PAD 5384 lecture one

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Master of public administration program

COURSE SYLLABUS

PAD 5384 Civic groups & public policy

Summer 2014

Introduction Civil society thinker of the week

Photo credit

Alexis de Tocqueville *

De Tocqueville may be the first person to write systematically about the involvement of civil

society in American public policy. His 1835 Democracy in America included the oft-quoted

passage (in Book I, chapter 12; see also Book II, chapter 5):

“In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used or

applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America. Besides the permanent associations

which are established by law under the names of townships, cities, and counties, a vast

number of others are formed and maintained by the agency of private individuals.”

*

I. Civil society and public policy *

The purpose of this course is to explore the interaction of government and nonprofit

organizations in public policy. This suggests links to three UNF-MPA courses: PAD 6060

Public Administration in Modern Society, PAD 6142 Management of Nonprofit Organizations,

and PUP 6007 Policy Analysis. 'Public policy' is an odd interactive partner for nonprofit

organizations, as public policy is a process, not an entity (or set of entities) that nonprofits can

interact with. The obvious interactive partner implied by 'public policy' is public organizations:

government. So the nonprofit manager interacts with the public manager in the social process

that we refer to as public policy.

To a large extent, that is what this course will seek to do: look at how nonprofit managers

(especially nonprofit policy advocacy organizations, but almost all nonprofits engage in some

advocacy work) interact with public managers in the public policy process. Some

definitions/clarifications:

1. Public v. nonprofit managers -- This distinction is both a descriptive and a legal one.

Legal: nonprofit organizations are technically defined in the United States as those registered

under Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code ("Exemption from tax on corporations,

certain trusts, etc."). When people talk about Nonprofit Organizations in the US it is often

501.c.3 organizations that are referred to:

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"Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated

exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or

educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition

(but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or

equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part of the net

earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, no

substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise

attempting, to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (h)), and

which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of

statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for

public office."

But the list of exempt organizations under Section 501 includes a wide variety of others

that should be considered under this broad rubric, especially for the purposes of a class on

civil society and public policy: civic leagues for the promotion of social welfare

(501.c.4); social and recreational clubs (501.c.7); fraternal societies (501.c.8 & 10);

nonprofit cemeteries (501.c.13); veterans clubs (501.c.19), and numerous others.

Descriptive: to distinguish between government and non-governmental organizations, there

are more than these two types of human organization, as illustrated in Table 1:

Table 1

Models of social organization

Type Owners Governance

Public agencies We the people (the public) One citizen, one vote

Business firms Private individuals One dollar, one vote

Member-benefit groups Private individuals One member, one vote

‘Civic’ groups Private individuals Self-perpetuating board

Communal Participants S/he who does, rules

Self Individual Self motivation

State (also called public, government) -- society creates a formal, central administration

to provide myriad public services, and to regulate social interactions. These are publicly-

owned organizations that take direction from elected representatives, and are managed by

public officials. These regulations would include anti-trust legislation, product quality

requirements, resources conservation, criminal behavior (though shalt not kill, etc.).

Examples: City of Jacksonville, Nassau County, State of Florida, Kingdom of Tonga.

Most folks also recognize the existence of what are referred to as Quasi-Autonomous

Non-Governmental Organizations, or Quangos. These are state-owned, but

independent of the elected political leadership.

Market (also called private, business, for-profit) -- people produce goods for exchange, in

the hopes of making a profit. These are privately-owned corporations that take direction

from Boards of Directors elected by shareholders of the corporations.

Examples: Salt Life, Winn-Dixie Supermarkets, Exxon, Ford Motor, Microsoft.

Nonprofit (also called independent, third sector, non-governmental) -- individuals

cooperate to get things done through formal, 'third sector' (non state or market)

organizations. These are also private organizations, which take direction from Boards,

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with these either appointed by members (for member-based organizations), or self-

perpetuating.

Public-serving NPOs -- Private, not-for-profit organizations that have as their mission

providing some sort of public benefit: United Way of Duval County, Greenpeace.

