Topic IIntroduction to Public

Administration

DR. Hala Elhelaly

UNIT 2 THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION CONTENTS

Administrator as implementer:• PA may be defined as all processes,

organizations and individuals associated with carrying out laws and other rules adopted or issued by legislatures, executives and courts.

What is public administration?

Administrator as regulator/ service provider:• Public administration is the use of managerial,

public, and legal theories and processes to fulfill legislative, executive, and judicial mandates for the provision of governmental regulatory and service functions.

What is public administration?

Woodrow Wilson• Public administration is detailed and

systematic execution of the lawexcludes policy formulation as well as elected

officials Shafritz and Russell—the public interest

• Whatever governments do for good or ill. It is public administration’s political context that makes it public--that distinguishes it from private or business administration.

Other definitions

Key Approaches :• Traditional Managerial Approach: Civil

Bureaucracy (“scientific approach”)• New Public Management: Competitive,

business-like

Political approach: Public administrator as a

reflection of the body politic

Legal approach: Public administrator as

adjudicator

Key Approaches:

The approachesLegal Political NPM Traditional

approach

Procedural validity

Representation, accountability

Customer response

Efficiency; effectiveness

Value

Adversary Pluralism Competitive Typical bureaucracy

Org. structure

Particularistic individual

Group member Customer Impersonal; rational

Individual

Precedence Muddling through Decentralized Rational Decision making

Judicial Legislative Executive Executive Function

Rights based Incremental Performance based

Rational (cost benefit)

Budget

The Public/ Electoral relationship • Constitutional rights

• Public Interest• Sovereignty Regulation

• Policy/ Civil rule enforcement Services

• Collective services (defense, welfare) Jurisdiction• Place bound

Key components of PA

Efficiency v. Effectiveness

• reaching public goals or measuring activities?

Responsiveness v. Accountability • responding to public needs or filling out

reports?

Difference between outputs and outcomes

Tensions faced by public administrators

CONCLUSION

It is aptly worthwhile to conclude that both

the public and private administrations are

placed in different surroundings.

But this differences are more apparent

than real .

CONCLUSION

The two are, in fact, of the same species of

the same genus .

But they have special values and

techniques of their own which gives each

other its distinctive character.

SUMMARY

Traditionally, when public administrators

think about what the public administration

mean at all, they think about it in institutional

terms .

SUMMARY

This in other words, means the management of

tax-supported agencies that appear on

government organisation charts – the

government bureaucratic agencies that constitute

the locus/position of public administration that

hold sway over the fields focus during the period

of paradigms .

SUMMARY

Public administration can be likened to a state

made of a glass house, we see what it tries to do,

and all its failures, the partial or total, are made

the most of .

But private enterprise is sheltered under good

opaque, bricks and mortar.