This instructor resource is provided courtesy of Westview Press, and is intended for course use only.

Public Administration Theory Primer, 3rd Edition

Additional Real World Examples

**Please note that there are no examples for Chapters 1 and 10.

Chapter 2. Theories of Political Control of Bureaucracy

1. One relatively recent example of establishing a “firewall” between politics and administration
was the switch from a commission form of government to one of a city manager in the city of
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In 2005, amid concerns that elected politicians did not have the expertise
to effectively run the city’s departments, the city put the item to a vote. The switch was
overwhelmingly supported, with more than two thirds voting in favor of a city manager style of
government. The goal was to improve both the ability of citizens to feel qualified to run for city
council, and the management of city departments. Thus, the city of Cedar Rapids expected
better democracy and better bureaucracy as a result of the switch.

2. Perhaps the most classic example of an iron triangle was the set of relationships that existed
between key members of Congress, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the
tobacco industry (including both tobacco growers and cigarette companies). This network
managed to protect and promote the industry well into latter half of the 20th century, even in
the face of mounting medical research on the hazards of smoking.

3. Lipsky’s findings on the challenges that street-level bureaucrats face seems to be reflected in the
increased frustration with decisions made by individual police officers. With the advent of the
use of body and dashboard cameras, citizens now have more ability to review those decisions.
As officers become more accountable to their communities, police forces are required to
improve training, as well as improve communication with the public.

4. Agency theory holds that as the principal increases its ability to hold the agent accountable, and
also increases its ability to alter the agent’s behavior (i.e. street-level discretion is reduced). This
is perhaps most clear in public K-12 education, where federal and state laws have increased the
effectiveness of monitoring mechanisms for schools, and even for individual teachers.
Proponents of these laws argue that teachers and school administrators have not been held
accountable to the public, while opponents argue that the ability for teachers to apply their
professional expertise has been removed.

Chapter 3. Theories of Bureaucratic Politics

1. Efficiency as a central principle for public administration may hold in certain select cases. A
state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles may be one example, where the primary function is to simply
process driver exam results, license renewals, and other paperwork, whereas the only thing the

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driver is concerned about is timely and accurate processing. The Internal Revenue Service is an
agency where efficiency certainly matters, but much of what is done also involves value-laden
decisions, particularly in terms of choices about who and how to audit, underscoring Waldo’s
argument that most administration is political. The IRS, for example, is often criticized for
targeting certain types of people or groups (most recently, conservative “Tea Party” members)
for audits while ignoring others.

2. Wilson argued that rules (organizational culture) play an important role in determining the
behavior of bureaucrats. Others have also found that “the way things are done around here” is
powerful and difficult to change. One example may be the difficulty that the United States
Marine Corps is having with integrating women into the ranks. Critics argue that the focus on
physical ability is a cover for an unwillingness to change institutional culture.

3. An excellent example of networked administration involves efforts to mitigate the effects of

poverty. Poverty, of course, is a “wicked” problem, because there isn’t one single cause, and
because it is an issue for government at the local, state, and national levels. Multiple
government agencies, non-profit charitable organizations, and religious institutions are involved
in providing access to food, health care, shelter, education, and financial resources. These
efforts are often coordinated through some network, such as a local Community Action Agency.

4. Skidmore College recently embarked on a conscious effort to diversify its faculty, calling
“mirroring the demographics of the population” a moral issue, and one that would also lead to
improved educational outcomes for students. This application of representative bureaucracy
was hailed by many as an over-due example of concrete efforts on the part of institutions of
higher education, while others criticized it as ill-defined, particularly regarding the population
Skidmore is trying to mirror. Whether it leads to improved student outcomes remains to be
seen, although the research on representative bureaucracy in K-12 education implies it will.

