NAME: NIÑO A.

NEMEÑO, MPA (Batch 2)

SUBJECT: MPA 504 (Theory & Practice of Public Administration)
PROFESSOR: DR. ANGELINA C. VILLAREAL

1. Describe the characteristic features of public administration and

highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the Philippine governmental
machinery.

Public administration is the study of public entities and their

relationships with each other and with the larger world: how public
sector organizations are organized and managed; how public policy
structures the design of government programs that we rely upon; how
our states, cities, and towns work with the federal government to
realize their goals and plan for their futures; how our national
government creates and changes public policy programs to respond to
the needs and interests of our nation.

WEAKNESSES:

Large bureaucracy, slow, and inefficient

Low quality of civil service
Citizens unaware of their rights
Limited resources
Lack of capacity building for citizens and politicians
Excessive and overlapping rules and regulations
Weak performance and results-based management system
Lack of culture of competitiveness
State has strong monopoly position (excessive regulation)
Discrete information process (lack of transparency)
Poor accountability mechanisms

STRENGTHS:

The citizen as customer is king

Transparency
Decentralized service delivery systems
Accountability through participation
Enhance the quality of public services through increased flexibility,
effectiveness, and efficiency
Cutting back on excessive regulation
Prioritizing the freedoms of citizens
Defining the core functions of government
Active participation of civil society in governance – from planning,
budgeting, and
implementation to monitoring and evaluation
Leveraging Resources

2. A fair, free and transparent system of accountability is a pre-

requisite of public administration in a democratic state. Identify the
causes and suggest remedies for the failure of system of
accountability.

Accountability exists within the safety culture as a condition or state of

being. An employee's sense of accountability is a felt internal condition
or effect caused by the knowledge that failure to achieve standards of
performance will lead to a consequence. Successful accountability
exists when appropriate behavior is objectively evaluated and results
in effective consequences.

Accountability may be thought of as the condition of being held liable

or answerable for one's safety performance. It establishes an
obligation to (1) perform assigned responsibilities (2) at a prescribed
level or standard. Accountability is fixed through the application of
natural and system consequences.

3. Differentiate between the roles and functions of political and

administrative leadership. How can we reconcile the conflict between
political and administrative leadership? Support your answer with real
world situations or workplace setting.

Political leadership involves many attributes. It often includes a power

relationship, a capacity to persuade, as well as intuitive tactical and
strategic skills. However political leadership is also framed by an
individual's particular emotional and psychological development.
As might be expected of any concept that has appeared to defy
definition, there is fairly widespread disagreement among the experts
as to just what leadership involves. Some people contend that while
leadership is of the utmost importance, and that no substitute exists
for it, leadership cannot be created or promoted or taught or learned.
Rather, this line of reasoning holds that leadership is an art not a
science, and that a science can be learned but an art cannot.

Other people define leadership simply as getting people to work to

achieve common goals of the enterprise ù giving people a reason
(motivation) to work. Still other people hold that leadership is the
ability to influence the behavior of others, set up goals, formulate
paths to the goals, and create some social norms that will guide
behavior. Another concept of leadership is that leaders induce
followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the
motivation ù the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations of
both leaders and followers, and that leadership is thus inseparable
from follower.
Margaret Thatcher grew up in a small apartment on the top floor of her
father's grocery. She entered the political arena at an early age,
coaxed along by her father. She often took notes at her father's
political meetings, helped out in local election campaigns and worked
at Conservative Party headquarters whenever she could (Harris, 1988,
p.44). Thatcher was 14 when World War II began, and she immediately
plunged into patriotic service and continual support for the policies of
Winston Churchill.

Thatcher began her undergraduate studies at Somerville College

Oxford in 1943. She entered as a reader in Chemistry and quickly
became involved in religious and political activities. By 1949 she had
become the youngest candidate to be considered for a Party seat, and
the only woman (Dahl and Neubauer, 1968). In terms of political
leadership, Margaret Thatcher is most often considered as more like
Ronald Reagan than any other political figure of her era. The two were
considered to be tough-minded Cold Warriors with conservative
domestic fiscal policies. Margaret Thatcher was the Iron Lady to Ronald
Reagan's John Wayne-like presidential figure.

4. What structural changes would you suggest to change the

orientation of public accountability to achieve the objectives of poverty
alleviation and development. Give reasons or support your answer.

The expansion of the global economy--especially as guided by the

neoliberal perspectives of the creditor countries and the International
Monetary Fund--has had a dramatic, albeit less than successful, impact
on economic growth in Latin American countries. The philosophy of
creditor countries to promote economic growth in Latin America and
elsewhere in the Third World has undergone several transformations
over the last half century, ranging from a purely liberal perspective to
today's neoliberal perspective. Thus far, each regime has not been
successful in terms of a variety of different measures, such as growth
in overall gross national product, economic independence among Latin
American nations, and the distribution of income among creditor
countries and debtor countries as well as among social classes within
Latin America. Income distribution is a politically explosive issue with a
complex and troubled history. It has once again become an important
theme in today's developing era.
Expanding spheres of influence as well as taming a growing
revolutionary zeal in Latin America prompted refining the liberal
perspective of the global economy to take into account the Third
World. Adopted widely in Latin America, the "import substitution"
model arose from the work of economists who sought solutions to the
problems of "underdeveloped" countries. Long-term economic progress
through industrialization was key, via replacement of imported
manufactured goods with domestically produced goods. The
"structuralists" provided theoretical support for the model's inward-
looking policies by underscoring a structural bias in the global trading
system against developing countries exporting primary commodities.
They believed industrialization could be achieved through backwards
linkages in the economy, starting with light industry and concluding
with capital goods production. Regional trading among developing
countries would provide a springboard for global trade. Domestic
regulatory law, rather than international law, implemented import-
substitution policies.