COMPARATIVE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION MPA 503 CPA ISSUES (Lecture 04)

SUMMARY/RECAP COMPARISONS BASED ON THE FOLLOWING CAN BE MADE: POLITICAL/ECONOMIC SYSTEMs REGIONS WHOLE OR PART OF ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM STRUCTURE AND PROCESSES OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM OVERALL ENVIRONMENT OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM INFORMAL ASPECTS PERFORMANCE

EMERGENCE Comparative public administration emerged as a field of study centered on the development and distribution of foreign aid. Overtime, the field has evolved in many directions ranging from the study of administrative inefficiencies, policy implementation, budgeting, systems analysis and fragmentation, culture and public administration, and distributions of governmental power

EMERGENCE The emergence of CPA as a field is linked to the process of decolonization and the expansion of nation-states. CPA in its origins attempt to help develop the administrative practice of developing nations. CPA was a “cold war” strategy to contain communism.

LINKAGE WITH US AID CPA has been closely linked with international development agencies such as USAID. The objective was to “help” developing countries to “catch-up” with the developed world by improving the practice of the public sector.

BAD REPUTATION The profession’s faith went hand in hand with the commitment of developed nations to international development. The fact that most developing nations have failed to make the leap into the league of developed nations and, many were being considered as failed states, put into question the professional practice of public administrators.

SOME ASPECTS Patterns of organization Recruitment of bureaucrats Certain common programs of governments Capacities and performance The perennial tensions between officials Personal norms and the control of bureaucratic power

C P A Issues These include ways in which administrators interact with their political environment and influence the policy making process. Some administrative decisions that may themselves become contentious policy issues

SMALL GOVERNMENT In the last decade, critics of the public service have argued that efficient government is small government. Privatization has been the order of the day. This model of development has been exported overseas, especially to the less developed and transitional states in Africa, Asia, Eastern and Central Europe and Latin America.

C P A ISSUES Affirmative action and representative bureaucracy Budgetary decision making Government reorganization Decentralization Privatization and Contracting Out Public sector reform.

Use of history The control of bureaucratic power, upon which comparisons of diverse bureaucracies can be valid. The Use of History: Historical Kingdoms in China,Asia, Africa and Europe were precursors to the modern state system

CPA ISSUES The politics-administration dichotomy Environmental and cultural factors are important. Ecology as an issue Bureaucracy as a Negative? Keep government out of people's lives Systemic influence on the individual- role definition, socialization and development of organizations vs. institutions

Politics and CPA     The relationship between politics and administration is one of the oldest and most controversial issues in public administration.  Woodrow Wilson in 1887 was the first in America to call for the separation of administration from politics.  In Wilson's view, politics ought to be about policy formulation and administration ought to be about policy implementation

EFFICIENCY Focus on the scientific efficiency of nation-states; i.e., the economic efficiency of government (this economically-driven perspective also being termed the "new public management" -- a minority viewpoint which continually recurs from time to time and essentially holds that the public sector ought to be managed like the private sector) 

POLITICAL CONTEXT Almost every aspect of public administration is contingent upon a political context. Administrative systems do not stand alone. They require some embracing organization, some kind of imposed hierarchic order, something other than anarchy or chaos. Being dependent upon politics presents many challenges, not the least of which is how to study perfection (which can be said to be the quest of public administration) under imperfect conditions .

POLICY MAKING AND EXECUTION   This distinction between policy-making and policy-executing has been an ambiguous one.   The problem is that bureaucrats and agency-level executives often make discretionary choices and exercise initiatives which are just as much the development of policy as anything politicians could do

RESEARCH independent variables -- the environment or context (societal characteristics, culture, political type of government, economic indicators, management slants or core operating system) dependent variables -- organizational structure, leadership, power and influence, internal decision-making processes, goals and goal accomplishment

THEORIES    There is a tendency in CPA to strive toward what are called "middle-range" theories which only consider a few examples of administrative behavior at a time and only promise to link concepts together better or formulate hypotheses (rather than formally test empirical hypotheses)

REFORM AND CAPACITY BUILDING    Comparative Public Administration (CPA) is an applied, intercultural, interdisciplinary, explanatory field of study which carries out cross-cultural investigations in order to provide solutions for management problems and develop management technologies .   It is no accident that the field focuses upon growth, reform and capacity building since CPA is in many ways about identifying those "best practices" which promote the most desirable organizational structures and processes

VESTED INTERESTS .  According to interest group theory the usual pattern is for a "special relationship" to develop between certain agencies and certain private interests.  Similar patterns involve government agencies becoming quite insulated from the public.   When an agency becomes "encapsulated" by a private interest group, bureaucratic capture is said to occur

OSSIFICATION     The study of bureaucracy or bureaucratic politics often involves the study of the class characteristics of public servants.  One of the most frequently used terms in those areas of study is ossification.  A bureaucracy becomes ossified, or set in stone, by the way it goes about its work.  This may occur regardless of political change or whether boundaries exist between politics and administration