Member-benefit NPOs -- Private, not-for-profit organizations that have as their

mission providing benefit to members: American Legion, American Medical

Association, Little League.

Communal -- not necessarily communes. Communal organization is much like

nonprofits, save that communal organization involves informal interaction, carried out in

the absence of a formal (i.e. typically registered) organizational structure. If you look

after your neighbour's child, for instance, your activity comes under this sector.

Self provision/subsistence -- grow your own veggies, make your own clothes, wash your

own car, cook your own food.

This class is about interactions between these formal nonprofit organizations, and

governments (public organizations).

2. Public policy -- Implied from the above: things happen in society as a result of individual

action; as a result of informal collective action; as a result of decisions and actions carried out by

formal, not-for-profit organizations; as a result of profit-oriented decisions by business firms;

and as a result of actions taken by government.

Public policy might be thought of as the realm of government activity, but that isn't at all

correct. Public policy is probably best understood when contrasted with market activity:

Market decision-making: corporate sellers produce goods in the hope that individuals will

purchase them. Social outcomes are determined by this aggregation of literally billions

of buying/selling decisions in a given year.

Public policy: this is more the realm of discourse, influence, democracy, and other

equally abstract forces. These decisions are often made in public bodies, such as city

councils, state legislatures, Congress, or myriad government agencies. But public

managers are by no means the only actors involved in these decisions. All of the five

types of human organization discussed above can get involved in some way.

3. The stages model. -- In this class we will also look at public policy through what is called the

'stages' model. This breaks public policy into a number of stages, with different folks offering

different lists of stages (Kingdom offers a four stage model on pages 2-3), but common ones

include:

agenda setting,

formulation,

selection,

implementation,

evaluation, and

termination.

Think, especially, about how the role of civic groups in public policy will differ in each of these

stages of a policy issue.

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4. Civil society -- broadly understood as the 'body politic', or the citizens of a society taken

collectively. Note that citizens typically get involved in public policy both individually, and

collectively. If collectively, this often takes place through some sort of informal, collective

movement. More often (and more effectively!) though, citizens band together in nonprofit

organizations to influence public policy.

*

II. Public Management *

The rest of this lecture, and the next two, will introduce the three components of the course:

public management, civil society, and public policy. We start with public management. But

first, some numbers to put public management in the United States in context. Table 2 presents

some comparative governance indicators for a range of countries.

Table 2

Comparative government indicators

Democracy Liberty Corruption Government

Political Civil Efficiency Size Regs

G-7 (+2)

US 8.22 1 1 7.1 7.86 7.6 8.0

UK 8.08 1 1 7.8 8.57 6.7 7.9

Canada 9.07 1 1 8.7 9.64 6.8 7.8

France 8.07 1 1 7.0 7.50 3.7 6.7

Germany 8.82 1 1 8.0 8.57 5.7 6.2

Italy 7.73 1 1 3.9 6.43 5.9 6.1

Japan 8.08 1 2 8.0 8.21 6.5 7.7

Sweden 9.50 1 1 9.3 9.64 3.2 7.3

Australia 9.09 1 1 8.8 8.93 6.4 7.6

BRICs (+3)

Brazil 7.38 2 2 3.8 7.86 6.4 4.3

Russia 5.02 6 4 2.4 3.21 5.2 6.1

India 7.68 2 3 3.1 8.21 7.7 5.4

China 2.97 7 6 3.6 2.97 5.1 5.0

South Africa 7.91 2 2 4.1 7.86 5.5 6.8

Mexico 6.67 6 6 3.0 5.00 7.9 6.7

Nigeria 3.52 4 4 2.4 1.86 6.2 6.0 Data explanations/sources:

Democracy -- An aggregated democracy score, rated 0-10, with 10 = more democratic. Economist Intelligence Unit.

Liberty: Political and Civil -- From Freedom House, transformed in to 1-7 scales, with 1 = free, 7 = not free.

