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1 - Defining Public Administration

Public administration can be defined in several ways: 1. It is what the government does to implement policies and provide services to citizens, both directly through government employees and indirectly through contractors. 2. Definitions include political (context that makes it public), legal (created and bound by law), managerial (executive function and management of programs), and occupational (what public employees do). 3. There is no single definition that can encompass the vast scope of public administration, but it generally involves the implementation of public policies and services for citizens.

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266 views14 pages

1 - Defining Public Administration

Public administration can be defined in several ways: 1. It is what the government does to implement policies and provide services to citizens, both directly through government employees and indirectly through contractors. 2. Definitions include political (context that makes it public), legal (created and bound by law), managerial (executive function and management of programs), and occupational (what public employees do). 3. There is no single definition that can encompass the vast scope of public administration, but it generally involves the implementation of public policies and services for citizens.

Uploaded by

Bebek Angsa
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Defining Public Administration

Hardian Wahyu Widianto


What is Public Administration?

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Definition of Public Administration

• it is government in action—the management of public affairs or the implementation


of public policies.
• while accurate, is not adequate for such an important task
• Public administration is so vast that there is no way to encompass it all with only
one definition
• David H. Rosenbloom clustering this definition in 4 categories: political, legal,
managerial, and occupational.
Political Definition of Public Administration

• It is this context (political) that makes it public—that makes it different from private
or business administration
• 1. PA is what government does.
• government employees do things that affect the daily lives of their fellow citizens.
• These efforts are beneficial (build bridges and highways), but sometimes they are not (brutalize
and violate the civil rights of its citizens).
• In whatever political and cultural context it happens to exist (Dwight Waldo, 1955)
• similar administrative acts can be performed differently in different cultures
• Public administration is the totality of the working-day activities of all the world’s bureaucrats—
whether those activities are performed legally or illegally, competently or incompetently,
decently or despicably!
Political Definition of Public Administration

• 2. PA is Is Both Direct and Indirect.


• It is direct when government employees provide services to the public (electricity)
• It is indirect when government pays private contractors to provide goods or services to citizens
(tambang batu bara, hunian, komunikasi). PRIVATIZATION, since 1980s
• 3. PA is a Phase in the Public Policymaking Cycle
• whatever government do or do not do is public policy
• All such decision are made by those who control political power and implemented by the
administrative officers of the bureaucracy.
• Public Policy and PA are two sides of same coin, One decides, the other does. They cannot be
separate because one side cannot exist without the other.
Political Definition of Public Administration

• 4. PA is Is Implementing the Public Interest.


• E. Pendleton Herring. Increase in the scope of the administrative discretion of government to
addressing public interest.
• Edmun Burke, Public administrators play representative who exercises personal judgment and
doesn’t just follow the exact orders of a legislature or the perceived opinion of a constituency. E
• 5. PA is Doing Collectively That Which Cannot be So Well Done Individually
• Legitimate object of government . . . To do for a community of people, whatever they need to
have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves—in their separate, and
individual capacities. Abraham Lincoln
• Public administration is the mature manifestation of the community spirit to provide service
and regulating individual behavior in interest of common good.
Legal Definition of Public Administration

• Because public administration is what a state does, it is both created and bound by
an instrument of the law.
• 1. PA is Law in Action
• Every application of a general law is necessarily an act of administration.
• Administration cannot exist without this legal foundation. (Constitution)
• 2. PA is Regulation
• It is government telling citizens and businesses what they may and may not do
• The Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylonia.
• Our lives are constantly governed, or interfered with, by regulation.
Legal Definition of Public Administration

• 3. PA is the King’s Largesse


• is whatever goods, services, or honors the ruling authority decides to bestow .
• In the modern world, can be seen in traditional monarchies and dictatorships, where hospitals,
schools, parks, and such are touted as something given by the autocrat to a grateful people.
• 4. PA is Theft
• Conservatives are continuously fearful of public policies involving redistribution, such as social
welfare policies and programs whose goal is to shift wealth or benefits from one segment of
the population to another.
• The basic mechanism for redistribution is taxation
• Who is the government’s chief robber in this Robin Hood game? None other than your local
public administrator!
Managerial Definition of Public Administration

• Without its management aspect, not much of the public’s business would get done.
• 1. PA is Executive Function in Government
• Executive, Legislative, Judicative
• Most of what an executive does is to manage existing programs, to run the bureaucracy
• 2. PA is Management Specialty
• Management refers both to the people responsible for running an organization, and to the
running process itself—the use of numerous resources (such as employees and machines) to
accomplish an organizational goal.
• PA is middle management—the group responsible for the execution and interpretation of top-
management policies and for the day-to-day operation of the various organizational units.
• They typically have supervisory or first-level managers—those responsible for the final
implementation of policies by rank-and-file employees—reporting to them.
Managerial Definition of Public Administration

• 3. PA is Mickey Mouse
• anything requiring considerable effort for slight results / Red Tape (Effect of formality and
attention to routine)
• policies or regulations felt to be needless, inane, silly, or mildly offensive (Copy of ID,
Ceremony, protocol).
• 4. PA is Art, Not Science—or Vice Versa
• Nothing is more pointless than to argue whether the practice of public administration is more
art or science. It is inherently both.
Occupational Definition of Public Administration

• One of the joys of public service occupations is the frequent opportunity to participate in
analyses and evaluations of public programs.
• 1. PA is an Occupational Category
• It is whatever the public employees of the world do
• Most of the people in this broad occupational category do not even think of themselves as public
administrators. (Phsician, engginer or teacher)
• 2. PA is Essay Contest
• People in bureaucratic careers tend to rise or fall on how well they can write.
• If you are considered talented enough, you will be asked to write your boss’s memos. Then, because
you’re too busy writing the boss’s memos, you find a younger talent to write yours. When your boss
gets that big promotion, you go along for the ride with your own promotion.
• Oral presentation skills are also essential, but because more people can speak than write effectively,
writing is more decisive in determining whose ideas get advanced.
Occupational Definition of Public
Administration
• 3. PA is Idealism in Action
• Idealism draws people into public administration
because it provides them with worthwhile—and
exciting—things to do with their lives
• Where else can someone without private wealth
achieve such vast power so quickly?
• 4. PA is an Academic Field
• PA goes far beyond the concerns of management
and incorporates as its subject matter all of the
political, social, cultural, and legal environments that
affect the running of public institutions.
• Woodrow Wilson called “Science of Administration”
• The first real American Public Administration text is
“Introduction to the Study of Public Administration”
by Leonard White 1926.
Occupational Definition of Public Administration

• 5. PA is a Profession
• It is the application of its unique arts and sciences to the problems of society.
• The case for public administration’s status as a profession can be made by applying to it the test
of professionalism.
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