Rethinking Public Administration

Governments have always required large public organizations, or bureaucracies, to deliver on their promises. Yet most people leading and managing those agencies lack understanding of the full toolkit of values, insights and findings that are necessary. Considering how public administration can learn from a wide range of disciplines ranging from history and the humanities to management and the social sciences, Marc Holzer delineates new ways of transforming organizations and building trust in governments. Reflecting upon the well-established field of studies on public administration, this book examines how it might reposition itself as society's necessary and best investment. Concise and timely, the book first draws on the arts and humanities for portrayals of bureaucracy's unintended impacts, before moving to highlight that public organizations must deliver on governmental promises to build trust with their stakeholders, outlining how willful blindness can result in organizational disasters. Holzer concludes by confronting the popular notion that governments should be run according to the principles of the private sector, and provides an insightful rethinking of how public administration should be practiced. Demonstrating the full range of competencies necessary to manage the public sector, Rethinking Public Administration will be essential reading for all scholars and students of public administration and management, public policy, government and political science. Providing a practical approach to the topic, it will also be advantageous to policymakers and other actors involved in the public sector.

Striving to redirect the study of public administration toward innovation and imagination, deliberative democracy, knowledge transfer, policy making, and ethics and values--topics which for too long have been overshadowed by traditional problems of efficency, productivity, and instrumental-rational solutions--this book of diverse essays is certain to invigorate both scholarship and practice. Eighteen leading international scholars evaluate public administration's historical development and explore the significance and value trends in public administration from a variety of cutting-edge theoretical and practical perspectives. Aimed at students and practitioners alike, this collection of essays is certain to stimulate critical thinking and discussion of public administration's aims, mechanisms, and overall effectiveness, as well as the role it plays in democratizing countries.

When we think about government, our thoughts are almost invariably about politics. Politicians deserve the attention they get, serving as they do at the top of federal, state, and local government. But there is a downside to focusing on politics, which is that we pay no attention to the management of our public institutions. Author Richard Clay Wilson, Jr., a former city manager, argues that the career managers who actually operate the entities of government have the capacity to significantly upgrade governmental performance. Before that can happen, though, we must rethink the roles of elected officials and career managers. This book points the way.

This volume explores new directions of governance and public policy arising both from interpretive political science and those who engage with interpretive ideas. It conceives governance as the various policies and outcomes emerging from the increasing salience of neoclassical and institutional economics or, neoliberalism and new institutionalisms. In doing so, it suggests that that the British state consists of a vast array of meaningful actions that may coalesce into contingent, shifting, and contestable practices. Based on original fieldwork, it examines the myriad ways in which local actors - civil servants, mid-level public managers, and street level bureaucrats - have interpreted elite policy narratives and thus forged practices of governance on the ground. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of governance and public policy.

Public Administration has experienced a fundamental rethinking of its basic objectives, concepts and theories during the 21st century. This book examines the transformations happening in global societies, the economy and in politics, to trace the trajectory of public administration as an academic discipline as well as being a focus of social science research. It presents a reassessment of governance in heterogenous developing countries that goes beyond the traditional Weberian bureaucratic model, toward new models of organization and management, informed by their legal, constitutional, economic and political needs, aspirations and ground realities. This is especially important in relation to the marginalized sections of society that primarily rely on citizen entitlements through public service delivery systems. The author looks at widening the range and scope of public administrative agencies with the gradual cooperation of multiple actors, such as the civil society, people at large and even the private sector, in a partnering role. The author revisits the discipline to tackle intellectual dilemmas that current governance theories and practices are confronting, or will have to confront in future administrative situations. There will be key discussions on mandates and challenges for the state regarding the rising South; this book will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of politics, especially governance and public policy, sociology and development studies. It will also be of interest to bureaucrats, NGOs and government officials.

Strategy is vital to effective and efficient public service delivery as well as successful governance and leadership. This new text provides a concise yet systematic overview of the achievements, downfalls and complexities of public strategy in today's globalized and often market-driven world. It describes the place of strategy in civic societies whose citizens are more interconnected and vocal than ever. It shows that successful strategic planning goes well beyond problem-solving to developing adaptable plans that can evolve as requirements and circumstances change. And it explains why muddling through simply won't work. Emphasizing the importance of applying a variety of techniques to the process of strategy-creation, Rethinking Public Strategy reassesses the key factors that can deliver significant improvements in public services and build public value. It looks at why public strategy is distinctive, as well as the principles it has in common with the corporate domain. This text includes numerous case studies from around the globe – from South Africa to Singapore, the USA to Germany, and from China to the Czech Republic – that ground the exposition in real experience. Based on state-of-the-art research by two expert practitioners in the field, it offers an essential guide to the art of strategy in the contemporary public sector, and encourages readers to evaluate critically the various approaches to strategy.