Analysis Of Public Administration Research Articles

Constitutional artisans: James Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom on artifactual man, the constitutional attitude, and the political economy of constitutional design

This paper examines the relationship between the work of James Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom. It adds to existing work by providing a comprehensive analysis of Buchanan’s and Ostrom’s changing views about how the ‘logical foundations of constitutional democracy’ should be conceptualised. The paper traces how in the 1960s and 1970s Ostrom took inspiration from the rational choice analysis of constitutional democracy in Buchanan and Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent, explaining how it shaped his reading of key texts in political theory and his analysis of public administration. It then discusses how Buchanan subsequently drew on Ostrom’s notion of artifactual man in developing his understanding of the ‘constitutional attitude’ necessary for individuals to engage in institutional design. It then explores how, from the mid-to-late 1990s, Ostrom became increasingly critical of Buchanan’s reliance on rational choice theory for his analysis of constitutional decision-making, identifying this as a key difference between their views.

KAMU YÖNETİMİ İNCELEMELERİNDE BİR ALT DİSİPLİN: KARŞILAŞTIRMALI KAMU YÖNETİMİ (KKY)

Bu makalenin amacı, Kamu Yönetimi incelemeleri içinde önemli bir alt disiplin olarak kabul edilen Karşılaştırmalı Kamu Yönetimi (KKY)’nin ortaya çıkışını, geçirdiği aşamaları, bu aşamalara katkısı olan bazı önemli düşünürleri ve kuramlarını ortaya koymaktır. Kamu Yönetimi yaklaşık iki yüzyıllık modern tarihinde disiplinler arası bir mahiyette gelişmiştir. Kamu Yönetimi bu özelliğini kuşkusuz karşılaştırmalı analiz yeteneğine sahip olmasına borçludur. Kamu Yönetiminin karşılaştırmalı yönü esasen doğasında var olan bir olgudur. Kamu Yönetiminin modern anlamda ele alınmaya başladığı ilk dönemlerden günümüze kullanılan karşılaştırma yöntemi, bir yandan disiplinin kurumsal yönüne katkıda bulunmuş, diğer yandan da dünyadaki emsallerinin benzeyen ya da ayrışan yönlerini ortaya koyarak analiz edilmesini kolaylaştırmıştır. Kamu Yönetimi biliminin karşılaştırmalı bir yöntemle incelenebilmesi de KKY ile mümkün olmuştur. Bu yönüyle KKY, geleneksel Kamu Yönetimi çalışmalarını destekleyen bir alt disiplini olarak görülmektedir. Metodolojik olarak ilk defa İkinci Dünya Savaşından sonra ele alınmaya başlayan KKY çalışmaları, Soğuk Savaş Döneminde olgunlaşmıştır. Teori ve disiplinin geliştirildiği Soğuk Savaş dönemi, aynı zamanda refah devletine yönelik düzenlemelerin de gerçekleştiği yıllar olarak hatırlanmaktadır. Dolayısıyla KKY çalışmaları bu yönde gelişme göstermiştir. Soğuk Savaş dönemde KKY çalışmalarının genellikle gelişmiş ülkelerin yönetim yapılarına odaklandığı görülmektedir. Soğuk Savaş sonrasındaysa Yeni Kamu Yönetimi Hareketi (YKH) çerçevesinde Küresel yönetişim ve liberalizm disipline damgasını vurmuştur. Küreselleşmenin de etkisiyle alana ait çalışmalar genişleme göstermiş, disiplinler arası bir mahiyet kazanarak bütün dünyada kullanılabilir hale gelmiştir. KKY çalışmalarının gelişimini tarihsel süreci içinde “Erken Dönem”, “Klasik Dönem”, “Modern Dönem” ve “Günümüz” olmak üzere dört döneme ayırarak ele almak mümkündür.

Teorías neosistémicas y administración pública: posibilidades observacionales y regulativas

The use of neo-systemic theories and the theory of self-referential systems in the observation and analysis of public administration is still scarce. With few exceptions, the empirical use of the self-referential systems theory is rejected for various reasons, including its high degree of abstraction, its theoretical-conceptual ignorance, and its complex and diffuse empirical applicability. Within the framework of the complexity and polycentric presentation of modern societies, this study presents a reflection on the possibilities of applying this theory in the observation and analysis of public administration. This paper is structured in three sections. First, it describes the meaning of complexity and how it impacts on the structure of public administration. Secondly, the basic epistemological and conceptual premises of the self-referential systems theory for public administration (self-referentiality and self-organization) and recent contributions (contextual orientation) are presented. It is emphasized that the capacity of self-organization of the public administration is not only a spontaneous process, but can also be structured and sequentially managed from the outside of the system, that is, in autonomous internal and external combination. In this thesis two distinctive aspects stand out. On one hand, a weak or unfinished point of the systems theory is found when establishing a link between self-organization and leadership, which is considered as necessary based on the "sequential" idea, and that in the systemic optics in the public administration applies to its ability to be autonomous and in turn dependent on the outside (political system). On the other hand, the analysis of the link between self-organization (endogenous) and leadership (exogenous) is exposed. Next, the concept of “triple differentiation” is explained from the perspective of public administration as a specialized functional system. Finally, some lines and hypotheses are presented for future research.

