform it and
make it more efficient.
It proposes reforms such as incentives for administrators, deadlines and contracts outsourced and more
public-private partnership.
However, the criticism it has drawn is that this needs to be implemented with caution especially in
countries like India where administrators are still not evolved and will become all the more selfish and would only
be bothered about profiteering.
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION EVOLUTION AS A DISCIPLINE,ROLE UNDER LIBERALISATION ,
PRIVATIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION AND RECENT TRENDS
EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AS A DISCIPLINE (FIELD OF STUDY):

It was born in 1887 as a discipline, not as an activity public administration is as old as human existence
itself. Woodrow Wilson's thought provoking and revolutionary paper 'The Study of Administration' in the Political
Science Quarterly brought it along and that's why he is considered the founder of this discipline.
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Public Administration is a combination of both theory and practice. As a discipline it studies and analyses
the machinery and procedure of government while formulating and implementing policies and that analysis/study
gives birth to new ideas, which are then applied to the activity of govt to test the practicality as to whether it
increases efficiency. Therefore they both are interdependent.
There are five stages in the chronology of the evolution of Public Administration as a discipline:
Stage 1: Politics Administration Dichotomy (1887-1926)
Stage 2: Principles of Administration (1927-1937)
Stage 3: Era of Challenge (1938-1947)
Stage 4: Crises of Identity (1948-1970)
Stage 5: Public Policy Perspective (1971 onwards)
The first stage was the manifestation of Woodrow Wilson's view of politics - administration dichotomy
(difference between two things as they are completely opposite). This led to a spurt in the interest of its studies in
various American as well as universities around the globe and reforms were made in government and thus scholars
were attracted to public administration with a new vigour. Woodrow Wilson propagated this view since at that
time people were fed up with the govt. and its various policies, rampant corruption and the spoils system that
prevailed in the bureaucratic framework. This was the major reason for people to readily lap up his view. L.D.
White published a book '' Introduction to the Study of Public Administration'' in 1926 that further buttressed this
view.
The second stage of administrative theory was marked by the same fervor of reinforcing the Wilsonian view of
Public Administration of public administration dichotomy and evolve a value neutral or rather value free science
of management.
It was believed that there are certain principles (guiding/basic ideas) of administration that are common to
all organizations and will work for all bringing out optimum efficiency. This was the mature Industrial Revolution
period and all that countries were concerned with was increasing production at any cost in order to earn big. Also
Industrial revolution's rapid expansion of industries led to new problems in management that were unforeseen and
therefore difficult to solve. That's when F.W. Taylor and Henri Fayol stepped in and generated their principles of
administration/management. They were successful administrators in their own right and therefore their views hell a
lot of water and were readily accepted by the industries world over.
Frederich Winslow Taylor and Henri Fayol advocated for adopting engineering based scientific methods in
the field of industrial work process in order to increase efficiency and economy. These schools of thought are
grouped under the Classical theory of administration.
Since, we are talking about the Classical theorists of Administration we have to make a very important
mention of Max Weber. His conceptual framework of bureaucracy deserves special mention as it brought about a
paradigm shift in the theory of public administration. He was the first to provide the discipline with a solid
theoretical base. He viewed bureaucracy as a national rule based central system that regulated the organization's
structure and process accordingly to technical knowledge and maximum efficiency. He was concerned about the
evolution of modern civilization with bureaucracies.
All the three theorists mentioned above laid emphasis on the physiological and mechanistic aspects of
public administration and that is why this school of thought apart from being called the Classical school of thought
is also known as the Mechanical theory of organization/administration.
The third stage in the evolution of the theory of public administration is known as the era of challenge because
the above mentioned principles and iron cage/mechanistic view of administration and workers were challenged.
The Human relations theory brought about a pragmatic view to administrative issues. It emphasized on the
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human aspects of administration that sprung from the Hawthorne experiments conducted by Elton Mayo and his
colleagues at Harvard Business School in the late 20's and early 30's of the twentieth century. The main focus of
study in this approach was to study the psychological and social problems of the industrial workers. The scholars
of this theory identified variables like informal organisations, leadership, morale and motivation for maximum use
of human resources in industries. This led to a far vast study by Herbert Simon and others that developed the
Behavioral Science theory.
The behavioral science school of thought propagated by Herbert Simon challenged the principles of
administration and its mechanistic ways as mere proverbs where one contradicted the other and thus are nothing
more than general statements based on person to person experience and lacking a theoretical foundation. Herbert
Simon advocated that decision analysis is what should be studied as decision making is the heart of administration
where a decision has to be taken at each and every stage of administration day in and day out and administration is
a series of decisions that lead to implementation and nothing more.
According to Simon if administrative behavior in an organizational setting has to be analyzed, then that can
only be done by studying the decisions taken by the administrators. Chester Barnard and Edwin Stene were other
two remarkable theorists of the Behavioral school.
