scholarly journals Public Administration and Democracy: The Virtue and Limit of Participatory Democracy as a Democratic Innovation

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 493-506
Author(s):  
Sirvan Karimi
Keyword(s):  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Implementation Processes ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Public Bureaucracy ◽  
Political Apathy

The expansion of public bureaucracy has been one of the most significant developments that has marked societies, particularly Western liberal democratic societies. Growing political apathy, citizen disgruntlement and the ensuing decline in electoral participation reflects the political nature of governance failures. Public bureaucracy, which has historically been saddled with derogatory and pejorative connotations, has encountered fierce assaults from multiple fronts. Out of these sharp criticisms of public bureaucracy that have emanated from both sides of the ideological spectrum, attempts have been made to popularize and advance citizen participation in both policy formulation and policy implementation processes as innovations to democratize public administration. Despite their virtue, empowering connotations and spirit-uplifting messages to the public, these proposed practices of democratic innovations not only have their own shortcomings and are conducive to exacerbating the conditions that they are directed to ameliorate but they also  have the potential  to undermine the traditional administrative and political accountability mechanisms.

War without Citizens

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Rosow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Advanced Technologies

Contestation over war memorialization can help democratic theory respond to the current attenuation of citizenship in war in liberal democratic states, especially the United States. As war involves more advanced technologies and fewer soldiers, the relation of citizenship to war changes. In this context war memorialization plays a particular role in refiguring the relation. Current practices of remembering and memorializing war in contemporary neoliberal states respond to a dilemma: the state needs to justify and garner support for continual wars while distancing citizenship from participation. The result is a consumer culture of memorialization that seeks to effect a unity of the political community while it fights wars with few citizens and devalues the public. Neoliberal wars fought with few soldiers and an economic logic reveals the vulnerability to otherness that leads to more active and critical democratic citizenship.

FISCAL EQUIVALENCE: PRINCIPLE AND PREDATION IN THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 244-265
Author(s):  
Emily C. Skarbek
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Equivalence Principle ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Police ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Internal Pressures ◽  
And Control

AbstractFiscal equivalence in the public administration of justice requires local police and courts to be financed exclusively by the populations that benefit from their services. Within a polycentric framework, broad based taxation to achieve fiscal equivalence is a desirable principle of public finance because it conceptually allows for the provision of justice to be determined by constituent’s preferences, and increases the political accountability of service providers to constituents. However, the overproduction of justice services can readily occur when the benefits of the justice system are not enjoyed equally. Paradoxically, the same properties that make fiscal equivalence desirable by imposing restraint and control between constituents and local government also create internal pressures for agents of the state to engage in predatory, revenue-generating behavior.

Administrative Traditions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Guy Peters
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
North America ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Administrative Behavior ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Bureaucracy ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
And Function

Contemporary public administration reflects its historical roots as well as contemporary ideas about how the public bureaucracy should be organized and function. This book argues that there are administrative traditions that have their roots centuries ago but continue to influence administrative behavior. Further, within Western Europe, North America, and the Antipodes there are four administrative traditions: Anglo-American, Napoleonic, Germanic, and Scandinavian. These are not the only traditions however, and the book also explores administrative traditions in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Islamic world. In addition there is a discussion of how administrative traditions of the colonial powers influenced contemporary administration in Africa. These discussions of tradition and persistence also are discussed in light of the numerous attempts to reform and change public administration.

scholarly journals Minister-Permanent Secretary Relationships: Lessons from Zimbabwe’s Government of national Unity

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Tawanda Zinyama ◽  
Joseph Tinarwo
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
The State ◽  
Team Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government

Public administration is carried out through the public service. Public administration is an instrument of the State which is expected to implement the policy decisions made from the political and legislative processes. The rationale of this article is to assess the working relationships between ministers and permanent secretaries in the Government of National Unity in Zimbabwe. The success of the Minister depends to a large degree on the ability and goodwill of a permanent secretary who often has a very different personal or professional background and whom the minster did not appoint. Here lies the vitality of the permanent secretary institution. If a Minister decides to ignore the advice of the permanent secretary, he/she may risk of making serious errors. The permanent secretary is the key link between the democratic process and the public service. This article observed that the mere fact that the permanent secretary carries out the political, economic and social interests and functions of the state from which he/she derives his/her authority and power; and to which he/she is accountable,  no permanent secretary is apolitical and neutral to the ideological predisposition of the elected Ministers. The interaction between the two is a political process. Contemporary administrator requires complex team-work and the synthesis of diverse contributions and view-points.

