OCTOBER 16, 2023

Class: Ba (hons). Political science

Subject: public administration

Submitted to: MS Ravina Richards

Submitted by : sheikh hashim Javaid

Tehmi shafi

Sajid Mushtaq bhat

EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION

GROUP ASSIGNMENT
 Topic: EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION

Introduction:
Public administration is a sub-division of the broader concept of administration.
Administration means ‘to serve’, ‘to look after people’, or ‘to manage affairs’. In
this sense, administration means management of the affairs of an organization.
When we add public to administration, it means governmental administration; it
is the management of governmental affairs and activities. Dimock and Dimock
define public administration as ‘the accomplishment of politically determined
objectives’. However, according to them:

“More than the techniques or even the orderly execution of programs, public
administration is also concerned with policy... Public administration...must be
sufficiently practical to solve problems and attain society’s goals, but it must also
be exploratory and innovative in its search for better methods based on broader
understandings of what is involved in effective group activity”.

Woodrow Wilson, an authority in the field, defines public ad- ministration as

‘detailed and systematic execution of public law’. Every particular application of
general law is an act of administration’. By public administration what is meant, in
common usage, are the activities of the executive branches of national, state, and
local governments. According to L.D. White ‘a system of public administration is
the composite of all the laws, regulations, practices, relationships, codes, and
customs that prevails at any time in any jurisdiction for the fulfilment or execution
of public policy’.

Felix A. Nigro holds that there could not be a condensed definition of public
administration. It can, however, be presented in the form of a brief summary that
will constitute the definition. According to him, public administration:
• is a cooperative group effort in a public setting;

• covers all three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial and their

interrelationships;

• has an important role in the formulation of public policy and thus a part of the
political process;

• is different in significant ways from private administration;

• is closely associated with numerous private groups and individuals in providing

services to the community.

Despite the pervasiveness of public administration in our daily lives, there is

hardly any mutually agreed definition of it. In fact, the discipline is still in search of
an agreeable definition. For ex- ample, even in the latest meet at Minnow brook
(2008) or what is popularly known as the Third Minnow brook Conference, at-
tempts have been made by scholars to define public administration in the context
of the twenty-first century. The definition that emerged out of the Minnow brook
Conference III (2008), warrants special mention here, as it reflects the evolving
nature of the discipline especially the elements, which have so long been avoided
by the scholars in the discipline. Public administration was defined as ‘a socially
embedded process of collective relationships, dialogue, and action to promote
human flourishing for all’. Implicit in the definition was the recognition of an
emerging globalized and multicultural order, within which public administration
was supposed to work.

On the basis of the above definitions, it can be concluded that public

administration is an instrument of translating political decision into reality, it is
the action part of government, the means by which the purposes and goals of the
government are realized. The process of public administration consists of the
actions involved in affecting the intent or desire of a government. It is, thus, the
continuously active, ‘business’ part of the government, concerned with carrying
out the law, as made by legislative bodies and interpreted by courts, through the
processes of organization and management.
Objectives covered under this project:

• Stages of the evolution of public administration

• Contemporary development of public administration
• Concluding observations

Stages in the Evolution:

Public Administration has developed as an academic discipline through a
succession of a number of overlapping paradigms which are as follows:

Nicholas Henry has described the five paradigms in the intellectual development
of public administration in the following manner:

Paradigm 1: The Politics/Administration Dichotomy, 1990—1926

Paradigm 2: The Principles of Administration, 1927—1937

Paradigm 3: Public Administration as Political Science, 1950—1970

Paradigm 4: Public Administration as Administrative Science (Management),

1956—1970

Paradigm 5: Public Administration as Public Administration, 1970—?

Stage I—Politics—Administration Dichotomy (1887—1926):

This is the beginning of evolution of public administration as a discipline. The
basic theme during this stage was the advocacy for the separation of politics from
administration, popularly known as the 'politics— administration dichotomy'.

