CS – PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE, POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION REVISED NOTES

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Complete copy of PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE, POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION NOTES is available in SOFT ( Reading using our MASOMO MSINGI PUBLISHERS APP) and in HARD copy 

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PAPER NO. 8:

 

PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE, POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

 

UNIT DESCRIPTION

This paper is intended to equip the candidate with the requisite knowledge, skills and competencies that will enable them implement governance principles in the public sector, formulate and implement relevant policies and effectively administrate public sector matters.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

A candidate who passes this paper should be able to;

  • Evaluate the theoretical perspectives of public policy and administration;
  • Analyse the political and economic environment of public policy and administration;
  • Manage policy and operational relationships between levels of government;
  • Interrogate policies in various sectors and apply them to development;
  • Apply appropriate leadership and managerial systems and processes in governance; and
  • Uphold ethical, patriotic and accountable culture in

 

CONTENT

  1. Administrative theory

1.1 Historical and theoretical perspectives of public administration;

1.2 Concepts and principles of public administration;

1.3 Administrative processes;

1.4 Overview and the Role of Judicial Review

1.5 Primary features of administrative systems;

1.6 Authority, power and influence;

1.7 Relationship between public administration and politics; and

1.8 Public administration challenges in the public sector.

  1. Government organization, functions and practices

2.1 Concepts, principles and levels of government;

2.3 Constitutional and legal framework for devolution;

2.4 Separation of powers/checks and balances through the arms of government;

2.5 Structure and Functions of Government – national and county;

2.6 Interface between the National and county governments;

2.7 Statutory provisions for conflict resolution;

2.8 Role and responsibility of Certified Secretaries and Governance Auditors in management of government; and

2.9 Management of the political environment.

 

  1. Theories and models of public policy

3.1  Historical and theoretical perspective of public policy;

3.2  Concepts and principles of public policy;

3.3  Public policy formulation processes (agenda setting, actors and roles);

3.4 Policy design formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation;

3.5 Public participation in the policy process; and

3.6 Benefits of public policy in national development.

 

  1. Public policy and national development

4.1 Classical and neoclassical models of development;

4.2 The role of the State in development;

4.3 The political economy of development;

4.4 Linkage of public administration and public policy;

4.5 Linkage between national and county development plans;

4.6 National and county plans and policies;

4.7 Stakeholder’s involvement in development planning;

4.8 Characteristics of effective plans and policies; and

4.9 Challenges of public policy formulation and implementation

 

  1. Public policy analysis

5.1 Concept and rationale for public policy analysis;

5.2 Diagnosing and defining the problem (data collection and analysis)

5.3 Tools of public policy analysis;

5.4 Policy analysis models;

5.6 Policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation;

5.7 Stakeholders analysis (mapping the political and ideological contexts); and

5.8 Research in public policy.

 

  1. Citizen participation and development planning

6.1 The concepts of civic education and public participation;

6.2 Rationale for public participation;

6.3 Legal framework for public participation: Constitution and legislative provisions

6.4 Principles of public participation;

6.5 Establishment of modalities and platforms of citizen participation;

6.6 Strategies for optimizing stakeholder engagement;

6.7 Benefits of public participation in government decision making; and

6.8 Challenges of public participation.

 

  1. Public sector governance

7.1 Leadership, integrity and national values in public service;

7.2 Principles of Corporate Governance;

7.3 Governance Models;

7.4 Approaches to corporate governance;

7.5 Corporate relationships in the government;

7.6 Values based leadership;

7.7 Professional codes and standards of governance;

7.8 Framework for enforcement of ethics and integrity in public sector; and

7.9 Strategies for handling ethical and integrity challenges

 

  1. Resource Stewardship

8.1 Legal and institutional framework in resource management; (Public Finance Management Act)

8.2 Resource mobilisation (revenue and debt);

8.3 Public sector planning and budgeting, budgetary process and budgetary expenditure control;

8.4 Resource utilisation for delivery of goods and services (Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act)

8.5 Reports and accounts for funds, outputs and results; and

8.6 External audit for oversight/ external accountability (Public Audit Act)

 

  1. Management of public enterprises

9.1 Theoretical foundations of public enterprises;

9.2 State-market debate;

9.3 Typology of public enterprises;

9.4 Organisation and governance structure;

9.5 Regulatory and legal framework of public enterprises;

9.6 Public investment appraisal;

9.7 Relationship between government agencies and private firms in the market place;

9.8 Performance of public enterprises across sectors and countries;

9.9 Reform of public enterprises including privatisation/divestiture;

9.10 Public Private Partnerships

 

  1. Case studies in public sector governance, policy and administration

 

 

 

 

CONTENT                                                                                       PAGE NUMBER

 

