PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW Lecture 6

 Public administration plays various roles in the contemporary society: - the most important are implementing laws and policies and acting as their adjudicators.  Hence, it is important to study public administration with an open mind and without prejudices to appreciate the full nature, role, importance and relevance of the administration. THE ROLE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES

 Public administration has a very long history which is traced back to the ancient and medieval times.  However, there has been a considerable shift in the way the public administration was carried out in ancient and medieval times when the initiatives were nothing more than sporadic administrative functions like maintaining law and order and collecting revenues with little or no welfare activities.  In those times people who carried out those activities were selected by the monarchs and were no better than their personal servants.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION – WHAT IS THIS?  According to Jan Boć ”Public administration is understood to be overtaken by the state and realized by its pending bodies and also by the bodies of the local self-government fulfilling collective and individual needs of citizens, resulting from the people’s coexistence in communities”.  Under the negative definition public administration is everything that is not legislative power or administration of justice (read about the principle of the distribution of authority in Montesquieu's division).  Public administration is an operational instrument in the hands of a political power.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION  Public administration is what government does:  As a profession, public administration has developed values and ethical standards, but as an activity it merely reflects the cultural norms, beliefs, and power realities of its society.  Public administration is the totality of the working day activities of all the world’s bureaucrats – whether they are legal or illegal, competent or incompetent, decent or despicable.

 Public administration is implementing the public interest:  The public interest is the universal label in which political actors wrap the policies and programs that they advocate.  The public interest is a commonly accepted good.  The rise of administrative discretion in the face of legislative vagueness means that the job of the anonymous administrator is to define the public interest.  The legitimate object of government [is] 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.  Twentieth century communications have given rise to ’a revolution of rising expectations.’

 Public administration is idealism in action:  Many people enter public service careers because they are idealists; they believe in and seek to advance noble principles.  Idealism draws people into public administration because it provides them with worthwhile and exciting things to do with their lives.

 Public administration is a profession:  A body of academic and practical knowledge that is applied to the service of society.  A standard of success theoretically measured by serving the needs of society rather than seeking purely personal gain.  A system of control over the professional practice that regulates the education of new members and maintains both a code of ethics and appropriate sanctions.

 The positive definition of public administration. This definition stresses those elements that perform administrative function. The main element of public administration, in accordance with this definition, is public interest which identifies the structure of the subjects which perform the administration.  Subjective definition of public administration. This definition takes the perspective of the subjects of public administration in order to define those bodies that exercise administration and the nature of their structure.  Polish scientist Franciszek Longchamps thought that the term public administration is linked with the administrative law.

 Public administration is an operational instrument in the hands of a political power. Serving the political power, public administration in democracy should serve, through the intermediary of the political power, the people organised in a democratic state.  It is, in a sense, an executive of the executive power.  It can also be qualified as a tension between the necessary exercise of power and the search for responsiveness to achieve maximum accountability from public servants.  Public administration is also ’public’ in the sense that, in liberal democracy, the only argument for its intervention – as the intervention of the state power – in the affairs of the state’s subjects (individuals as well as thier organisations: business and non-profit ones like) is the public good, also called the public interest.

 From the functional point of view, public administration can be defined as an operational function, in any state, independently of the epoch and of the form of government.  It is not, however, the case of public administration approached in institutional terms.  As a specific set of authorities and institutions, with missions set up conformity with principles of the horizontal and vertical division of labour and staffed by professional employees – public administration is a relatively new phenomen.

 Etymology: 1. from Middle English – administracioun, 2. from Old French – administration, 3. from Latin - administratio, administrare.  Origin of the word: ; Middle English administracio(u)n < Latin administrātiōn- (stem of administrātiō) service  Related terms: 1. administer, 2. administrator, 3. administrative.

ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD ’ADMINISTRATION’ 1. Word ’administration’ is etymologically linked to the Latin word ministrare, strenghtened by the preposition ad-, meaning ’to serve’. 2. Above mentioned word minister and ministrations also confirm 'servant’ aspect of the derivates of ministrare. 3. The word ministrare linked with the word administro, administrare, means to serve, conduct or manage. 4. Due to this etymology administration always means a certain service of executive activity, carried out with respect to somebody and/or something more important or decisive. It is also an instrument serving to achieve a goal and/or to execute a will of a superior.

FEATURES OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 1. it is a social phenomenon (all of its other features stem from this fact), 2. regulates social coexistence, 3. acts on behalf of and on account of the state or the local self-governing community, 4. has a political nature (the principle of political booty developed in the USA) 5. always acts as a non-profit entity. Even if it conducts profit-oriented activities (managements), these do not constitue its main purpose but they are rather an idinrect pursuit of the public interest, 6. performs public tasks, 7. it is always characterized by its purposelfulness action and initiative, 8. employs mainly professional personel (clerical staff).

Classification of public administration in reference to its function  Regulatory administration (classical administration) – is realized by issuing administrative decisions and other administrative acts.  Administration of provision – it is not connected with a regulatory activity, is an activity conducted without the direct use of authority (empowered intervention). Examples of such activities include running a registry, public rallies, informative and organizational activities, social assistance, social help and aid in natural disasters.  Managaments of the administration conducting owner and managing their rights of public administration. This type of administration is connected primarily with changes with the political system in the 1990s and the phasing out of socialist state and free market rules. Administration conducts the owner’s rights of the State Treasury, which comprises mostly public property under diffrent forms (partnerships, agencies and other bodies).

 Only public administration is responsible for initiating and ending administrative proceedings. For this reason, only public bodies have certain legal responsibilities and prerogatives during the course of administrative proceedings, i.e., they are oblige to inform parties to the proceeding about their rights and duties, to act within prescribed time limits or to check any evidence which can be important for the case.  For this reason, one must disguinish differences between public and private administration. Private administration is not responsible for performance of administrative procedures and public tasks. There is a great difference between public and private administration.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION vs. PRIVATE ADMINISTRATION According to Paul H. Appleby public administration is different from private administration in three important aspects: 1. political character, 2. the breadth of scope, 3. impact and consideration and public accountability. These differences seem to be very fundamental and valid.

 While the public administration functions on service intuition the private administration follows the business intuition.  They also have different purposes to serve, with different needs, values and objectives.  Both of them make different kind of contribution to the society as well.  The way the performance and results are measured is different in a public administration than that of private one.

1. the managerial aspects of planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling are the same for public and private administration, 2. the accounting aspects like maintenance of accounts, filing, statistics and stocking are the same, 3. both of them have a hierarchical chain of command or reporting as the organizational structure, 4. both get influenced, adopt and reform their own practices in the light of best practices of the other, 5. they share the same pool of manpower, 6. they share similar kinds of personnel and financial problems.

Thank you for your attention! This presentation was based on: 1. Bińkowska M., Chechłowski A., Walawender R.A., The Code of Administrative Proceedings, C.H. Beck, Warszawa Duniewska Z., Administrative law, [in:] Introduction to Polish Law, Wyrozumska A. (ed.), Łódź Izdebski H., Public administration and administrative law, Liber, Warszawa Korzeniowska A., Administrative Procedure, [in:] Introduction to Polish Law, Wyrozumska A. (ed.), Łódź Możdżeń-Marcinkowski M., Introduction to Polish Administrative Law. Second Revosed Edition, C.H. Beck, Warszawa This presentation was based on above articles and chapters only for didactic purpose.