This stage began with the publication of Woodrow Wilson's essay The Study of
Administration in the political science quarterly in 1887. This essay laid the
foundation for a separate, independent, and systematic study in public
administration. Hence, Wilson is regarded as the 'Father of Public Administration.
Wilson separated administration from politics. He argued that politics is
concerned with policymaking while administration is concerned with the
implementation of policy decisions. In his words that administration lies outside
the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions.
Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to
manipulate its offices."

Wilson described public administration as a field of business. He observed, "The

field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the study of the
hurry and strife of politics." He further observed that CD "It (Administration) is a
part of political life only as the methods of the counting-house are a part of the
life of society; only as a machinery is part of the manufactured product."
Wilson believed that administration is a science. Thus, he said that "the science of
administration is the latest fruit of that study of the science of politics which was
begun some twenty-two hundred years ago. It is the birth of our own country,
almost of our own generation. We are having now, what we never had before, a o
science of administration." He called for a separate study of public administration.
His basic argument was that "it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than it
is to frame one." Hence, there should be a science of administration, which shall
seek:

(i)to straighten the paths of government.

(ii)to make its business more businesslike.

(iii) to strengthen and purify its organisation.

(iv) to crown its duties with dutifulness.

The Wilsonian line of thought was further continued by Frank J. Goodnow in his
book Politics and Administration published in 1900. He made a sharp conceptual
distinction between two functions of government, that is, politics and
Administration. To quote Goodnow, "Politics has to do with policies or expressions
of the state will", whereas, "administration has to do with the execution of these
policies." The basis of this distinction was provided by the classic separation of
powers. Like Wilson, Goodnow also argued for the promotion of public
administration as an independent and separate discipline. He came to be
regarded as the 'Father of American Public Administration'.

In the beginning of the 20th century, American universities showed much interest
in the public service movement (movement for governmental reform). As a result,
public administration received the first serious attention of scholars. The
American Political Science Association in its 1914 report stated that one of the
concerns of political science was to train specialists for governmental positions.

In 1926, L.D. White's Introduction to the Study of Public Administration was

published. It was the first textbook on public administration. With its publication,
the subject picked up academic legitimacy, that is, American universities began to
offer courses of instruction in public administration.

Stage II —Principles of Administration (1927—1937):

During this stage, the scholars believed that there are certain principles of
administration which could be discovered and applied to increase the efficiency
and economy of public administration. They argued that administration is
administration irrespective of the nature and context of work because the
principles of administration have universal validity and relevancy. Hence, they
claimed that public administration is a science.

This stage began with the publication of W.F. Willoughby's Principles of Public
Administration in 1927. He asserted that, "in administration there are certain
fundamental principles of general application analogous to those characterizing
any science."

This stage in the evolution of public administration reached its zenith with the
appearance of Gulick and Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration
(1937). Gulick and Urwick stated that "It is the general thesis of this paper that
there are principles which can be arrived at inductively from the study of human
organisation which should govern arrangements for human association of any
kind. These principles can be studied as a technical question, irrespective of the
purpose of the enterprise, the personnel comprising it, or CD any constitutional,
political or social theory underlying its creation."

As rightly observed by Mohit Bhattacharya, "The public aspect of public

administration was virtually dropped at this stage and the focus was almost
wholly on efficiency. This stage can be called the stage of orthodoxy, as efforts
were underway to delineate firmly the boundaries of a new discipline of
'management'. Public administration merged into the new science." Public
administration reached its reputational zenith during this stage.

Stage Ill—Era of Challenge (1938-1947):

The main theme during this stage was the advocacy of the 'human relations—
behavioural approach' to the study of public administration.

Both the defining pillars of public administration were challenged. It was argued
that administration cannot be separated from politics because of its political
nature and political role. Administration is not only concerned with
implementation of political policy decisions, but also plays an important role in
policy formulation which is the domain of politics. In other words, the idea of
politics—administration dichotomy was rejected.

Similarly, the principles of administration were challenged and criticised on the

ground of lack of scientific validity and universal relevancy. Hence, they were
dubbed as "proverbs" and "naturalistic fallacies".