Chapter 4. Public Institutional Theory

1. An excellent example of the difficulty in balancing risks is given by Kettl (2007) in System Under
Stress, 2nd ed. Evaluating homeland security politics, Kettl demonstrates that zero tolerance for
mistakes can create a system that generates false positives, which increases the expense of
administration. Over time this is no longer tolerated, prompting what is known as “backsliding”
away from vigilance. This informs our understanding why some provisions of the Patriot Act
were allowed to expire on July 1, 2015. Another example may be the “zero tolerance” policies
in K-12 schools that have led to such false positives as students being expelled for minor
infractions such as throwing snowballs or playing tag. As absurd applications of the policies
(false positives) become more common, school districts are re-evaluating this approach.

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2. In some ways, system fragmentation and the diffusion of innovation are linked. One example
might be in tax incentives for business relocation. As one jurisdiction offers a tax benefit in
order to lure additional corporate investment, nearby jurisdictions will consider offering similar
benefits, in order to avoid giving their neighbor a competitive advantage and having businesses
shift from their areas.

3. One example of a debate that can be informed by an understanding of hierarchy is the

leadership of a typical university. Traditionally, university presidents, particularly of public
institutions, come from the academic ranks and have served in academic leadership positions
(e.g. dean, provost). This is understood to be appropriate, since experience, knowledge, and
judgement are needed to be able to see “the big picture” regarding the fundamental mission of
the university. Increasingly, however, governing boards are more willing to hire leaders from
the corporate and political sectors in order to bring in alternative experience and knowledge in
the hopes of “transforming” the institution more rapidly.

Chapter 5. Theories of Public Management

1. Scientific management remains in modern public administration. Although the federal

government shifted away from the use of civil service exams in the early 1980s, about 20
percent of federal jobs (ranging from air traffic controllers, to postal workers, to clerical staff)
still require some sort of aptitude test. The federal government has shifted in the other
direction. The Office of Personnel Management starting implementing the “USA Hire” exam in
2012, designed by psychologists to help find the best employees out of the large volume of job
applications. By the spring of 2015, all applicants for jobs in the Departments of Defense,
Justice, and Health and Human Services are required to take the new civil service exam.

2. One of the challenges agency leaders and managers face is tied to their roles. They need to
adequately represent their agency so that elected officials provide resources and enact clear
policies that are congruent with the agency’s mission. On the other hand, agency leaders are
also in a position where they need to be responsive to external demands and political interests
that may not be in line with the goals of those within their own organization. When agency
leaders choose to align themselves with the interests of those within their organization (and
perhaps rebuff external political demands), they are said of have “gone native.” Robert
McDonald, appointed as Secretary of Veteran Affairs in the summer of 2014, was criticized as
early as the following fall by veteran groups, who claimed he had “gone native” with his
deliberate, careful method of responding to concerns about record-keeping in the VA.

3. Certainly, one of the most vivid rhetorical devices used regarding public management is Grover
Norquist’s statement that he “want[s] to shrink it [government] down to the size where we can
drown it in the bathtub.” His views have substantially influenced how the Republican Party

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thinks about public management. Certainly, efforts to reduce the size of government through
tax cuts and contracting have flowed from the doctrine promoted by Norquist.

4. An example of public management that perhaps pushes the boundaries of both public
administration theory and what government authority the public will be willing to turn over to
the private sector is the private policing of the French Quarter in New Orleans. In early 2015, a
privately-funded organization (the French Quarter Task Force) began patrolling the French
Quarter, as a result of citizen dissatisfaction with the local police (David Amsden. “Who Runs the
Streets of New Orleans?” New York Times Magazine. August 2, 2015, page MM24). After
several months of success using the personal funds of a private businessman, financing was
turned over to the Convention and Visitors Bureau, a private economic development
corporation for the city. The city has since acknowledged that the French Quarter Task Force
has relieved municipal budget pressures and has allowed the local police to redeploy resources
elsewhere in the city.

Chapter 6. Postmodern Theory

1. School bond issues are among the more contentious issues facing voters in localities. The
debate over the pros and cons of these initiatives often include positivist (e.g. cost-benefit
analysis, infrastructure improvement, betterment of school outcomes) and postmodern
(fairness concerns [who benefits and who doesn’t], and equity) arguments.

