IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - Public Concerns

Objective of Public Administration as a discipline:

Public Administration has direct influence on every citizen and it is worth studying Public Administration as a discipline in order to understand how Public Administration responds efficiently to diverse public needs and plays pragmatic problem solving role.

Introduction:  It was the Woodrow Wilson, who highlighted the importance of Public Administration as a specialized subject of study in his celebrated essay on 'The Study of Administration' published in 1887.  He put the Government Administration as – The practical/business unit/end of Government which can be separated from ‘Politics’ part. Urging for the establishment of an autonomous field of academic inquiry, Wilson observed: 

"There should be a science of administration which shall seek to straighten the paths of government, to make its business less unbusiness like, to strengthen and purify its organization, and to crown its duties with dutifulness."

The Practical Concerns

During the period of Wilson, there had been a need for increased social productivity and a positivistic government’s role as the regulator of the social order and a facilitator of socio-economic development. Wilson defined the subject as an efficiency-promoting, pragmatic field. This became the first explicitly articulated statement on the importance of a separate discipline.

• Classical administrative theory (we will be learning about the Classical Administrative Theory later) reigned uninterrupted for about three decades since the beginning of the century which had laid special emphasis on improvement in the machinery of government. Due to the increasing tasks of modem administration, it was just proper to look into the causes of administrative incompetence and many efforts were made to streamline Public Administration to make it a fit agency of social development.  Examples - The Haldane Committee Report (1919) in Britain and the President’s Committee on administrative Management (1937) in the United States. During the British period as well as after independence, several committees had been set up in India e.g., the Administrative deforms Commission (1966).

The reformers of the Public Administration were the critics of over dependence of administration on “politics”. A new ‘faith was- born in the form of a 'science' of administration that would have great applied value in scientific restructuring of Public Administration on the basis of studies made by the practicing administrators and academicians. The classical 'principles' of administration have severely been criticized but they have never been totally discarded. [These were the precursors of latter-day sophisticated methods and techniques of administrative improvement such as cost-benefit analysis, operations research, etc.]

• Due to increasing social complexity and international tensions, the governments had assumed more and more an interventionist postures. There were demands for State intervention in industrial regulations, elimination of Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and other social evils which marked the end era of the laissez-faire state(We will define it in later posts). Thus positivist-interventionist welfare state has emerged steadily.
• As Leonard White - "In their broader context, the ends of administration are the ultimate object of the state itself-the maintenance of peace and order, the progressive achievement of justice, the instruction of the young, protection against disease and insecurity. The adjustment and compromise of conflicting groups and interests-in short, the attainment of the good life".
• There arose various questions among the academicians and practitioners in order to make the Public Administration more ‘Efficient’ and more suitable for the social dynamics: 

1. How can governmental activities be made more cost-effective?
2. How can the budgetary practices in government be streamlined and made more and more management-oriented?
3. Are there better ways of organizing the administrative machinery?
4. What could be done to ensure a steady and timely flow of skilled and motivated personnel within the governmental machinery?
5. After all, it is popular satisfaction and fulfillment of popular demands that provides the rationale for Public Administration. So, what methods could be invented to monitor popular reactions to administrative action?
6. How can people's satisfaction be measured?

In addition to those, larger issues of public policy formulation, policy execution and monitoring and evaluation of policy outcome had come to assume crucial significance in governmental operations.

Note: 1) Public Administration has received policy science orientation because of Herbert Simon’s contribution to decision-theory which enhanced the utility of the discipline for practical policy analysis and policy improvement in the government.

    2) Writers like Dror and Dye have greatly enriched policy analysis as a major area of Public Administration.

• The importance of the new discipline came to be recognized, as sustained academic inquiry and interest started - producing new techniques and methods of improving governmental performance. There were increasing practical concern for public problem-solving which has steadily legitimized its place in Social Sciences.  Such as:

1. Innovations in organizational designs in order to meet the needs of rapidly changing social situations were adopted. In recent years, Organization theory has assumed the character of a well-developed discipline and then, the organization theory perspective has become an integral part-of Public Administration discipline. This has made the discipline much more useful than ever before for organizational development and structural experimentation in government. Thus in recent years the discipline has acquired considerable strength and stood in a position to suggest alternative ways in organizing governmental activities to optimize the results.
2.      Public Personnel system has got the benefit of more sophisticated analysis due to application of behavioral science knowledge. Research on motivation and morale group and inter group behavior, and interpersonal relationships have produced various knowledge and theories which are being used by Public Administration-analysts. The importance of human element in administration is being emphasized, which was largely ignored in the classical model.

In the next post, we will continue on the same topic but with different perspectives and concerns. Then we will discuss about the contribution of Public Administration as a discipline.  Click here to read now!