Public Administration

Changes in Public administration

By

Jefferson D. Salamat

MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVES
Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on the Development of Public Policy Intruduction

 This series of posts is by way of an experiment in consolidating material within a blog format.

The period since the end of the Second Wold War has seen a series of fundamental global changes to the practice of public administration. Those changes have been affected by and in turn have affected the development and implementation of public policy.

Continue Over the last twelve months I have discussed aspects of these changes in a number of posts on several blogs. Given this, we thought that it might be interesting if I attempted to draw this material together in a more integrated way, thus making it more readily accessible. We will also post the material to the NdaralaGroup web site a little later to test the process in another format. As material is posted, we will add full post details of all posts at the end of each post, along with citation details. This creates a problem in regard to feeds, but we hope that readers will bear with this.

Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on the Development of Public Policy
Notes on Major Trends

The Welfare State

The term "welfare state" came into popular use in British Commonwealth countries at the end of the second world war. The social hardship of great depression created a desire in Governments for action to protect citizens. This was aided by the work of John Maynard Keynes in discrediting elements of the previously dominant economic thought by showing, among other things, that economic downturns need not be self correcting, that Government policy actions based on the assumptions of classical economics.

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The 1942 UK Beveridge Report is often referred to as a key report in defining the scope of the welfare state. It was certainly influential. However, in Australia and New Zealand elements of the welfare state had been evolving since European settlement and in the Australian context were encapsulated what has been described as the Deaconate social contract.

Central to this was the idea that workers were entitled to a guaranteed wage that would allow them to cloth, feed and educate their families. In return, industry received protection via tariffs to ensure that this could be paid. Government acted as umpire and protector.

End of the Welfare State

The fifties and sixties had been decades of continuous economic expansion dependent in part on cheap oil. International trade grew in importance both in absolute terms and relative to the size of domestic economies. There was rapid expansion in international investment, especially by US companies. This was not always welcome, leading to the publication in 1968 of Jean-Jacques ServanSchreibers' book The American Challenge, a book that in some ways encapsulated the European response to US dominance.

Because the US currency was the main global currency and store of value, the decline in the value of the US dollar created tensions, especially among resource exporting countries. There had already been discussions among OPEC members and especially its Arab members on the need for higher oil prices. TheYom Kippur War (October 1973) triggered a combination of embargoes and orchestrated price increases led by Arab countries, leading to a three fold increase in the price of oil by early 1974.

Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on the Development of Public Policy

Publish or Perish Case Study

this context, one of the things that I was musing about was the changing position of academia, an area that I have known very well over a long period starting as a child in an academic household. This is an area where measurement has become pervasive and indeed arguably even perverse.
itation Indexes are compilations of all the cited references from particular groups of journal articles published during a particular year or group of years. In a citation index, you look up a reference to a work that you know to find journal articles that have cited it, although you can also search by concepts and authors. Cited reference searching is a fast and efficient way of finding journal articles that relate to your research.

 1. Sourcing of Coal-Fired Boilers and Coal Sources of Coal-Fired Boilers Semirara Cebu Mindanao (Bislig Zamboanga) Indonesia/China

Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on the Development of Public Policy

the New Zealand Model

 2. Higher operating cost Operating cost for coal-fired boilers is higher compared to oilfired boilers due to higher electricity, manpower and waste-neutralizing costs.

The Rise of Thatcherism

The failure of previous policy approaches to address the problems of stagflation, continuing high interest rates and persistently high unemployment led to a search for new policy approaches.
Margaret Thatcher (and here) became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1979, the first of a series of "conservative" (I have put conservative in inverted commas because the outcomes were far from conservative) world leaders including Ronald Reagan (1980) and Brian Mulroney in Canada (1984). Influenced by the ideas of Milton Friedman and a strong believer in free market forces, she began a process of winding back government involvement in the economy, of corporatisation and sale of Government business activities, of tight monetary and fiscal policy intended to destroy inflation.

Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on the Development of Public Policy

Application of the Model in Practice - New Zealand Scene

Taxi drivers lectured me on the evils of a deregulated taxi industry, on the way in which competition had driven down both their income and the standard of service. Yet after visiting a number of agencies I was impressed by the coherence of vision and language. I started to become very positive about New Zealand'sfuture, although I could also see some of problems starting to emerge in terms of the application of the model. These became clearer on subsequent trips.

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Taxi drivers lectured me on the evils of a deregulated taxi industry, on the way in which competition had driven down both their income and the standard of service. Yet after visiting a number of agencies I was impressed by the coherence of vision and language. I started to become very positive about New Zealand'sfuture, although I could also see some of problems starting to emerge in terms of the application of the model. These became clearer on subsequent trips. This clash was encapsulated in the 1991 Porter Project report. Inspired by the ideas of and part authored by Michael Porter, the book was an incisive analysis on the causes of New Zealand's economic problems. However, its suggestions as to solutions were noticeably weak. It is very hard to define a proactive development role for Government when your starting premise has ruled such a role out!

Panel on Challenges and Changes in Public Administration

On 1 November 2001, the United Nations and the International Institute of Administrative Sciences organized a panel discussion on Challenges and Changes in Public Administration during a session of the Second Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. The panel was one of two panels organized to mark the fifth anniversary of the landmark resolution 50/225 on Public Administration and Development, which was taken by the United Nations General Assembly at its resumed 50th session. The following are notes on the presentations and discussions.

H.E. Mr. Francisco Seixas da Costa, Permanent

Representative of Portugal to the United Nations and President of the Second Committee, chaired the panel. Mr. Michael Duggett, Director-General of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences, made an opening speech. The following panellists made presentations:

H.E. Mr. Ignacio Pichardo Pagaza, guest research fellow, National Institute of Public Administration, Mexico, former President of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences and former Ambassador of Mexico (Spain and Netherlands); Mr. Jean-Marie Atangana Mebara, President of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences and Minister of Higher Education of Cameroon; Prof. Gerard Timsit, Director, Centre of Public Administration Studies and Research, University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, France; Prof. Maria del Carmen Pardo, Professor-Researcher, Center for International Studies, Colegio de Mexico;

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Prof. O.P. Dwivedi, Professor of Comparative Public and Development Policy and Administration, Department of Political Studies, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada; and Prof. Andrew Massey, Professor of Government and Director of Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom.

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H.E. Mr. Ignacio Pichardo Pagaza, the first panellist, reminded the participants that the International Institute of Administrative Science and the United Nations had done some research in 1969 on the status of public administration in the world, which had revealed, among many other things, that:

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Public administration in the world had progressed; Institutional reforms were being undertaken globally; and Countries were interested in carrying out public administration reforms for administrative efficiency.

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The study had also illustrated that different countries involved in public administration reforms were at different stages of progress: First generation reforms involving reforms in state functions and in personnel; Second generation reforms involving reforms in public management; and Third generation reforms, which have centred on making citizens part of public administration and have included issues such as ethics, citizens charters, respect for values etc.

The End

Thank You Very Much