Explains the reasons behind Congress's expanded role in the federal government, its underlying coherence, and its continuing significance for those who study and practice public administration
2001 Louis Brownlow Award from the National Academy of Public Administration Explains the reasons behind Congress's expanded role in the federal government, its underlying coherence, and its continuing significance for those who study and practice public administration Before 1946 the congressional role in public administration had been limited to authorization, funding, and review of federal administrative operations, which had grown rapidly as a result of the New Deal and the Second World War. But in passing the Administrative Procedure Act and the Legislative Reorganization Act that pivotal year, Congress self-consciously created for itself a comprehensive role in public administration. Reluctant to delegate legislative authority to federal agencies, Congress decided to treat the agencies as extensions of itself and established a framework for comprehensive regulation of the agencies' procedures. Additionally, Congress reorganized itself so it could provide continuous supervision of federal agencies. Rosenbloom shows how these 1946 changes in the congressional role in public administration laid the groundwork for future major legislative acts, including the Freedom of Information Act (1966), Privacy Act (1974), Government in the Sunshine Act (1976), Paperwork Reduction Acts (1980, 1995), Chief Financial Officers Act (1990), and Small Business Regulatory Fairness Enforcement Act (1996). Each of these acts, and many others, has contributed to the legislative-centered public administration that Congress has formed over the past 50 years. This first book-length study of the subject provides a comprehensive explanation of the institutional interests, values, and logic behind the contemporary role of Congress in federal administration and attempts to move the public administration field beyond condemning legislative "micromanagement" to understanding why Congress values it.
This book explores why some members of Congress are more effective than others at navigating the legislative process and what this means for how Congress is organized and what policies it produces. Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman develop a new metric of individual legislator effectiveness (the Legislative Effectiveness Score) that will be of interest to scholars, voters, and politicians alike. They use these scores to study party influence in Congress, the successes or failures of women and African Americans in Congress, policy gridlock, and the specific strategies that lawmakers employ to advance their agendas.
The original Handbook of Public Administration was a landmark publication, the first to provide a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the discipline. The eagerly-awaited new edition of this seminal international handbook continues to provide a complete review and guide to past and present knowledge in this essential field of inquiry. Assembling an outstanding team of scholars from around the world, the second edition explores the current state-of-the-art in academic thinking and the current structures and processes for the administration of public policy. The second edition has been fully revised and updated, with new chapters that reflect emerging issues and changes within the public sector: - Identifying the Antecedents in Public Performance - Bureaucratic Politics - Strategy Structure and Policy Dynamics - Comparative Administrative Reform - Administrative Ethics - Accountability through Market and Social Instruments - Federalism and intergovernmental coordination. A dominant theme throughout the handbook is a critical reflection on the utility of scholarly theory and the extent to which government practices inform the development of this theory. To this end it serves as an essential guide for both the practice of public administration today and its on-going development as an academic discipline. The SAGE Handbook of Public Administration remains indispensable to the teaching, study and practice of public administration for students, academics and professionals everywhere.
This wide-ranging comparative account of the legal regimes for controlling administrative power in England, the USA and Australia argues that differences and similarities between control regimes may be partly explained by the constitutional structures of the systems of government in which they are embedded. It applies social-scientific and historical methods to the comparative study of law and legal systems in a novel and innovative way, and combines accounts of long-term and large-scale patterns of power distribution with detailed analysis of features of administrative law and the administrative justice systems of three jurisdictions. It also proposes a new method of analysing systems of government based on two different models of the distribution of public power (diffusion and concentration), a model which proves more illuminating than traditional separation-of-powers analysis.