 

Topic 1: Administrative theory…………………………………………………..8

Topic 2: Government organization, functions and practices…………………….26

Topic 3: Theories and models of public policy……………………………….…43

Topic 4: Public policy and national development………………………….……59

Topic 5: Public policy analysis…………………………………………….…….60

Topic 6: Citizen Participation and development planning………………………95

Topic 7: Public sector governance………………………………………………110

Topic 8: Resource Stewardship…………………………………………………124

Topic 9: Management of public enterprises……………………………….……140

 

TOPIC 1

 

ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY 

Administrative theory, classical administrative theory 

An early form of organization theory, pioneered mainly by Henri Fayol (1841–1925), which was concerned principally with achieving the ‘most rational’ organization for co-ordinating the various tasks specified within a complex division of labour. Fayol was concerned mainly with business management, although he himself makes it clear that his ideas about management were intended to apply to all formal organizations, including political and religious undertakings. Expressing the French ‘administration’ as ‘management’ has also led to the alternative designation of this approach as the ‘classical school of scientific management’. Fayol is acknowledged to be the earliest advocate of a theoretical analysis of managerial activities, identified the key functions of management as being those of forecasting and planning. The most rational and efficient organizations were, in his view, those which implemented a plan that facilitated ‘unity, continuity, flexibility, precision, command and control’. Universal principles of administration were then distilled from these objectives.

 

HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION;

 Public administration has ancient origins. In antiquity the Egyptians and Greeks organized public affairs by office, and the principal officeholders were regarded as being principally responsible for administering justice, maintaining law and order, and providing plenty.

 

The Romans developed a more sophisticated system under their empire, creating distinct administrative hierarchies for justice, military affairs, finance and taxation, foreign affairs, and internal affairs, each with its own principal officers of state. An elaborate administrative structure, later imitated by the Roman Catholic Church, covered the entire empire, with a hierarchy of officers reporting back through their superiors to the emperor. This sophisticated structure disappeared after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, but many of its practices continued in the Byzantine Empire in the east, where civil service rule was reflected in the pejorative use of the word Byzantinism.

 

Early European administrative structures developed from the royal households of the medieval period. Until the end of the 12th century official duties within the royal households were ill-defined, frequently with multiple holders of the same post.

 

Exceptions were the better- defined positions of butler (responsible for the provision of wine), steward (responsible for feasting arrangements), chamberlain (often charged with receiving and paying out money kept in the royal sleeping chamber), and chancellor (usually a priest with responsibilities for writing and applying the seal in the monarch’s name). With the 13th century a separation began between the purely domestic functions of the royal household and the functions connected with governing the state. The older household posts tended to disappear, become sinecures, or decline in importance. The office of chancellor, which had always been concerned with matters of state, survived to become the most important link between the old court offices and modern ministries, and the development of the modern treasury or finance ministry can be traced back to the chamberlain’s office in the royal household.

 

From the middle of the 13th century three institutions began to emerge as the major bodies for handling affairs of state: the high court (evolving primarily from the chancellery), the exchequer, and the collegial royal council. In England and France, however, it was not until the early 14th century that such bodies emerged. In Brandenburg, which was governed by an elector (a prince with a right to elect the Holy Roman emperor) and which later formed the basis of the Prussian state, they became distinct entities only at the beginning of the 17th century.

 

Apart from justice and treasury departments, which originated in old court offices, modern ministerial structures in Europe developed out of the royal councils, which were powerful bodies of nobles appointed by the monarch. From the division of labour within these bodies the monarchs’ secretaries, initially given low status within a council, emerged as perhaps the first professional civil servants in Europe in the modern sense. The proximity of the secretaries to the monarch gave them more knowledge of royal intentions, and their relative permanence gave them greater expertise in particular matters of state than could be found among the more transient nobles on the council. They were also assisted by staffs. The secretaries grew in importance in the 15th and 16th centuries as they became more or less full members of the council.

 

The distribution of functions among secretaries was initially based upon geography. In England this geographical allocation—with, for example, a secretary of the North and a secretary of the South—persisted until 1782, when the offices of home and foreign secretary were created. In France a more complex allocation of territorial responsibilities among secretaries of state had begun to give way to functional responsibilities by the end of the ancien régime in 1789.

 

The civil service in China was undoubtedly the longest lasting in history; it was first organized, along with a centralized administration, during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and improved under the Tang (618–907) and Sung (960–1279). The administration was organized so well that the pattern stood until 1912.

 

Theories

Public Administration Theory recently has been divided into three branches. The three branches are, Classical Public Administration Theory, New Public Management Theory and Postmodern Public Administration Theory. Each of these three branches study Public Administration from a different perspective. These types of theories are some of the ways which an administrator can understand and exercise their duties as a public administrator.