The Fourth stage that is the crisis of identity stage is set in the late 20th century where many parts of the world
were just out of wars and colonization called the developing nations. This phase marked a debate for the return of
values in Public administration and cross cultural as well as cross national study of administration.
The US also faced a host of crisis in the 1960's and the traditional public administration failed to answer a
lot of questions to provide solutions to the problems. Thus grew a need to reinvent public administration and lead
to a question as to whether public administration that had been known as it is till then was relevant anymore. Thus
was born the concept of ' New Public Administration' courtesy Dwight Waldo from the First Minnow brook
Conference in 1968 attended by young scholars and practitioners of Public Administration.
These were the second generation behavioralists as per George Frederickson who was a very important part
of the First Minnow brook Conference and the main convener of the 2nd Minnow brook conference 20 years later
in 1988. It laid stress on values in public administration and a commitedness by administrators and scholars of the
discipline towards value formulation and their implementation. It developed the thought of society and its welfare
as the main goal of public administration in today's times through the public policy approach.
It brought democratic humanism and client orientation as well as the science perspective in New Public
Administration. The collapse of the Soviet Union also strengthened this view.
The Fifth Stage Public Policy theory, the next stage in the development of Public Administration theory. Public
policy is an attempt by a government to address a public issue by instituting laws, regulations, decisions, or actions
pertinent to the problem at hand.
It is policy that is made for the welfare of the people and their development. As a discipline public policy
perspective is the study of govt. policies for the people and its pros and cons and how to better the same. Here it
has come closer to political science again and also has incorporated many management principles to help public
administration cope up with the dynamics of its discipline and conduct.
So these were the various stages of Public Administration's evolution as a discipline.
ROLE UNDER LIBERALISATION,PRIVATISATION & GLOBALISATION:
Under LPG the bureaucracy has to play an open and competitive role as the policy of LPG affects the role,
values and skills of public bureaucracy. Liberalization is the withdrawal of all direct controls of the govt on the
economic sectors through deregulation, de-licensing and decontrol of pricing and distribution of products and
services. Privatization is the transfer of public ownership to private ownership that will help lead to efficiency and
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encourage investment that will eventually help in development of infrastructure and social programmes.
Globalization is the opening up of world trade thus converting the world into a global village or global market.
Therefore, under these new reforms Public Administration has to very fairly play the role of a enabler,
collaborator, facilitator, co-operation, partnering (through public-private partnership in various sectors like
telecom, airlines, electricity etc),regulating the market and directly handling sensitive deptt. such as defence, law
and order, atomic energy and foreign policy. And with regards to social programmes and policies effective
implementation it can partner up with various NGO's and charity organisations.
RECENT AND CURRENT TRENDS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:
Growth of science and technology has brought about a period of stress as well as development in the field
of Public Administration both as an art(way of conducting and actually doing the actives of Public Administration
by administrators) and as a science( academics, field of study for students and scholars).
The recent trends are:
1) Public - Private Partnership: Though the differences in public and private administration one must not forget
that if they both team up viz. their respective strengths it can lead to the best of both worlds. Public administration
brings in its expertise on social issues and policies and private admin brings in its specialization on management
and how to improve efficiency to achieve the pre-set goals by the public policy.
2) Public Administration in Policy Making: Public administration as we all know very well can never be
separated from policy formulation but nowadays it is becoming all the more dominant and is easily seen. Civil
services can give shape to stated policies through exercise of choice and judgment in administering them and
secondly they are engaged in policy formulation through their suggestive, analytical and interpretative roles.
3) Movement Towards Political Economy: Recently economists have developed new methods of analyzing the
cost and benefits of govt. programmes and administrators are choosing more and more economics as a base of
public admin than political science.
4) New emerging goals of Public Administration: Efficiency (read. Technical Efficiency) and effectiveness are
the ultimate goals of Public Administration.
5) Staff And Line Units Are Complimentary, Not Antagonistic. Line agencies are the field work agencies and
staff units are the technically specialized co-ordination and facilitating agencies between upper management from
where decisions come and the line agencies who implement them first hand.
6) Human Relations approach in Public Administration: Its main orientation is towards change in attitudes,
values and structures of organisations.
7) People's Participation Decision Making: minority groups and poor as well are now getting their share.
8) Decentralisation: Panchayats and Municipal corporations constitutional status.
9) Emerging Changes In Bureaucratic Pattern And Behavior: It emphasis upon formal structure, hierarchy and
efficiency. It is the most important in a democratic form of govt for development of the welfare of the people. It is
centrally involved in change and transformation of society. Recently there has been a growth and spread of new
management techniques in public administration. It is concerned with human goals now like: life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness. The new public administration is concerned about social equity, sensitivity to human
suffering and social needs.
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