Corruption -- Corruption perceptions index, rated 0-10, with 10 = less corrupt. Transparency International.

Government efficiency -- Functioning of government, rated 0-10, with higher = more effective government.

Economist Intelligence Unit.

Government Size and Regulations -- Economic freedom indicator, rated 0-10, with 10 = more economic freedom

(and so smaller government and less regulation). Fraser/Cato Institute.

The table presents a range of indicators about government around the world, including the G-7

(Group of Seven largest 'advanced industrial societies', rather than the Group of Seven Canadian

painters), the four BRICs (an awkward acronym coined to identify 'the' four large emerging

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economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and a few other cool countries (Australia, Mexico

and South Africa). Note that the sources are either impeccably conservative (the Fraser and Cato

Institutes, and the Economist Intelligence Unit), anti-Communist and widely respected (Freedom

House), or detached anti-corruption (Transparency International). So this is not a liberal snow

job. The data shows:

Economic freedom -- The United States has the least regulatory, smallest government of any

rich country. The trend has been toward more freedom (i.e. less government and less

government regulation) in the US, too. The 2010 Fraser/Cato Economic Freedom in the

World Report shows, on page 16, that President Reagan inherited what was already a very

small, lightly regulating government and made it smaller and less intrusive through the

1980s. This trend remained the same through the Clinton years, with economic freedom

increasing slightly from 1995 to 2000. While America became slightly 'less free' through the

GW Bush years, by 2008 the US remained the 'freest' country in our sample.

Civil and political freedom -- Table 1 lists seven countries that have perfect Freedom House

scores for political and civil liberty. The broader Freedom House data shows 47 (47!)

countries that, as measured by Freedom House, are as democratic as the US. The main point

here is that it is naive to argue that no other country enjoys the freedoms the US enjoys.

Democracy -- This is also evident in the democracy results that the Economist Intelligence

Unit produces. Here, the US is by no means the most democratic country in the world, but

one needn't fret too much about this, the results have measurement squishiness. Besides, the

important thing is not whether you score 9.07 (Canada) or 8.22 (the US), but rather that you

don't score 5.02 (Russia) or 2.97 (China).

Government effectiveness -- Here the US unabashedly scores middling by rich world

standards. Put perhaps in context: the US is one of the best, most honestly governed societies

in the history of our species. One can quibble about whether government in the US is more

honest than that in Italy (the US clearly appears to be more so) or France (this seems to be a

draw); and whether the US is more efficiently governed than the UK (we appear to be a bit

better) or Germany (we appear to be somewhat worse). But in the course of human history

there have been a couple of dozen or so countries that all share historic, and contemporary

world topping levels of effectiveness and integrity in government.

Critics -- It isn't hard to find folks who disagree with this assessment, but they surely need to

provide better evidence than I have, and I doubt that this is possible. In the absence of such

evidence, this course (and the MPA program) operates on the assumption that the US is about

as good as it gets. While constantly in need of reform (which has been occurring for over a

century), those calling for revolution are wildly ill-informed.

Some theory

The study of administration

Besides just being an important, early perspective on public management in America, Wilson's

1887 article also raises some issues that remain relevant regarding the relationship between civil

society and public policy in America (and much of the world, for that matter). This is probably

most evident in his identification of the 'politics/administration dichotomy' (p. 210) as a

fundamental tension in public management. We'll get to this in a bit. But first, some points

worth pondering from Wilson's 1887 article:

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He opens with reference to administrative reform in American government. This has been an

ongoing process in the US, and Wilson was present at the inception. Nicholas Henry, in a

text that I've used in PAD 6060 equivalent courses, dates the history of administrative reform

in the US from after the Civil War, eventually culminating in the Civil Service Act of

1883. Reform has continued ever since -- often with little consensus regarding what needs to

be done! -- but efforts to improve public management in the US have been continuous. As a

result, just four years after the Civil Service Act of 1883, Wilson notes

"This is why there should be a science of administration which shall seek to straighten the

paths of government, to make its business less unbusinesslike, to strengthen and purify its

organization, and to crown its duties with dutifulness" (p. 201).