Moreover, the principles approach to organisational analysis was criticised as a

mechanistic approach due to its emphasis on the formal structure of organisation
and neglect of socio-psychological aspects of organisational behaviour. The
Hawthorne studies (1924—1932) conducted under the leadership of Elton Mayo
shook the foundations of principles approach to organisational analysis by
demonstrating the role of informal organisations in determining organisational
efficiency. These studies gave rise to 'human relations' theory of organisation.

The important publications of this stage which challenged the classical public
administration were:
(i) C.I. Barnard: The Functions of the Executive (1938)

(ii)F. Morstein Marx (Ed.): Elements of Public Administration (1946)

(iii)Herbert A. Simon: The Proverbs of administration (1946)

(iv)Herbert A. Simon: Administrative Behaviour (1947)

(v)Robert Dahl: The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems (1947)

(vi)Dwight Waldo: The Administrative State (1948)

Herbert A. Simon was the most important critic of principles of administration and
described them as "proverbs". He advocated the behavioural approach to public
administration to make it a more scientific discipline. He focused upon decision
making as the alternative to the principles approach. To quote Simon, "if any
'theory' is involved, it is that decision-making is the heart of administration, and
that the vocabulary of administrative theory must be derived from the logic and
psychology of human choice."

Simon rejected the idea of politics—administration dichotomy and recommended

an empirical approach to study of public administration. Thus, as Mohit
Bhattacharya puts it, "he brought in the perspective of logical positivism in the
study of policy-making and the relation of means and ends. Reflecting the
perspectives and methodology of 'behaviouralism' in psychology and social
psychology, Administrative Behaviour pleaded for the raising of scientific vigour in
public administration."

Robert Dahl argued that the evolution of science of public administration (or
development of universal principles of administration) was hindered by three
problems.

(i) The frequent impossibility of excluding normative considerations from the

problems of public administration. The study of public administration must be
founded on some clarification of ends

(ii) The need to study certain aspects of human behaviour limits the potentialities
of a science of public administration. He criticised the existing tendency to treat
the organisation in formal technical terms and to regard human beings that
constitute organisations, as more or less material.

(iii) The unscientific nature of principles of administration which are based on a

few examples drawn from limited national and historical settings. o

Robert Dahl observed, "We are a long way from a science of public
administration. No science of public administration is possible unless: (a) the
place of normative values is made clear; (b) the nature of man in the area of
public administration is better understood and his conduct is more predictable;
and (c) there is a body of comparative studies from which it may be possible to
discover principles and generalities that transcend national boundaries and
peculiar historical experiences."

Robert Dahl emphasised the environmental effects on administrative behaviour.

He believed that public administration cannot escape the effects of national
psychology and social, political and cultural environment in which it develops.
Hence, he suggested the cross-cultural studies, that is, comparative studies. In his
words, "... the comparative aspects of public administration have largely been
ignored; and as long as the study of public administration is not comparative,
claims for 'a science of public administration' sound rather hollow. Conceivably
there might be a science of American public administration and a science of
British public administration and a science of French public administration; but
can there be a 'science of public administration' in the sense of a body of
generalized principles independent of their peculiar national setting? ... The Study
of public administration inevitably must become a much more broadly based
discipline, resting not on a narrowly defined knowledge of techniques and
processes, but rather extending to the varying historical, sociological, economic
and other conditioning factors..."

Stage IV—Crisis of Identity (1948—1970):

With the rejection of politics-administration dichotomy and principles of
administration, public administration suffered from the crisis of identity.
Consequently scholars of public administration reacted in two ways:
(i)Some of them returned to the fold of political science (the mother science).
However, they were not encouraged by political scientists. John Gaus in his article
entitled Trends in the Theory of Public Administration (1950) developed a thesis
that "a theory of Public Administration means in our time a theory of politics
also." Further, Rosco Martin in his 1952 article, called for continued "dominion of
political science over public administration."

(ii)Some others moved towards the administrative science. They argued that
administration is administration irrespective of its setting. They founded the
Journal of Administrative Science Quarterly in 1956. The major works influenced
by this perspective are—Organisations (1958) by March and Simon, Behavioural
Theory of the Firm (1963) by Cyert and March, Handbook of Organisations (1965)
by March, and Organisations in Action (1967) by J.D. Thompson.

