UNIVERSITY OF MALAWI

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE STUDIES

COURSE TITLE : Introduction to Public Administration

COURSE LECTURER : Ass Prof M Hussein

COURSE CODE : PAS 111

FROM : Jessica Mwafulirwa (BSOC-39-20)

SUBJECTS : The Roles and Significance of Public Administration and The

DUE DATE : 25th June 2021

Public administration has become quite significant over the years and it plays important and
different roles in Malawi and is very significant. Though it is over looked by many people in our
society, it is very crucial that we cannot survive properly without public administration and
neither can the government. This is because it plays a vital role in our daily lives, it is the
instrument of change in the society or country, it is a stabilizing force in the society and it is the
basis of government, just to mention a few.

Firstly, public administration plays an important or vital role in peoples day to day lives. Every
day we come in contact with different kind of public services. These different kinds of public
services are provided to the people through various types of the government like the ministry of
health, ministry of education, ministry of information etc, that provide the people with services
such as communication, food, sanitation, health, education and social welfare. We basically
receive public services starting from the day we are born to the day we pass on. In Malawi for
example, we have different kinds of public services that can be found almost every district like
government schools such as Mzuzu government secondary school in Mzuzu and Chiuzimbi
primary school in Lilongwe, not forgetting government hospitals like Zomba central in Zomba
and Kamuzu Central in Lilongwe.

Public administration also plays the role of being an instrument of change in the society. This
role also serves as a significance of public administration. Malawi as a developing country, its
key instrument is public administration as it manages and orchestrates the running and building
of schools, hospitals, road, industries and the like. Only a well-developed public administration
can handle such a hefty duty or task. With that being said though Malawi is still developing
adequate administrative operations that can take up different kinds of tasks required for this
country to flourish. This may seem as if public administration only plays a part in economic
development but this is not the case as it also is greatly involved with developing social welfare
measures that benefit everybody. This involves drafting laws and enforcing new laws for the
protection of weaker section like children and women rights though the driving force for social
change is usually brought forth by the political process. This was displayed when then
interchange in Lilongwe was needed and was later provided this was orchestrated by public
administration of course.

Furthermore, public administration is stabilizing force in the society. The government changes
frequently, this being after five years. The president, ministers and the like change frequently, so
frequent that is could cause a show to the country but due to public administration this being in
terms of civil servants that remain constant as the cabinet changes, maintaining stability as the
way of doing things is the same as it was and the new cabinet will also leave it as they found it.
This is to say that civil servants work very hard to keep everything stable hence why public
administration is a stabilizing force in the society. For example when president of Malawi Dr
Lazarus Chakwera became president the law was not change and everything was kept stable by
public administration of course.

Lastly, public administration is the basis of government. It is known that a government can exist
on without a legislature, or an independent judiciary but no government and I mean no
government can exist without public administration. As Paul H. Appleby (n.d) observes,
“Without administration would be a discussion club, if indeed, it could exist at all”. Public
administration is important to Malawi as it used to implement public policies. According to The
ifioque project (n.d, para.3), “public administration is an essential and administrative machinery
that cuts across different ideologies including capitalist and socialist countries. Basically, the
whole government exist because public administration is keeping it together as a whole and
working toward implementing law and being the steady rock that the government is built and
stands on.

All in all, it is possible to say that we mostly depend on public administration to survive as
individuals and as societies. Public administration has many roles and importance to our growing
communities. The points above stated only a few roles and significance of public administration.
References
Anon., 2021. Article1000. [Online]
Available at: http://article1000.com/rple-importance-public-administration
Anon., 2021. Ifioque.com[Online]
Available at: https://ifioque.com
Massaro, V., 2021. Google chrome. [online]
Available at: https;//jus.com.br/artigos/59904/importance-of-public-administration
 THE EXPANSION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OVER THE YEARS

Pubic administration has been there for the longest time before it was ever recognized as public
administration. Even the Egyptians in the ancient times had a well-structured public
administration but it became a discipline just recently. Woodrow Wilson laid the foundation of
the science of public administration that led to the expansion and growth of the discipline.

First of all in 1887 Woodrow Wilson published an article on the politics administration
dichotomy. The insisted that political science and public administration should be separated as to
him the two were very different and should be approached as such. Public administration is the
obvious part of the government hence Wilson defined it as the detailed and systematic
application of laws. Public administration started picking up academic legitimacy in the 1920s.
This was the locus oriented stage where the net result of paradigm 1 was to strengthen the
notation of a distinct politics/administration by relating it to a corresponding value/fact
dichotomy (Henry, 1975, p. 379).

Then came the principles of public administration. Public administration had a reputational
zenith during this second phase of its development (Henry, 2010, p. 29). As a discipline and a
practice it was in great demand both in government and in business during this period. Public
administration had matured during this stage to become a “science” and there was a belief that
there was “scientific principles” of administration that could help increase the efficiency of the
government. It is said so because if administrators used the principles they would be experts in
their work, hence increasing the efficiency of the government. During this phase they did not
care about the locus since it was everywhere so meaning that this phase was more of a focus
oriented phase. The scholars only cared if these principles were applied or not and focus was
favored over locus and nobody gave bones about it (Henry, 1975, p. 380).

Furthermore, the third paradigm period known as public administration as political science. This
was around 1950-1970 where public administration toppled and was abandoned by many
scholars because there came many oppositions to public administration or politics/administration
dichotomy and the principle of administration. This was because there was not a distinct line
separating public administration, they were intermingled in sorts. Due to this concerns public
administration merged again with political science, as a result public administration became an
area of study, emphasis or an underling of political science. The prestige of public administration
went downhill and things became pretty nasty as some scholars were hostile toward public
administration that it was not even included as a subfield of political science.

Last but not least came the public administration as an administrative science. This is when
administrators started looking for an alternative and this was happening at the same period of
time as when the third paradigm was taking place. While other administrator were trying to
somewhat defend the politics/administration dichotomy and the principles of administration
other were trying to find an alternative as said before. Scholar started to argue that administration
was administration whether public, business and institutional administration and were false
distinctions. Public administration later lost it identity as it was deemed an administrative science
and was focus oriented.

Finally came the emerging paradigm, public administration as public administration. Despite the
intellectual turmoil, public administration has been gaining or has gained a renewed validity,
(Henry, 1975, p. 383). It now focuses on the dynamics of administration, it is also considered
inter-disciplinary and it’s basically a new public administration with new trends emerging like
comparative administration, development administration and the market orientation.
References
Basheka, B., 2012. the paradigmes of public administration. 47th ed. kampala: uganda management
institute.

Henry, N., 1975. paradigmes of public administration. In: public administration review. s.l.:blackwell
publishing, pp. 378-386.

khan, h., n.d. an introduction to public administration. s.l.:s.n.