His discussion of the early political battles "about the nature of the state, the essence and seat

of sovereignty, popular power and kingly prerogative" (p. 198) illustrates why the

relationship between civil society and public policy is important: once it is established that

government is no longer the prerogative of a hereditary monarch, or (more common today)

the prerogative of the man with the most guns; the question arises how to implement

'government of the people and for the people'. In other words, how to incorporate civil

society into public policy? Elections seem the most obvious answer to that question, but they

are an imperfect answer, for at least two important reasons:

1. Voting requires interest aggregation.

Assume, for instance, that you’re left-of-center, and supported President Obama’s

goal to get US troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq; but didn’t agree with his

compromise, market-friendly health insurance reforms (the Patient Protection and

Affordable Care Act).

Q: What to do?

A: Form a civic group, and lobby to express your views on these respective issues.

2. Voting is a rigorously controlled, open process in which each person has one vote. The

involvement of civic groups in public policy, however, does not feature this equality.

Each person has the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of association, petition and

speech that underpin civic groups (though for workers this is becoming a bit less so), but

not everyone has the ability to organize with equal effectiveness, and so to exercise those

rights as effectively. Public policy has become hideously more complex, even in the

relatively short history of the US in Wilson's time (Wilson 1887, p. 199-201; 221).

The hoary old 'politics/administration dichotomy' (from p. 207). This is where tensions

between civil society and public policy become especially relevant. The issue, again, is how

to create government of the people and for the people? Problems present themselves:

o As indicated above, elections are imperfect mechanisms for determining the popular will.

o He also had some pretty gnarly sounding views regarding the public (p. 208-9).

In his defense, the world has changed considerably since the 1880s. Perhaps most

important, the 21st century opened with information overload a serious problem

facing most people. There is too much news for anyone to digest, between the local

paper, newsmagazines, half a dozen television news sources (more on cable), radio,

and of course the internet. This was not the case in the 1880s.

Yet even today there have been no shortage of surveys showing that the level of

knowledge of most Americans about policy issues is woefully low. Ipso facto: citizen

engagement with public policy had to be even worse in the 1880s.

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Most important, his point was more to figure out where democracy should stop. Reality,

for instance, is not something subject to democracy. We cannot legislate a functioning

missile defense system, victory in Iraq, a re-built New Orleans, and so forth. So, as

Wilson put it:

"The problem is to make public opinion efficient without suffering it to be

meddlesome. Directly exercised, in the oversight of the daily details and in the choice of

the daily means of government, public criticism is of course a clumsy nuisance, a rustic

handling of delicate machinery. But, as superintending the greater forces of formative

policy alike in politics and administration, public criticism is altogether safe and

beneficent, altogether indispensable. Let administrative study find the best means for

giving public criticism this control and for shutting it out from all other interference" (p.

215).

Larry Lynn! See also Lynn’s article on “what traditional public administration really stood for,”

which I have not assigned for this course but link in the references at the end of this lecture. In

the previous section of this lecture, I identify four paradigms that I think usefully define the key

elements of good governance in the contemporary world. I also identify a fifth, ‘pre-modern’

paradigm mostly because a) the bureaucratic revolution has not occurred in many countries in the

world today, and b) we forget what life was like in the absence of a modern, accountable, ‘pre-

bureaucratic’ age. This sums up much of Lynn’s argument. As he puts it: “In its first century,

the American state was prebureaucratic. Administrative officers, -- a great many of them elected

– functioned independently of executive authority, with funds appropriated directly to their

offices” (2001, p. 147). This was not a good thing.

And so, our country was founded on the need for public management, as indicated in the

Declaration of Independence.