However, in both cases (i.e. either towards political science or administrative

science), public administration lost its separate identity and distinctiveness and it
had to merge with the larger field. This is why, this stage in the evolution of public
administration is called as the 'stage of crisis of identity'.

Stage V—Public Policy Perspective (1971—continuing):

The main theme in this final stage of evolution is the concern for public policy
analysis. Public administrationists are showing much interest in the related fields
ofpolicy-science, political economy, policymaking, policy analysis, and so on.

Public policy approach got acceptance in administrative analysis as the traditional

idea of politics— administration dichotomy was abandoned. Dwight Waldo
concluded that the separation between politics and administration had become
an "outworn credo".

According to Robert T. Golembiewski, the public policy approach stage in the

evolution of public administration is built upon two basic themes—(i) The
interpenetration of politics and administration at all or many levels; and (ii) The
programmatic character of all administration. In all, these themes directed
attention in public administration toward political or policy-making processes as
well as toward specific public programmes. With the adoption of public policy
approach, public administration has become inter-disciplinary, gained in social
relevance and expanded its scope.

Contemporary development :
The period of the late 1960s was a time of academic foments that yielded a new
perspective which was a distinctly public perspective. This was the New Public
Administration. In the late 1960s, a group of young American scholars voiced
strong resentment against the contemporary nature of discipline. At the Minnow
brook Conference I (1968), they advocated for what is known as new public
administration to make the study and practice of the subject relevant to the
needs of the emerging post-industrial society. The said conference was truly a
wake-up call for the theorists and the practitioners alike to make the discipline
socially relevant and accountable. It was held in the backdrop of a turbulent time
which was marked by a series of contemporary developments like social
upheavals in the form of ethnic skirmishes across the American cities, campus
clashes, Vietnam War and its repercussions in American society, and the like.
Above developments coupled with a deep sense of dissatisfaction among the
practitioners regarding the present state of the discipline, especially its obsession
with efficiency and economy, had ushered in a qualitatively improved phase in
public administration, subsequently christened as new public administration. The
Minnow brook Conference I was famous for bringing about arguably a new era in
public administration informed with relevance, values, social equity, and change.
Public interest formed the core of the deliberations. Relating administration to
the ‘political’ was the central focus of the new public administration school.

Public choice school is another landmark in the evolution of public administration.

Far from accepting bureaucracy as ‘rational’ and ‘efficient’, the protagonists of
this school have been highly sceptical about its structure and actual operating
behaviour. The argument of Niskanen, Downs, and Tullock, in this context, is
based on the assumption of administrative egoism. The bureaucrats are, in their
view, individualistic self-seekers ‘who would do more harm than good to public
welfare’ unless ‘their self-seeking activities are carefully circumscribed’ . This
explains the tendency towards bureaucratic growth that brings in more and more
rewards for the officials and quid pro quo. To mitigate the evils of bureaucratic
monopoly, Niskanen (1971) suggests the following steps:

• Stricter control on bureaucrats through the executive or legislature;

• More competition in the delivery of public services;

• privatization or contracting-out to reduce wastage; and

• dissemination of more information for public benefit about the availability of

alternatives to public services, offered on a Competitive basis and at competitive
costs.

The public choice school has been successful in pointing out that there are
alternatives available for the delivery of services to citizens. The role of the
market as a competing paradigm has challenged the hegemonic position of the
state. Also the power of the bureaucracy has been similarly slashed, opening up
possibilities of non-bureaucratic citizen-friendly organizational options.