E-Participating Decision-Making Mechanism in the Public Administration System

2022 ◽  
pp. 214-235
Author(s):  
Konur Alp Demir
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Electronic Government ◽  
Management Model ◽  
Demand System ◽  
Flexible Structure ◽  
Administration System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Decision Making System

In this chapter, an analysis of the electronic decision making system, which is thought to benefit from the heavy bureaucratic system which does not take into account the expectations of the citizen in the public administration system, will be used to make a more flexible structure. The focus of this chapter is on the need to design the decision-making mechanisms of the state according to the expectations of the citizen. For this purpose, requests and complaints from the citizens through the electronic environment should be taken into consideration in the decision-making process. In fact, this situation is reflected in the application of electronic participation management model. The application of this management model in the public administration system is the citizen participation complaint and demand system which is carried out under the name of electronic government. The examination of this system, which is an example of the application of participatory democracy, is important for the reflection of democratic values on the administration system.

Policy implementation in the era of accelerating projectification: Synthesizing Matland’s conflict–ambiguity model and research on temporary organizations

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Jensen ◽  
Staffan Johansson ◽  
Mikael Löfström
Keyword(s):  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Structural Form ◽  
Project Organization ◽  
The Public ◽  
Temporary Organizations ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Project Organizations ◽  
Entity Relationship

It has become increasingly common to use the project as a form of organization when implementing public policies. Previous research has identified political, administrative and organizational motives behind this trend towards more project-based organizations within the public administration. The problem is that project-based organization carries inherent problems and special challenges when these projects are supposed to be implemented in permanent agencies and organizations. The purpose of this paper is to identify problems and challenges that public administrations face when ‘the project organization’ is used as a structural form of organization in implementing different kinds of public policies. The article takes its starting point in the policy implementation research and especially in Matland’s conflict-ambiguity model. This research tradition is complemented by a review of research on temporary organizations, which draws attention to some inherent and significant characteristics of project organizations, that is the concepts of entity, relationship and time. Our analysis shows that the use of project organization puts special demands on the players involved, and if these are not taken into account, there is a high risk that projects designed to bring about social change will not produce the effects that policymakers and citizens expect.

scholarly journals Citizens local political participation in the Czech Republic: rural-urban comparison

2008 ◽  
Vol 53 (No. 1) ◽  
pp. 21-29
Author(s):  
J. Cmejrek
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Local Administration ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Public

The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 in the former Czechoslovakia opened the way to the renewal of the democratic political system. One of the most visible aspects of the Czech political development consisted in the renewal of the essential functions of elections and political parties. On the local level, however, the political process - as well as in other post-communist countries - continued to be for a long time influenced by the remains of the former centralized system wherein the local administration used to be subjected to the central state power. Municipal elections took hold in these countries, however, the local government remained in the embryonic state and a certain absence of real political and economic decision-making mechanism on the local level continued to show. The public administration in the Czech Republic had to deal with the changes in the administrative division of the state, the split of the Czechoslovak federation as well as the fragmentation of municipalities whose number increased by 50 percent. Decision making mechanisms on the local and regional level were suffering from the incomplete territorial hierarchy of public administration and from the unclear division of power between the state administration and local administration bodies. Only at the end of the 1990s, the public administration in the Czech Republic started to get a more integrated and specific shape. Citizens participation in the political process represents one of the key issues of representative democracy. The contemporary democracy has to face the decrease in voter turnout and the low interest of citizens to assume responsibility within the political process. The spread of democratising process following the fall of the iron curtain should not overshadow the risk of internal weakness of democracy. The solution should be looked for in more responsible citizenship and citizens’ political participation. The degree of political participation is considered (together with political pluralism) to be the key element of representative democracy in general terms, as well as of democratic process on the local and regional level. The objective of this paper is to describe the specifics of citizens local political participation in the Czech Republic and to show the differences between rural and urban areas. The paper concentrates on voting and voter turnout but deals also with other forms of citizens political participation.

Urban Government and Nation Building in East Africa

1971 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-592
Author(s):  
Richard Vengroff
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emerging Nations ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Micro Level

Recent years have witnessed a rebirth of interest in the study of local government (or local political systems, depending on one's theoretical orientation). This has been especially true among political Scientists seeking to develop new approaches more readily applicable to the political systems of the so-called emerging nations. It has become apparent to an increasing number of research workers that grandiose macro-theory of the Almond variety, while impressive on paper, may be of very little use in the field.1 Thus an attempt is now being made to return to the micro-level in order to gain greater conceptual clarity, and an understanding of behaviour in political situations. Unfortunately much of the new thrust to develop micro-level theory has been hampered by the continuing use of old, and at least partially outdated, tools, or what I have chosen to call (perhaps unjustifiably) ‘the public-administration approach’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document