Market failure

Or put another way: why are our Creator-given, unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit

of happiness insecure? A critical point in the markets v. government dichotomy, that is all but

lost in contemporary debates in the US, is an understanding of why government exists in the first

place. This gets discussed in historical context in a paper of mine that you're invited to read

later. The point of this paper is that:

1. …contemporary economics asserts that the free interplay of supply and demand, under

conditions of perfect competition, will yield socially optimal results. This was first stated by

Scottish philosopher Adam Smith in 1776:

" As every individual… endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the

support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the

greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the

society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public

interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. …he intends only his own security; and by

directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he

intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand

to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the

society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of

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the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." (Click, and see

section IV.2.9 for the quote in context)

2. …contemporary economics also recognizes that markets fail. Any contemporary economics

101 text identifies some of these, and even Adam Smith identified six such areas:

o Justice

o National defence

o Major infrastructure

o Public goods, with education specifically mentioned

o Monopoly or oligopoly

o Inequality

3. …contemporary economics fails to bring these first two points together. The superiority of

market decision-making under perfect competition is asserted, the existence of market

failures (i.e. various examples of imperfect competition) is presented, but the superiority of

market decision-making is presented as an absolute, without these market failure

qualifications.

More market failure. Economics has gone on to identify a number of other market failures

(beyond those identified by Adam Smith, and probably not limited to the following, though these

are the major ones found in a typical, mainstream economics textbook):

Asymmetric information -- if one party in an exchange (usually the seller) knows more than

the purchaser.

Externalities -- when A sells to B, but in the process of the production or use of the product,

C is affected.

Principal/agent problems -- when employees act in their own, rather than the organization's

interest.

Irrationality -- Markets assume rational decision-making on the part of consumers and

suppliers. Yet as especially the spate of recent bubbles has shown (not to mention personal

bankruptcies), this is an at least questionable assumption.

Costs of creative destruction -- Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter famously defended

the logic of capitalism as follows:

“The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development

from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of

industrial mutation–if I may use that biological term–that incessantly revolutionizes the

economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a

new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what

capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.” -- Capitalism,

Socialism and Democracy (1942).

This is all well and good, so long as the costs of the destruction don’t overwhelm the benefits. So

if your favourite bakery goes broke, no worries, you can get bread elsewhere. But if your kid’s

for-profit school goes broke, your child could lose a year of education; not to mention a contract

police force, or Army division.

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A public management primer Size

As shown above, government in the United States is (wait for it...) small. In addition to Table 2,

this is also presented in Table 3, below.

Table 3

Size of government (again) (% GDP)

Total tax revenue Total government expenditure Gov’t1

1965 1985 2010 1970 1990 2012 2010

Canada 25.7 32.5 31.0 35.9 48.7 41.8 22

France 34.2 42.8 42.9 --- 49.6 56.1 25

Germany 31.6 36.1 36.3 1.5 --- --- 20

Italy 25.5 33.6 43.0 32.3 52.6 50.4 22

Japan 18.0 27.1 26.9 22.5 31.2 43.3 20

Sweden 33.3 49.6 45.8 43.0 59.8 52.2 28

UK 30.4 37.0 35.0 40.5 41.5 48.7 23

US 24.7 25.0 24.8 32.3 37.2 40.5 17 Source: OECD, World Bank, p. 398-9. 1 – Government final consumption, % of GDP.

Key points:

US government relatively small. Note again that government – whether in terms of taxes,

spending, or final consumption -- is smaller in the US than in any of the other 'Group of

seven', largest industrial economies.

US government consumes even less. Note, too, difference between total spending and final

consumption (the last column). Even most of the money raised by US governments is then

disbursed to private individuals, who make final market decisions about what to purchase. So

the impact of government on the US economy is even less.

The US federal government is the world's largest organization in terms of its annual budget. At a

recession-bloated $3,700,000,000,000 of expenditures in 2010 (according to the 2011 budget

estimates, see table S-1 in the Summary Tables), the budget of the federal government of the

United States is larger than the entire economy of all but two other countries in the world: Japan

and China. By comparison, the world's largest corporation has annual revenues (as opposed to

profits, or even value-added) of around $408,000,000,000, or one-ninth as large as the US

federal budget. The US federal government is also the largest employer in the US (a recent

source that I saw indicated that the US federal government was the fourth largest employer in the

world, behind the federal governments of China, India and Russia). Still, 'The State', or

government (federal, state and local combined) in America is one of the smallest among the rich

countries, relative to the size of the US economy.