 

Classical Public Administration Theory

Classical Public Administration is often associated with Woodrow Wilson and Max Weber. In the United States, Woodrow Wilson is known as ‘The Father of Public Administration’, have written “The Study of Administration” in 1887, in which he argued that a bureaucracy should be run like a business. Wilson promoted ideas like merit-based promotions, professionalization, and a non-political system. Sympathy can lead to downfall in an administration, means there should be pragmatism in bureaucracy.

 

New Public Management Theory

New Public Management a set of administrative practices, a consulting fad, and a body of theory that interprets recent developments in public administration. Many scholars argue persuasively that scholars should pay more attention to New Public management as a theory than as a fad.

 

New public management is part and parcel of the massive intrusion of freemarket values into public space, which threatens to drive out political values altogether. In this sense, new public management is the radical opposite of the notion of migrating political values into “private” space in the interest of further democratizing society. However, new public management theory fails to addresses political questions in a meaningful way. This theory looks at public administration from its roots of capitalism, and goes on through the perspective of global capitalism. Intentional or not, new public management has served the interests of elites, particularly corporate elites, has degraded the ability of governments to address the public interest, and has served as a vehicle for elevating the apolitical governance of free trade and other supranational organizations, which have fully embraced the political philosophy of economic rationalism and new managerialism.

 

Postmodern Public Administration Theory

Post-modern public administration is referring to the inner workings of nearly every government entity in existence. Whether it is the congress men and women in Washington D.C. or the Department of Public Safety representatives located at any DPS office handling the paper work of applicants wanted to obtain a drivers license. The idea of public administration is broad enough to encompass all government positions that affect the public. Members of public administration come in different forms and quantities. When understanding the theory of postmodern public administration, it is important to make a differentiation between postmodern theory and the postmodern era as well as being able to differentiate between post-modernity (period of time) and postmodernism (theory/philosophy).

 

Public Administration theory is derived from several contemporary theory building tools such as Max Weber’s Ideal type method. Theories are also derived from studies of evolving governments around the world, such as China’s expanding bureaucracy. Different aspects to take into account are: accountability, state-citizen relations, and services for all in times of fiscal scarcity. When developing theories, the most effective theories are the ones tailored for a particular country taking aspects such as values into account. When empirical evidence is the only aspect taken into account it leads to an ineffective policy because the theory will not reflect the values of the citizens, resulting in bad citizen- state relationships. The Theory-Gap Practice is used to analyze the correlations between Public Administration theory and practice. The three fields of the theory gap-practice that describe the relationship between scholars and practitioners are: Parallel, Transfer, and Collaboration strategy.

SAMPLE WORK

Complete copy of PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE, POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION NOTES is available in SOFT ( Reading using our MASOMO MSINGI PUBLISHERS APP) and in HARD copy 

Phone: 0728 776 317

Email: info@masomomsingi.com

Max Weber’s Ideal- Type Method

The ideal-type method developed by Max Weber is a useful tool in contemporary public administration theory development because the method takes into account the culture of a society that is then integrated into a theory. Weber referred to it as cultural science or interpretive sociology, which, is to understand ideas and practices from within their own intellectual and cultural horizon and on the basis of categories that are grounded in a meaningful social and historical context. According to Margaret Stout, Ideal-type methods are used to frame observation and analysis and to evaluate what is found. Weber’s method must be developed using value judgments that direct our empirical observations and then guide our interpretation of those observations.

 

Through this theory building method, Weber insisted that all interpretations of meaning must remain at best “a peculiarly plausible hypothesis”, as opposed to a claim of relevance of a theory. Weber’s purpose for using this method is to clarify the importance of values in sense making, but how they are also extremely important for the conduct of meaningful social science. Weber’s interpretive sociology employs a type of functional analysis that begins with the whole, proceeds to the parts, and then goes back from the parts to the whole. His ideal-type method is thereby simultaneously useful in both the study of social structure and social action. Social action is linked to subjective meaning at the individual level of analysis, and structural forms are a consequence or construction of social action. This combination is particularly valuable to public administration because the manner in which administrative action and the social structures of governance interrelate requires an approach that considers both. On the one hand, ideal-types enable consideration of things like alternative meanings of important concepts or alternative motivations held by social actors. On the other hand, they enable analysis of associated or resulting social structures. In this way, an ideal-type can concurrently help interpret the meaning of the administrative role as well as critique the institutions of governance.