EKSPLORACJA PROCESÓW W ANALIZIE USŁUG ELEKTRONICZNYCH ADMINISTRACJI PUBLICZNEJ

EKSPLORACJA PROCESÓW W ANALIZIE USŁUG ELEKTRONICZNYCH ADMINISTRACJI PUBLICZNEJ

Doing for Political Science What Darwin Did for Biology

This essay begins with a comparison of Mumbai and Shanghai, using the recent 2012 book on slum conditions in Mumbai by Katherine Boo, but suggesting that an analysis of public administration (PA) in essential in this regard. Unfortunately, PA is a neglected field in the social sciences. Partly this may be due to doubts about the usefulness of PA, along the lines suggested by a 2004 book by Francis Fukuyama: why, for example, what works in one place and time does not work in another. Political Elasticity (PE) theory is put forward as a way of overcoming these doubts. In so doing, the author attempts to do for the political science what Darwin did for the biology. Case studies (e.g., solid waste management failure in Lagos, as against achievement in Tokyo; the inability of Ghana to improve agricultural outputs, despite its progressive and democratic government) are used to illustrate PE theory. At the conclusion, the impor-tance of motivation is emphasized, using Vietnam (in comparison to Bangladesh) as an example of a country that has been able to link PA to economic development.

The Evaluation of Public Managers’ Performances in the Light of Italian Public Administration Reform

One of the most important element in the analysis of public administration’s performances is the management. In fact it is the connection point between objectives (fixed at political level) and the system of outputs and outcomes, achieved by public personnel at different levels. This is the main reason why during the last decades, the reform of Italian public administration has concentrated on improving public action performances, by a regulation of public management and the connected introduction of two key words: autonomy and accountability. This means that managers should be endowed of greater autonomy in the execution of their managerial activities and, at the same time, they are fully responsible for both personnel’s and whole body’s performance.Even thought the legislative decrees nr. 286/99 (art.5) and nr. 165/01 (art.19-21) introduced an evaluation and control system of managers’ activities, they have been applied with a very little success inside public administration. The reason is that evaluation has been realized in a bureaucratic way, often by the use of a great number of general indicators, which do not concretely reflect actual organizational processes and related outcomes. According to the above considerations, it could be stated that the reform of the Italian public administration did not completely accomplish its two fundamental goals. First of all, it did not recognize a greater autonomy to managers, considering that in the Italian system there are many instruments which can be used by politicians to affect managers’ executive action and, on the other hand , it has provided a managers’ performance evaluation system which is not compliant to the reality. However, according to these themes, a new discipline has been recently provided by the legislative decree nr. 150/09. Its aim is to introduce a concrete system of measures and indicators, which are oriented to ensure the accountability of public managers’ activities.The purpose of this paper is to verify why managers’ performance evaluation system provided by legislative decrees nr. 286/99 and nr. 165/01 was not proper and well-functioning; to analyze the changes introduced by the new discipline and, finally, to verify if such innovations are really able to realize an adequate evaluation system of public managers’ performances, in order to built a strong feedback flow for the review of personnel policies.

The Administrative and Academic Politics of Ranking Research: The Case of the 2004 “Public Sector Performance” Study in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT In contrast to the other analyses of rankings in this issue, this paper concentrates on analyzing a single specific case of a rankings exercise from the “inside,” in large part relying on documents produced by observer participation. The case that is analyzed in depth is an exercise conducted by the Dutch government in the early 2000s to produce a critical comparison and de facto ranking of public sector performance in the industrialised countries. The paper examines the production process which culminated in the publication of “Public Sector Performance” by the Dutch Social Cultural Planning Office (SCP) in 2004, and in particular the interactions between the civil servants of the SCP and the outside academic body in Belgium that the SCP commissioned to produce the “public administration” component of the ranking exercise. On the basis of this “inside” analysis, the paper describes how the SCP ranking analysis of public administration was conducted, and examines the process from three complementary and overlapping analytic perspectives drawn from the literature on the politics of evaluation research. Those perspectives are: how supply interacts with demand for ranking surveys, how the “management of meaning” played out in this case, and how culture shapes ranking surveys. The paper shows that in this case the “Say's law” principle of analytic supply leading to political demand did not apply and that there was a mismatch between demand for and supply of public administration indicators. It also shows how ranking exercises can develop in a politico-administrative culture often said to be much more predisposed to “soft consensus” in its operation than that applying in less “consociational” administrative cultures.

Power and Service: A Cross-National Analysis of Public Administration

Power and Service: A Cross-National Analysis of Public Administration