Free guide book notes for Assam University students: Pol. Science Guide Book 6th Semester, Assam University. Read the full chapter-wise notes below.
Political Science 6th Semester Notes: Administration and Public Policy - Concepts and Theories (PS-604)
Original study notes for B.A. 6th Semester Political Science (Pass, CBCS, DSE) at Assam University, Silchar. They follow the five syllabus units in simple English. Practise with the Political Science question papers on AUS Helper.
Unit 1: Public Administration as a Discipline
Meaning
"Administration" comes from the Latin administrare, to look after or serve. Public administration is the work of government in carrying out law and policy. It can mean the activity (the executive's action) or the discipline (the study of it). Woodrow Wilson's 1887 essay "The Study of Administration" is taken as its start.
Scope and significance
Two views: the POSDCORB view of Luther Gulick (planning, organising, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, budgeting) and the broader subject-matter view that covers all the work of government. Its importance grows with the welfare state: it delivers services, keeps law and order, and drives development.
Public and private administration
| Point | Public | Private |
|---|---|---|
| Aim | Public service | Profit |
| Control | Political, legal, public | Owners |
| Accountability | To legislature and citizens | To shareholders |
| Uniformity | Same rules for all | Flexible |
Evolution and approaches
Stages: politics-administration dichotomy (1887-1926), principles of administration (1927-37), human relations and the challenge (1938-47), crisis of identity (1948-70), and the new public administration (from 1970). Approaches include the traditional, behavioural, ecological (Fred Riggs), systems and comparative approach. Comparative public administration studies how administrations differ across countries and cultures.
Unit 2: Administrative Theories
- Classical theory: Fayol, Gulick, Urwick and Weber. It views the organisation as a machine with hierarchy, unity of command, span of control and division of work. Weber's bureaucracy has fixed rules, hierarchy, written records, and appointment by merit.
- Scientific management: F. W. Taylor. Find the "one best way" by time and motion study, scientific selection and training, and pay incentives. Criticised for treating workers as machines.
- Human relations theory: Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne experiments (1924-32). Social needs, informal groups and morale affect output more than pay alone.
- Rational decision-making: Herbert Simon. Decisions are made under "bounded rationality": people settle for a satisfactory option, not the best one.
Unit 3: Understanding Public Policy
Public policy is what government chooses to do or not to do (Thomas Dye). Theories of how policy is made: the elite theory, group theory, institutional theory, systems theory (Easton) and the incremental model (Lindblom), which says policy changes by small steps. The process has stages: agenda setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, evaluation and feedback. Policy matters in administration because the civil service turns decisions into action. Evaluation asks whether the aim was met and at what cost, and may lead to continuation, change or termination.
Unit 4: From Development Administration to New Public Management
Development administration (Edward Weidner, Fred Riggs) arose in newly independent states. Its elements: administration geared to national development goals, change-oriented, with people's participation and a focus on results. It is political: leaders and bureaucrats compete over resources, and developing countries faced weak capacity, corruption and a gap between plans and results. These problems and the fiscal crisis of the 1980s led to calls for reform, which opened the way for New Public Management.
Unit 5: New Public Management (NPM) - A Critical Perspective
NPM applies market ideas to government: competition, contracting out, performance targets, customer focus, decentralisation and "steering, not rowing" (Osborne and Gaebler's Reinventing Government). Pioneered in the UK and New Zealand in the 1980s. Merits: efficiency, choice, better service. Criticism: public values such as equity and accountability suffer, the poor may be left out, and measuring public outcomes is hard. Later ideas include governance and "new public service".
See also: All 6th Semester posts and question papers.