2. Public employees and administrators who are in constant face-to-face contact with clients or
citizens (such as welfare and human services case workers, and law enforcement officers)
expend considerable emotional labor. These employees also work for organizations that are
among the first to face significant budgetary constraints during tough economic times. Research
into “emotional labor” can provide insight into the potential implications of high emotional
labor on public organization performance.

3. The May 2015 issues of State Legislatures discusses the use among some states of “social impact
bonds,” or a contract between a government and nongovernmental organization to deliver a
public good. As discussed in the article, the state of New York is using such bonds to reduce
recidivism and increase employment among former prisoners. The emphasis on measurable
outcomes is in line with the positivist tradition (not to mention that the public-private
partnership fits with governance theory as discussed in Chapter 9), but the focus on the prison
population is postmodern in nature as this is a target population that often lacks political power.

Chapter 7. Decision Theory

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1. Anchoring: City administrators are considering placing school bond issues on upcoming ballots,
one of which is considerably more expensive (but also calls for significantly more improvement
in existing infrastructure). Consider the extent to which administrators should consider the
psychological effects of placing the least expensive bond on the first ballot.

2. Agenda setting in the United States is often a reflection of the availability, or representativeness
bias. The issues that capture the attention of decision makers are those that are often most
salient. Consider the issue of gun control in the United States, where the ebbs and flows tend to
follow the unfortunate acts of gun related violence.

3. Administrators and political leaders in several states, including California, have restructured
their retirement systems to be “opt out” rather than “opt in” enrollment. Such systems are
clearly in line with the choice architecture literature originally developed by Cass Sunstein,
Bryan Jones, and others, whereby administrators design systems to account for cognitive biases
in the hopes of improving human decision making.

Chapter 8. Rational Choice Theory and Irrational Behavior

1. Critics of the Internal Revenue Service’s apparent deliberate targeting of “conservative” groups
for auditing purposes fits with Niskanen’s notion of the utility-maximizing bureaucrat (i.e. such
efforts, if true, would enhance career opportunities for bureaucrats working in a Democratic
presidential administration).

2. In 2015, the U.S. Congress considered revising the No Child Left Behind Act. House Republicans
advocated for changes that would allow for federal dollars to be used by students to transfer to
private schools. Such policy proposals fit with the school choice literature, and have roots in the
Tiebout model of public service delivery. Evidence has also emerged suggesting that empirical
support for this model is lacking, and that the model only applies to a small segment of the
population.

Chapter 9. Theories of Governance

1. The deal reached by the United States and other world powers in 2015 to scale back economic
sanctions on Iran in exchange for a drawdown of nuclear weapon development demonstrates
the complexity of global governance on two fronts: determining accountability when state and
international bodies disagree, and the complexity of global networks in administering policy,
including “third-party governance.” The United Nations unanimously approved the deal prior to

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the U.S. Congress approving or disapproving the deal, complicating accountability and
perceptions of legitimacy.

2. Following a series of security lapses by the Transportation Security Administration at U.S.

airports in 2015, the United States is once again reconsidering the privatization of airport
security service. Advocates for such reform tend to adhere to the new public management
(NPM) school. Because performance measures are easily measured and evaluated for this
service, advocates argue that privatization will likely improve efficiency.

3. The financial collapse and brinkmanship regarding the economic situation in Greece in 2015
involved several actors considered by Koppell to be “global governance organizations” ([GGOs],
e.g. European Credit Union, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund).
Throughout the bargaining process, these organizations faced accountability issues not only
with the people of Greece, but across other countries as leaders in Germany continued to press
for tougher sanctions due to domestic political pressure. It became clear early in this process
that the people, the state, and even other GGOs had varying perceptions of legitimacy about
each actor. While a deal was ultimately reached, it to some extent represented a failure to
achieve collaborative governance, or at a minimum demonstrates that even where collaborative
governance exists, not all actors are satisfied.