The economic perspective on public administration

Abstract

Public administration as a body of thought and field of study is changing from a paradigm dominated by political science to an eclectic array of theoretical contributions from all of the social sciences, particularly economics. Basic education and training in economics is essential to an effective contemporary public administration. Without a fundamental understanding of economics the “do-it-yourself-economics” which is practiced in policy-making contributes to basic errors in policy. As the size and significance of the public sector has grown, increased attention has been paid to the discipline of public administration. What began as a structured way of describing the operation and structure of public management and public organizations has evolved into a discipline that has a much broader scope—the analysis of policy making in the public and not-for-profit sectors. In addition, employment in the public administration profession is more likely to be viewed as a vocation rather than as an avocation, in contrast to the past. Once the repository of generalists in the areas of public management and organizational behavior, public administration has become a hodgepodge of individuals with varied backgrounds and training. This has resulted in a discipline that has notable strengths and weaknesses. A major weakness, and source of criticism from outsiders, is the discipline's lack of a paradigm—there is no easily identifiable intellectual structure. Its strength lies in the diverse theoretical, conceptual, and methodological contributions borrowed from other disciplines. The most prominent contributor has been political science, where the discipline of public administration had its origins. Political science's influence on public administration still is evident: numerous public administration programs are located in political science departments; a large number of faculty in public administration programs are political scientists by training; and public administration professional societies and publications are dominated by political scientists. Economics has made forays into public administration and established garrisons in some of the larger and more prominent programs. But, economics has failed to have a distinct impact on everyday public policy making. This is evident in many policy decisions that lack much semblance of basic economic understanding on the part of decision makers. Recent examples include the handling of the federal deficit, solutions to airway and airport congestion, the war on poverty, housing programs, dealings with international trading partners, proposed solutions to the third world debt crisis, resolution of the acid rain problem, and so forth. Although other explanations can be offered for the absence of good economic reasoning in many policy decisions, a lot of the blame lies with public administration's failure to adequately integrate economics. Economics does not wield substantial influence in either the discipline's curricular matter or administrative structure. This failure partially can be attributed to a lack of understanding of what economics has to offer the discipline and partially can be attributed to the insolent demeanor of many economists. This paper proposes to discuss what role economics can and should play in public administration. First, the relationship between public administration and economics is discussed. Second, deficiencies within the economics discipline that keep it from becoming an integral component of everyday policy making are discussed. Finally, ways to better blend economics into public policy making are proposed.