B. A .

Political
Science hons.
Semester : 3
Year : 2nd
Paper name :
Perspective on Public
Administration
Name : Saziya
College Roll no :123
Introduction :-
The Public administration is a part of life, rule and regulations and it’s
implementing the policy of state. There are two views regarding the
nature of public administration that is integral and managerial and
different thinkers adopted this, according to their perspectives .The
nature of Public administration is changing when the nature of state is
changing ,e. g :-Globalization. There are so many scholars who
contributed in the growth of Public administration were Woodrow
Wilson, L. D White, Willoughby, Gullick, Urwick, Taylor, F. W Riggs Waldo
and others. So, changes in the environment, society, there are five
phases of evolution of public administration and thinkers advocated
that. But today ,the Role of liberalization is adopted by state. The Public
administration means by various schools of thought .a). L. D White :-
The art of administration is the direction, coordination and control of
many persons to achieve some objective ,b). M. E Dimock :-
Public administration is concerned (what and how of
government).,c) .A. Nigro :-Public administration is a cooperative group
effort of public setting and covers all the three branches of government
and important role in the formation of public policy.

Nature of Public Administration :-

There are two views regarding the nature of the Public
administration ,that is integral and managerial.
Integral View :- According to this view, Administration is a sum total of
all the activities undertaken in pursuit of and in fulfillment of public
policy. These activities include not only managerial and technical but
also manual and clerical. Thus the activities of all persons from top to
bottom constitute administration although they are of varying
significance to the running of administrative machinery. Prof: L D White
adopts this view of Public administration. According to him, “Public
Administration ‘consists of all those operations having for their purpose
the fulfilment or enforcement of public policy’. This definition covers a
multitude of particular operations, many in fields. Another scholar
Marshal E Dimock also shares the same view. He holds that
administration is concerned with the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of government.
The ‘what’ is the subject matter, the technical knowledge of a field
which enables the administrator to perform his tasks. The ‘how’ is the
technique of management, the principles according to which
cooperative programmes are carried to success.
Managerial view :-According to this view, the works of only those
persons who are engaged in the performance of managerial functions
in an organization constitute administration. In this managerial view the
administration has the functions of planning, programming and
organize all the activities in an organization so as to achieve the desired
ends. Luther Gullick and Herbert Simon adopt this view. Gullick says
‘Administration has to do with getting things done; with the
accomplishment of defined objectives’.
According to Prof. M.P. Sharma the difference between the two views
is fundamental. The integral view includes the activities of all the
persons engaged in administration whereas the managerial view
restricts itself only to the activities of the few persons at the top. The
integral view depicts all types of activities from manual to managerial,
from non-technical to technical whereas the managerial view takes into
account only the managerial activities in an organization. Furthermore,
administration, according to the integral view would differ from one
sphere to another depending upon the subject matter, but whereas
that will not be the case according to the managerial point of view
because the managerial view is identified with the managerial
techniques common to all the fields of administration.
These two views in simply deals with the execution.

Evolution and Growth of

Public Administration :-
The term Public Administration has emerged in the late 19th and
beginning of 20th century. Woodrow Wilson contributed very much to
the subject of Public Administration, he also known as the father of
Public Administration. As a discipline Public Administration is not very
old it is emerged during the 19th century last. During these years Public
Administration has passed through several phases of development Each
phase has been characterized according to whether it has locus or
focus. Locus is the institutional “where” of the field or focus is the
specialized “what” of the field. We can broadly divide the growth of
Public Administration into the following five stages.

 Public l Administration Dichotomy (1887-1926)

 Period ll Principles of Administration (1927-1937)
 Period III Era of challenge and Human relationship theory
(1938-1947)
 Period IV Crisis of Identity and Comparative and
Development administration ((1948-70))
  Period V Public Administration as an Independent
Discipline ((1970 onwards))

1). Public Administration Dichotomy (1887-

1926) :-
Woodrow Wilson is called the father of Public Administration.
He
started with his essay entitled “The Study of Administration”, published
in 1887, he emphasized the need for studying Public Administration as
a discipline apart from politics. This is known as Principle of politic
administration dichotomy, i.e., a separation of Politics and
Administration. Wilson argued that, “Administration lies outside the
proper sphere of politics. He observed that (( It has getting harder to
run the constitution than to frame one.
Books published by “Frank. J. Goodnow ,In his book ((Public and
Administration )) contended there were two distinct functions of
government, one is policy by state and second is administration. He
believed in separation of powers because separation of powers is the
basic of distinction.
In the beginning of the 20th century, Public Administration started
gaining popularity mainly because of the keen interest taken by
scholars in the public reforms movement going on in American
universities. A Committee on Practical Training for Public Service was
established in 1912 by the American Political Science Association which
recommended that professional schools were needed to train public
administrators. This committee became the forerunner of the American
Society for Public Administration, set up in 1939.
In 1926 Leonard D. White‘s ,((Introduction to the Study of Public
administration ) ,It’s emphasized that Politics should not intrude on
administration. Public administration is capable of becoming a value
free science in it’s own right. The purpose of public administration is
((economy and efficiency)). In this phase the emphasis was on value -
neutral administration .