The growing ‘constitutional school’ of public administration has roots in the Federalist Papers, constitutional law, and the writings of several contemporary leaders and contributors in the field. It is comprised of a loose grouping of scholars who subscribe to the proposition that constitutions and the constitutional characteristics of a regime are key determinants of public administrative culture, institutions, organizations, personnel practices, budgetary and decision-making processes, commitment to the rule of law and human rights, and myriad aspects of overall behavior. Participants in constitutional school research believe that the ‘big questions’ in public administration cannot be answered without reference to constitutional designs, institutions, and regime values. This edited volume brings together the most prominent names in constitutional school scholarship in an aim to make it more visible, accessible, and central to the field of public administration's pedagogy, scholarship, and intellectual development. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of public administration with an interest in constitutional / administrative law and political theory around the globe.
Introduction : anti-politics in public administration -- Value pluralism and moral experience -- Politics, conciliation, and value pluralism -- Politics and the limitations of a science of governance -- A pluralist approach to public administration : adversary argument -- Constitutionalism, and administrative discretion -- Conclusion : practical moral reasoning in public administration.
The prevailing notion that the best government is achieved through principles of management and business practices is hardly new—it echoes the early twentieth-century "gospel of efficiency" challenged by Dwight Waldo in 1948 in his pathbreaking book, The Administrative State. Asking, "Efficiency for what?", Waldo warned that public administrative efficiency must be backed by a framework of consciously held democratic values. Revisiting Waldo's Administrative State brings together a group of distinguished authors who critically explore public administration's big ideas and issues and question whether contemporary efforts to "reinvent government," promote privatization, and develop new public management approaches constitute a coherent political theory capable of meeting the complex challenges of governing in a democracy. Taking Waldo's book as a starting point, the authors revisit and update his key concepts and consider their applicability for today. The book follows Waldo's conceptual structure, first probing the material and ideological background of modern public administration, problems of political philosophy, and finally particular challenges inherent in contemporary administrative reform. It concludes with a look ahead to "wicked" policy problems—such as terrorism, global warming, and ecological threats—whose scope is so global and complex that they will defy any existing administrative structures and values. Calling for a return to conscious consideration of democratic accountability, fairness, justice, and transparency in government, the book's conclusion assesses the future direction of public administrative thought. This book can stand alone as a commentary on reconciling democratic values and governance today or as a companion when reading Waldo's classic volume.
American Public Administration has been the go-to introductory textbook for Public Administration courses with a focus on civil society for the better part of two decades. Now in an extensively revised and updated third edition, authors Cropf and Wagner weave the most recent and compelling research throughout every chapter to give students a useful, in-depth understanding of the field today. Changes to this edition include: Three new chapters, including one on public administration’s role in community resilience, a second on public administration and public health, and a complete rewrite of the chapter on managing information resources in public organizations. Extended discussions about the importance of civil society in public administration as well as the growing role of information technology, including the role of government in combating misinformation and disinformation. New coverage of topics, including but not limited to: the need for better disaster and pandemic planning at all levels of government; a need for greater preparedness related to global climate change; the worsening of the wealth inequality gap in the United States; America’s changing role in the world’s economy; important efforts to achieve racial, economic, and social equality and the response from government; and the increasing and evolving relationship between police and the community in the United States. Fully updated pedagogical tools including chapter summaries, discussion questions, brief case studies, case study discussion questions, key terms, and suggestions for further reading in each chapter, as well as accompanying support material that can be easily incorporated into Learning Management Systems (LMS), including Canvas and Blackboard. Comprehensive, well-written, and offering a careful consideration of the fundamentals, American Public Administration, Third Edition is an ideal introductory text for courses at undergraduate or graduate level, offering students a broader civil society context in which to understand public service.
Although much has been written about the Korean public administration, the international academic community has little knowledge about it as most of the literature has been written in Korean. This book aims to provide more accessible knowledge internationally by filling that gap, covering both the history and the current status of the Korean public administration. This book is a collaboration of many Korean public administration scholars and would appeal to those interested in the secrets of Korea’s rapid development in such a short span of time. Each chapter covers historical contexts, key to understanding its public administration and an important aspect as Korea is a fast changing society. The book takes on a more pragmatic approach rather than to put the Korean experiences into the western theory. Each chapter therefore provides an extensive discussion on the lessons-learned and practical implications.