As another perspective on the size of government in the US, the federal government employs

about 2.7m civilians. Add 1.4m military personnel, and you've got about 4.1m. Out of an

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economically active population of 144m people, this amounts to a bit less than three percent of

the US labour force. Adding in state and local employment (an anti-government civic group

estimates this at 15m) still leaves total government employment in the US at less than 20m

people, or less than 15% of the labour force. Keep this in mind with reference to Table 2, above.

This shows total government outlays as 35% the size of the US economy, which (given the

labour force figures) is an over-estimate of the role of government in the US.

Complexity

Hideously so! Given the 90,056 American governments reported in the most recent Census of

Governments, carried out every five years by the US Census Bureau, interaction among these

various bodies creates obvious complications in dealing with public policy issues that cross

borders.

Participants inside of government

'Public servants' feature at least three broad types (especially for the purposes of this class):

Elected politicians -- These are the 'politics' side of Wilson's political/administration

dichotomy. As representatives of the public, they determine what government should do.

Career public workers -- These are the 'administration' side of Wilson's

politics/administration dichotomy. They determine (in Wilson's world) how to carry out

policy.

o They are increasingly appointed on merit, without political concerns, and owe an

obligation to faithfully carry out the decisions of elected leaders.

Political appointees -- These might be understood as the go-betweens between politics and

administration. They are appointed by elected political leaders to administer policy, as heads

of the various departments of the public body in question.

Nonprofit social service workers – I should add this fourth group who, as put in a Brazilian

book that I won’t cite, are private folks working for the benefit of the public.

Kingdon chops this up a bit differently, in his discussion of policy participants inside

government:

The administration

The executive – Kingdon’s focus is federal (President), but states (Governors) and cities

(Mayors) also have an executive branch that features many of the dynamics of the

President. The Executive features various advantages in the policy process:

Institutional resources.

Appointments. Ability to hire and fire department heads, who are expected to

pursue the Executive’s agenda), and to

Implement public policy.

Veto. The power to veto legislation.

Enormous agenda setting scope, with the ‘bully pulpit’.

Less influence in steering the debate (identification of alternative policy

responses).

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Organizational. Unlike the multi-headed monster that is a legislature, or the un-

organized (for policy advocacy purposes) cadre of the civil service, the Executive can

have a single purpose.

Presidential staff – These are, of course, appointed by the President, but are key

independent actors in their own right. As an example, think of the disagreements in the

GW Bush White House between Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and the various

hardliners.

Political appointees – As with the Executive’s staff, political appointees are not drones,

acting only on the Executive’s orders.

Impermanence. As Kingdon points out, their major weakness is their ephemerality.

Two years is the median length of service at the federal level (see a GAO report).

You don’t need to be a genius to realize that the lobbyists, legislators, and career civil

servants will run rings around them.

Civil servants

“Bureaucrats are often thought to be the source of many agenda items. They are alleged

to have

“the necessary expertise,

“the dedication to the principles embodied in their programs,

See the Denhardts’ ‘power of public service’ article. In one of the obscenities that

help define contemporary American politics: nineteen private individuals hijacked

private aircraft and crashed them in to two tall buildings housing mostly private

sector workers, many making millions of dollars in the financial industry. As

those private sector workers ran out of the burning building, public sector workers

ran in to try to save them. Of the 2819 who died in the attack, 343 were

firefighters and paramedics, and 60 police officers (source).

We paid some lip service to firefighters in the immediate aftermath, declaring

them America’s heroes. South Bend, Indiana built a Firefighter Memorial statue.

We weren’t able to bring ourselves to similarly honour police officers.