2).Principles of Administration (1927-1937):-

In 1927,”W. F Willoughby” book (Principles of Public admini-
stration))which indicated the new era of Public administration that is
certain scientific principles of administration. In this period, the
principle of administration saw flowering of public administration both
((academically and professionally)) critical to the establishment of the
role of ((Philanthropy )was very important between 1927-37 lots of
money was spend in training of public administrator in America. It was
a period when public administration was supported not only by the
government but also by the industries for their managerial knowledge.
The many thinkers who contributed to the growth of principles of
administration were M. P. Follet‘s "Creative Experience "(1924), Henri
Fayol‘s "Industrial and General Management"(1930) and James D.
Mooney and Alan C, Reiley‘s "Principles of Organization" (1939).But the
main thinkers were ((Luther Gulick‘s and Lyndall Urwick‘s (Papers on
the Science of Administration)(1937)). They gave famous concept of
((POSDCORB)) which means, P -Planning, O-organizing, S-Staffing, D-
Directing, CO-coordinating, R-Reporting, B-Budgeting .
The most notable contribution to the literature was (( F. W
Taylor ,Principles of scientific management (1911)).
This period is considered as golden years of principles of public
administration. The central belief of this was to discover and apply to
increase the ((Efficiency and economy of public administration)).
3). Era of challenge and Human relationship theory
(1938-1947):-
The main theme during this period was the advocacy of ‘Human
Relationship Behavioural Approach’ to the study of Public
Administration. The 1st challenged with the publication of ((Chester I.
Barnard‘s “The Functions of the Executive”)). The challenge came
basically in two forms: first, rejection of the idea of politics
administration dichotomy and second, principles of public
administration lacking in scientific validity. ((Fritz Morstein in his book
“Elements of Public Administration‟)) .It questions the assumption that
politics and administration could be dichotomized. And also challenged
the assumption of value free politics or administration. It was argued
that the politics and the administration are inseparable .
And 2nd challenge was ((Herbert. A. Simon, “Administrative
behaviour ”in his book ,he argued that focused upon decision- making
as the alternatives to the principles approach.
In the same year, ((Robert A. Dahl ,: “The Science of Administration :
Three Problems”)).In his book, he observed ―We are a long way from a
science of public administration. No science of public administration is
possible unless (a) the place of normative values is made clear; (b) the
nature of man in the area of public administration is better understood
and his conduct is more predictable; and (c) there is a body of
comparative studies from which it may be possible to discover
principles and generalities . The same theme was reflected by(( Dwight
Waldo‘s in his book “The Administrative State” (1948)) when he
attacked the notion of unchanging principles of administration.
((Hawthorne experiment carried out by “Mayo”, this experiment clearly
demonstrated the limitations of scientific approach and powerful
influences of social and psychological factors on the workers output.

4).Crisis of Identity and Comparative and

Development administration ((1948-70)):-
The discipline was in quandary and suffered from the crisis of identity
due to the abando-nment of politics-administration dichotomy and the
principles of public administration. ((John Gaus,in his famous article
“Trends in the Theory of Public Administration”(1950) observed
that ―A theory of public administration means in our time a theory of
politics also)).The Comparative was a new development in this field
and it was given a great impetus by the (Ford Foundation in
America)and it was applied for bettering a lot of poor people in the 3rd
world to the improvements of governmental efficiency in the
developing nation. The ((Comparative political administration ))
addressed five motivated concern:-a) .Search for a theory, b). Practical
Application, c).Contribution to the broader field of comparative
politics,d). The interest of researchers trained in the tradition of
administrative laws, e). comparative analysis of ongoing problem of
public administration.

((F. W Riggs main thinker of this approach)). By 1973,the Comparative

political administration was disbanded and there was a challenge to the
bureaucracy. One of the downfall of Comparative political
administration was its emphasis on theory building was disbanded
by1970.
5).Public Administration as an Independent
Discipline ((1970 onwards)):-
After the 1970s the evolution of Public Administration has gained new
ways. The main factors which contributed in this process :- The first was
the development of inter-disciplinary programs focusing upon policy
science. In this regard three distinct inter-theoretical linkages – a)
politics-administration union, b) Economics-administration confluence,
and c) organization theory-administration intermixing -- can be
identified. The second was the ((emergence of New Public
Administration (NPA) )– an outcome of first Minnowbrook Conference
held in 1968 sponsored by ((Dwight Waldo)) -- which put more
emphasis on values replacing the traditional goals of
efficiency,effectiveness,budgetingand administrative techniques the NPA
was very much aware of normative theory, philosophy and activism. The
NPA was called for independence from both political science and
management.
In 1970 National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and
Administration (NASPAA) was founding and this association offered
major programmes and this led to ((development, profession,
administration and public administration)) truly emerged as an
independent discipline. The two important work during this time :-
1.((Frank Marini :-He edited a new book “toward a new Public
administration “in 1971. 2. Dwight Waldo:-His book “Public
administration during the time of turbulence”)). In the late 1980, ((New
Public Management (NPM)) theory advocated by “David Osborn and
Ted Gaebler” in their book( Reinventing Government) emphasized the
use of :-private society style models, organizational ideas and values to
improve the service and service orientation of the public sector .
Conclusion :-
In the era of liberalization,Privatilization and globalization ,the
administration has to play an investor friendly, responsible,
transparent, open and competitive role .The state has changed to a
regulator. Today the role of public administration is more towards
governance and direct involvement . There is also a new culture of
partnership with private sector, ex:- Bhagedhari scheme adopted by
Delhi government. The governance implies that Public administration
has to operated in a wider concept and coordinate efforts and activities
of governmental agencies at various levels that is market, private sector,
civil -society groups, NGO etc. The government has taken a no. of steps
to ensure the people participation in the administration ex- wife
73/74amendment,panchayat cooperation etc. Today the state is a
welfare state, so the public administration also aims at public welfare.
Both have the same end, i.e, public welfare, to make people happy by
all means. They hold that today public administration is not only
the Watchdog of civilized life, but also a great tool of Social justice
and social welfare.