The Minnowbrook Conference II, which was held in 1988, is another landmark in
the evolution of public administration. The outcome of the conference gave birth
to the New Public Management (NPM) approach to governance. Its
emergence reflected the changes that took place in the Western nations. State as
major dispenser of social justice had been increasingly questioned across the
globe since late 1970s. The popular mood was against the state for its dismal
performance in almost every sphere—social, political, and economic. Recent
changes in the form governance in advanced Western countries also contributed
to the development of NPM. From late 1980s and early 1990s public sector
management in the advanced Western democracies underwent a sea change.
NPM is depicted as a normative conceptualization of public administration
consisting of several interrelated components: providing high-quality services that
citizens value; increasing the autonomy of public managers; rewarding
organizations and individuals on the basis of whether they meet demanding
targets; making available human and technological resources that managers need
to perform well; and, appreciative of the virtues of competition, maintaining an
open-minded attitude about which public purposes should be performed by the
private sector, rather than public sector.

The main features of the NPM are:

• It proposes a thorough organizational revamping so that organizational

structure will become conducive for organizational leadership. Organizational
restructuring include simplifying organizational procedures, flattening of
hierarchies, and so on;

• one of the major hallmarks of NPM is the empowerment of citizens. Unlike the
traditional public sector, it reconceptualises citizens as ‘active customers’ to be
always kept in good humour;

• it calls for more autonomy for the public sector managers. It is in favour of
greater elbowroom for managerial leader- ship by providing public managers with
greater flexibility in personnel policy like contractual appointment, workplace
bargaining, and so on;

• application of rigorous performance measurement technique is another

hallmark of NPM;

• it suggests disaggregation of public bureaucracies into agen- cies, which will

deal with each other on a user-pay basis;

• inspired by New Right philosophy, the NPM is in favour of cost-cutting in public

sector;

• it encourages quasi-markets and contracting out techniques to ensure better

management of ailing cash-strapped public sector; and

• it believes in a decentralized form of governance. It encourages all kinds of

organizational and spatial decentralization.
The NPM focuses on the entrepreneurial government. It is a participatory
management and community-owned governance, in which citizens are
considered as active consumers and not as passive recipients of programmes and
policies. The main motto is to empower citizens.

The publication of Reinventing Government by Osborne and Gaebler (1992)

redefined the functions of the government. The authors argue in favour of
‘entrepreneurial government’ that is certain to bring about radical changes by (a)
improving public management through performance, measurement, and
evaluation, (b) reducing budgets, (c) downsizing the government, (d) selective
privatization of public enterprises, and (e) contracting out in selective areas. Thus,
the focus is on de-bureaucratization, democratization, and decentralization of the
administrative processes in the interest of the citizens. The concept of governance
has further led to the recognition of the role of multiple agencies in organizing
and undertaking public business. In addition to formal goverments, the role of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations has
been acknowledged as supplementary public agencies.

In the late 1990s, Janet and Robert Denhardt have proposed a New Public
Service model in response to the dominance of NPM. A successor to NPM is
digital-era governance, focusing on themes of reintegrating government
responsibilities, needs-based holism (executing duties in cursive ways), and
digitalization (exploiting the transformational capabilities of modern IT and digital
storage). Another new public service model is what has been called new public
governance, an approach which includes a centralization of power; an increased
number, role, and influence of partisan- political staff; personal-politicization of
appointments to the senior public service; and, the assumption that the public
service is promiscuously partisan for the government of the day.

Concluding observations:
Thus, public administration has undergone a sea change in response to new
inputs from the contemporary socioeconomic and political scene. It is therefore
difficult, if not impossible, to grasp the nature of public administration in terms of
the Weberian conceptualization underlining its rigid, rule-bound and hierarchic
characteristics. Instead, the preferred form of administration is one which is
accessible, transparent, and accountable, and where the citizens are consumers.
Furthermore, the notion of ‘public’ in public administration has acquired new
dimensions where the public–private distinction is more analytical than real since
there is a growing support for both cooperation and healthy competition between
these two sectors in the larger interests of societal development. To sum up,
public administration has gone through various stages in its evolution and growth
as an academic discipline. The evolutionary process indicates the shifting
boundaries of the discipline in response to constantly emerging social needs.

Bibliography:
• M Laxmikant, PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION .
• Bidyut chakrabarty, PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD
• S P NAIDU, PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION CONCEPT AND THEORIES
• ACADEMIA.EDU
• BRITANICA
• CLASS NOTES