Important Figures in Public Administration Theory

 

Max Weber

Max Weber was a German political economist, social scientist, and renowned Philosopher is an important father to the theory of Public Administration and the bureaucratic side of it. He did extensive research studying ancient and modern states to gather a better perspective of bureaucracies in multiple eras for his Magnum Opus Economy and Society published in 1922. That piece of work has contributed countless insight into the Public Administration Theory. Max Weber considered bureaucracy to be the most rational form of administration yet devised by man. In his writings he asserts that domination is exerted through administration and that for legal domination to take place bureaucracy is required.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson, another one of the theorists of Public Administration. Woodrow Wilson defined public administration as a detailed and systematic execution of public law, he divided government institutions into two separate sectors, administration and politics. According to him politics is dealt with policy formulation and questions regarding such, whereas administration is equipped with carrying said policies out. In his own words in his early essay, “The Study of Administration” he said “it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one.” Wilson very much so tried to establish a distinction between politics and administration; he saw administration as a field of business which lies outside politics. He thought the theory of public administration existed simply because of technicalities and was around for the behind the scenes business aspect of politics.

 

Woodrow Wilson

 

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Taylor was an engineer by profession who saw much of life from a scientific aspect. He is a popular less conservative contributor to the Theory of Public Administration in that he produced his own, very popular, theory of traditional public administration, The Scientific Management Theory. He was concerned with finding the best and most efficient way to complete a task for a particular job, reducing the overall labor a worker had to exert with the least amount of movements. Frederick Taylors work approached motivation with a very authoritative, cold, scientific motivator which weighed heavy over any sort of humane aspect to scientific management. Overall many intricacies in Public Administration such as management, control and accounting are subject to scientific principles and Taylor draws on these to find his own, efficient theory approach to Public Administration Theory.

 

CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

 Today public administration is often regarded as including also some responsibility for determining the policies and programs of governments. Specifically, it is the planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling of government operations.

Public administration is a feature of all nations, whatever their system of government. Within nations public administration is practiced at the central, intermediate, and local levels. Indeed, the relationships between different levels of government within a single nation constitute a growing problem of public administration.

 

In most of the world the establishment of highly trained administrative, executive, or directive classes has made public administration a distinct profession. The body of public administrators is usually called the civil service. In the United States, the elitist class connotations historically attached to the civil service were consciously abandoned or from the early 20th century, with the result that civil servants were recognized as professionals and valued for their expertise.

 

Here are 12 principles of public administration

 

  1. Transparency

Transparency is one principle that aims at keeping public servants in check as far as

their operations is concerned. We can only achieve transparency when  there is free flow of information that concerns the interests of the people to be served. Such information should also be made easily accessible.

 

  1. Equity

Public servants deal with people from diverse backgrounds and all deserve their service. The aspect of equity places paramount importance to striking a balance in giving opportunities to all men and women regardless of who they are.

 

  1. Economy

When researching the pillars of public administration, economy comes in under the banner ‘efficiency and effectiveness.’ This is the most prominent principle of public administration. Human beings’ primary instincts care about survival and their relationship with public administrators is focused on the distribution and management of resources. The main goal is to deliver the best public service at very low costs. However, the idea is not only to put the existing resources to use, but also ad value or make more out of them for the benefit of the people.

 

  1. Subsidiarity

Due to public administration’s concern with efficiency, effectiveness and improvement, focus has been placed on question of formal organization in service delivery. This birthed the principle of subsidiarity, where departments, ministries and agencies are organised on the basis of common or closely related purposes.

 

  1. Pluralism

Pluralism places emphasis on the dispersement of power among different economic and ideological groups. Pluralism accepts diversity as a beneficial element to society and that autonomy should be enjoyed by disparate functional or cultural groups within a society, including religious groups, trade unions, professional organizations, and ethnic minorities for principles of administration. With regards to public administration, pluralism puts servants in a position where they ought to serve these diverse groups of people with impartiality.

 

  1. Accountability

As societies became more organized and the control of resources went into the hands of elected government structures, the public became dependent on these governments for services and quality is of importance. Providing public good in a cost effective manner is the main goal of public service. As such public administrators are held highly accountable by principles of administration and the constituents they serve. Accountability is a a critical principle that has the power to make or break governments. It requires ethical decision making, equal representation, legitimacy, efficiency, effectiveness, responsibility.

 

  1. Participation

Public administration accepts that all people are equal irrespective of their backgrounds, ethnicity, gender and/or affiliations. As such, participation of all men and women in matters of public interest is progressive.

 

  1. Access to services

For equity to be achieved, every citizen ought to be afforded equal access to public services such as health care, education among others. This principle role works hand

SAMPLE WORK

Complete copy of PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE, POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION NOTES is available in SOFT ( Reading using our MASOMO MSINGI PUBLISHERS APP) and in HARD copy 

Phone: 0728 776 317

Email: info@masomomsingi.com

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