Guy B. Peters: Fifty years of public administration

Fifty Years of Public Administration

Theory and Practice

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The Challenge

• Capture the Development of This Field

• What is its Present State?

• What is its Future?

• Public Administration More Difficult than Most Areas of Inquiry

2

Defining, ConfoundingCharacteristics

• 1. Theory and Practice

• 2. Dependent in Part Upon Transformations of The Public Sector More Generally

3. A Discipline, But Also Integrates Other Disciplines

4. Comparative as Well as National

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Period of Major Change• Warfare State to Welfare State• National Development• The Development of Public Administration

Certainly Some Before But Major Development

Theoretical Developments Rationality

Bounded Rationality Institutionalism Networks, etc.• Management Developments

NPMBudgeting

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Strategy for Presentation

• Focus on Series of Analytic Themes

• Dichotomies, a la Simon

• Often Cyclical Rather than Developmental

• Always Focus on Reform and Change

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I. Management and Administration

• Basic Theme of Law vs. Management, Formalism vs. Management

• Back to Weber and Wilson

• Rather Different Visions of Public Administration, Although Discussed Together

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Now Tend to Disparage Administration

• Formalism• Rigidity• Inefficiency

BUT

• In its time, crucial• Equality• Transparency• Efficiency of a Sort

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Wilson as Early Managerialism

• Scientific Management

• Supremacy of Management

• Capacity to Make the Public Sector More Efficient

• Then successors such as Brownlow

8

Then the NPM• Actually a Lot of OPM, US ,Canada, Scandinavia

• Then the Movement to Management

• Various Drivers for Change

• Various Meanings

MarketInternal DeregulationPerformance

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But Too Far?• Fragmentation

• Difficulties of Measurement

• Inequality

• Less-Developed Systems

• Primacy of Politics

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And What Form of Management?

• Human Relations Management in 30s

• Now Participatory Versions

• Not only the NPM Style

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Swing Back to Administration

• What’s Wrong with Bureaucracy?

• Return to More Formalism

• Managerialism Did Not Always Serve Clients Well

• Again, the Political Dimension

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II. Impartiality and Responsiveness

• Another of the Old Questions

• Neutral Competence vs, Responsive Competence

• Wilsonian Separation

• Shafferian Bargain (Hood and Lodge)

13

Relationships of Politicians and Bureaucrats

• Crucial Question for Governance

• Styles of Inquiry

Structures Attitudes Bargains

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Normative and EmpiricalArguments

• Normative

Professional Civil Service Serve the State, not a Government Neutrality and Skepticism “Speaking Truth to Power”

• Empirical

Better Decisions Organizational Memory Stability of Policy

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Polticization as an Issue• Long Standing Issue

• Seems to Have Been Exacerbated Neo-Liberals Post-NPM Presidentialization

• Various Meanings

Overt Professional Redundant Anticipatory Dual Social

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Democracy on the Output Sideof Government?

• Decline of Conventional Models

• Popular Apathy

• Interest in Local Institutions

• Bureaucracy as Locus of Participation

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III. Simplicity and Complexity

• Structure Rather than Behavior

• Reorganization as One of the Oldest Strategies in Public Administration

• Salamon

Less Efficiency More Policy

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Traditional Model• Simple Hierarchies

• For All Types of Functions (Area, etc.)

• Ministerial Department

• Internalizing Implementation

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Agencies as an Option• Old Swedish Model

• “Next Steps” in the UK

• Now Widely Dispersed

• Basic Logic

Single Function Autonomy Different Governance Mechanism Quasi-Public

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Mega-Departments as theOther Extreme

• Integrate Major Functions, e.g. Social Services

• Coordination and Coherence

• Benefits

• Costs

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But What Goes With What?

• Multiple Logics

• For Example, Labor Market Policies

• To Some Extent Everything Goes with Everything

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Is There a Perfect Structure?

• Constant Search

• All Formats Now in Use

• How to Match to Functions?

• How to Match Political Systems?

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IV. Specialization and Coordination

• Another of the Classic Questions in Public Administration

• Need to Bring Expertise To Bear

• Need to Create Coherence

• How Do we Balance?

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Have Tended to EmphasizeExpertise

• The Cabinet Department

• Specialized Advice Organizations

MinisterialPresidential, etc.

• Advisory Processes

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But More Recently Emphasis on Coordination

• Political and Administrative Reasons

• After NPM

• “Joined Up Government”

• Priority Setting Style

General Post Crisis

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Changing Levels ofCoordination

• Negative

• Positive

• Strategy

• All are Relevant

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Movement Back and ForthLooking for the Optimal

• True for all Dimensions of Reorganization

• Bouckaert, Peters, Verhoest

• Political As well as Administrative

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V. Autonomy and Integration

• State and Society Issue

• How Autonomous are Public Organizations From Their Clients and Stakeholders?

• Answer Varies Markedly

Across Time Across Countries

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Statist Position

• State Power

• Autonomy

• Legalism

• Top-Down Perspective

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Corporatist Alternative

• State Dependent Upon Society

• Importance of Stakeholders

• Alternative Form of Participation

• Democracy and Efficiency

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Network Version

• “Governance Without Government”

• Autopoesis

• Openness to Multiple Actors

• But Still Linked to Public Sector

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Autonomy from Political Control

• Some of the Same Question as Agencies

• Structural Differentiation

• Professionalism and Expertise

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Use of Other Actors• Contracts

• Partnerships

• Market Action

• Etc

• Normative and Empirical Issues

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VI. Rationality and Evolution• Two Significant Strands of theory

• Rational Choice/Social Choice

• Bounded Rationality

• Both Reactions to Conventional “Theory”

Scientific Management Human Relations POSDCORB

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Rational Choice

• Downs, Niskanen, et seq.

• Principal/Agent ideas

• Moral Hazard, etc.

• Useful, but….

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Bounded Rationality

• Simon

• Then Development

Cyert and March Cohen March And Olsen

Institutionalism Organizational Basis of Political Life

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Incrementalism as AnotherVariant

• Synoptic Model of Rationality

• Incrementalism as an Alternative

Empirical Normative

Dominant in American Public Administration

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VII. Authority and Democracy

• The Public Sector as Source of Authority

• But Need for Accountability

• Again, Shifting Over Time

• Generally in the Direction of Greater Accountability

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Traditional Form of Accountability

• Hierarchical

• Internal to the State

• Focus on Errors

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Now More Complex

• Hierarchical Continues Upward

• Supplemented by Outward

• Supplemented by Downward

• Civil Servants with Multiple Masters

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Hood, Peters, et al

• Hierarchy

• Competition

• Mutualism

• Contrived Randomness

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Responsibility and Responsiveness

• NPM and Responsibility

• Participative Style and Responsiveness

• Now Restatement of Accountability

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Performance Accountability

• Part of NPM, but Legs of its Own

• Managerial, but Also About Accountability

• Depends Upon Public Activation

• Less on Mistakes, More on Average Levels of Performance

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Conclusions

• Constant Search for Improvement

• And Often Reinventing the Wheel

• Why?

• Absence of Theory?

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Can We Learn?

• Cross Time

• Cross System

• Triumph of Hope Over Experience

• The Future as More of the Same?

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