Even this lip service to public service didn’t last long. Firefighters have been

threatened with job cuts in New York, and just took pay cuts Jacksonville.

Meanwhile, the US entered its worst recession since the 1930s, with the cause

widely attributed to excesses by the very financial firms whose employees were

running out of the twin towers on 11 Sep 2001, yet who have done just fine since

(source).

Yet in the current political climate, government (including firefighters) are

overpaid and need to be cut (except for our troops, who die for our freedoms –

and police officers?), while business is unabashedly good, and financial sector

whizzes who caused the economic meltdown need to be paid top dollar to keep

this top talent (source)?

“an interest in program expansion, and

“sheer staying power.

“These attributes might lead them to capture the political appointees in their agencies, to

forge powerful relationships with interest groups and with members of Congress, to

shape the flow of information essential to policy proposals” (Kingdon, p. 30).

Kingdon’s survey-based research suggests otherwise.

Bureaucrats’ resources (Kingdon, p.33-4):

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Longevity

Expertise

Relationships

The legislature – whether Congress, state legislatures, or city/county councils/commissions/

etc.

Resources:

Legal authority. On federal budgetary issues, for instance, Article I, Section 7 gives

to the House of Representatives the legal authority for writing the budget of the

United States: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of

Representatives...”

‘Formidable publicity’. Presumably: 535 mini-bully pulpits of their own.

‘Blended information’: “a blend of the substantive and the political, the academic and

the pressure group information, the bureaucracy and the constituency” (p. 37).

Longevity.

Incentives: “Why do Hill people engage in agenda-setting activities” (p. 38)?

Satisfy constituents

to ‘do something’, which can morph in to ‘symbolic politics’ very easily.

Enhancing their reputation, not least in Fantasy Congress.

They care (within the limitations of their often blinkered ideological views), trying to

“achieve the member’s conception of good public policy” (p. 39).

Congressional staff. Probably an amalgam of the political appointees, civil servants, and

legislators.

*

III. The course and instructor *

In this section, familiarize yourself with the mechanics of the course, as indicated in the course

syllabus, readings, and assignments. Note that it is your responsibility to familiarize yourself

with Blackboard. If you are unable to function effectively on this online platform, you will nto

be able to take this class.

The general idea of the course: as indicated, in recent research I've been working on trying to

develop a framework for understanding the field of public administration. Within the modern

tradition, I've identified five paradigms: one –pre-modern’, and the other vital for good

governance today:

Pre-modern – this is included to make the point (elaborated on later) that for all its

limitations, public bureaucracy (government!) in the US reflects a veritable revolution in

good governance, when looked at in historical, or global comparative terms.

Bureaucracy -- the 'how' of public administration, including techniques, structures and all

that.

Normative concerns -- the 'why' of public administration, including values, ethics,

accountability, and all that.

Networks -- concerned with the outward responsibilities of the public/nonprofit agency,

given relationships with other elements of society, including other public/nonprofit

agencies, for-profit firms, citizens, etc.

Civic responsibility -- concerned with the responsibilities of the citizen to the broader

society, including (often) public and nonprofit agencies.

PAD 5384 lecture one

Page 13 of 13

This course is concerned with the 'Networked' paradigm, above (though addresses some 'civic

responsibility' concerns, too). In a recent paper, I distinguish between "two major streams of

networked approaches to governance: an economic liberal stream that focuses on contractual,

marketized relationships; and a political liberal (in the American sense of the word) stream

which focuses on participatory networks mediated through dialogue" (2010, p. 4).

*

References:

Candler, G.G. (2010). “Governance, governança, gouvernance…or systems theory?” Midwest

Political Science Association, Chicago, 24 April.

Henry, Nicholas (2004). Public Administration and Public Affairs. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall.

Lynn, Laurence (2001). "The myth of the bureaucratic paradigm: what traditional public

administration really stood for." Public Administration Review 61(2), pp. 144-60. JSTOR

link.

Starling, Grover (1998). Managing the Public Sector. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.