Week 3 - Theoretical Frameworks

What are the three major public administration frameworks covered in Week 3?

Traditional Public Administration, New Public Management (NPM), and New Public Governance (NPG), alongside public value approaches.

What is Traditional Public Administration (TPA)?

A model emphasizing hierarchy, formal rules, merit-based public service, bureaucratic expertise, and political accountability.

What is New Public Management (NPM)?

A reform approach applying private-sector management techniques, competition, performance measurement, and efficiency principles to government.

What is New Public Governance (NPG)?

A governance approach emphasizing collaboration, networks, partnerships, and interdependence among public, private, and nonprofit actors.

What is public value?

The collective value created through public institutions and activities, including outcomes such as fairness, trust, legitimacy, and effective services.

What is the central priority of Traditional Public Administration?

Maintaining lawful, consistent, accountable administration through professional bureaucracy and established procedures.

What is the central priority of NPM?

Improving efficiency, performance, responsiveness, and results by introducing managerial flexibility and market-inspired mechanisms.

What is the central priority of NPG?

Addressing complex public problems through cooperation and coordination among multiple organizations and stakeholders.

How does NPM view citizens?

Often as customers or service users whose satisfaction and service outcomes should influence public management.

How does NPG view citizens?

As participants, stakeholders, and potential partners in creating and governing public services.

How does Traditional Public Administration view citizens?

As members of the public entitled to lawful, impartial, and consistent treatment by government.

What is a major criticism of NPM?

Its focus on efficiency and competition may weaken equity, democratic accountability, coordination, or public service values.

What is a major criticism of NPG?

Network governance can create unclear accountability when many organizations share responsibility for policy decisions or service delivery.

What is a major strength of NPG?

It can combine resources, expertise, and perspectives from different organizations to address problems government cannot solve alone.

How does NPM differ from NPG?

NPM emphasizes managerial performance and competition; NPG emphasizes cooperation, partnerships, and networks.

How does Traditional Public Administration differ from NPM?

Traditional administration prioritizes hierarchy and rules; NPM prioritizes managerial autonomy, performance, and results.

What is a wicked policy problem?

A complex public problem with interconnected causes, contested definitions, and no simple or universally agreed solution.

Why is NPG relevant to wicked problems?

Complex problems often cross organizational boundaries and require multiple actors to coordinate their knowledge and resources.

What is collaborative governance?

A process in which government works with non-governmental actors to develop or implement collective public decisions.

What is network governance?

Governing through relationships among interdependent organizations rather than relying exclusively on a single government hierarchy.

What is a limitation of governing through networks?

Responsibility for outcomes can become difficult to identify because decisions and implementation are distributed across multiple actors.

What is input legitimacy?

Legitimacy derived from fair, inclusive, representative, and democratically acceptable decision-making processes.

What is output legitimacy?

Legitimacy derived from a government's ability to produce effective, beneficial, or socially valued policy outcomes.

How do input and output legitimacy differ?

Input legitimacy concerns how decisions are made; output legitimacy concerns what decisions achieve.

Can a policy have strong output legitimacy but weak input legitimacy?

Yes. A policy may deliver useful results while excluding affected people from the decision-making process.

Can a policy have strong input legitimacy but weak output legitimacy?

Yes. An inclusive decision-making process may still produce ineffective or harmful outcomes.

What is the central question in Skogstad's Who Governs? Who Should Govern?

Which actors exercise governance authority, and what makes their authority democratically legitimate?

What are the four legitimacy or authority approaches emphasized in our Skogstad review?

State-centred, expert, market, and popular approaches.

What is state-centred authority?

Legitimacy grounded in authorized public institutions, legal powers, and the responsibility of elected governments.

What is expert authority?

Legitimacy grounded in specialized knowledge, professional expertise, and technical competence.

What is market authority?

Legitimacy associated with market mechanisms, competition, economic choices, and consumer preferences.

What is popular authority?

Legitimacy grounded in citizen participation, representation, and public involvement in governance.

What is a limitation of expert authority?

Technical expertise does not automatically provide democratic authorization or resolve disagreements about public values.

What is a limitation of market authority?

Market outcomes can overlook inequality, unequal purchasing power, and interests that are difficult to express through prices.

What is a limitation of popular authority?

Participation can be unequal, and public preferences may conflict with technical evidence or minority rights.

What is a limitation of state-centred authority?

Formal legal authority alone does not guarantee meaningful participation, effective outcomes, or public trust.

How does expert authority differ from popular authority?

Expert authority emphasizes specialized knowledge; popular authority emphasizes participation and representation.

Why can expert authority conflict with democratic legitimacy?

Experts may recommend technically defensible policies that lack public support or conflict with democratically expressed values.

What is bureaucratic politics?

An approach explaining government decisions through bargaining, competing institutional interests, and the relative influence of officials and organizations.

Who is associated with the bureaucratic politics model?

Graham Allison, particularly through his analysis of government decision-making and organizational bargaining.

What does Allison mean by where you stand depends on where you sit?

Officials' policy preferences are often shaped by their institutional positions, responsibilities, and organizational interests.

What is the main idea of Allison's bureaucratic bargaining model?

Policy outcomes emerge from negotiations and competition among officials rather than from one unified, fully rational government actor.

How can bureaucratic politics affect policy outcomes?

Different departments may prioritize their own mandates, creating negotiation, conflict, compromise, or delays in decisions.

What is James Q. Wilson's central argument about bureaucracy?

Bureaucratic behaviour is shaped by organizational tasks, constraints, incentives, workplace routines, and institutional environments.

Why are organizational routines important in Wilson's approach?

They shape how officials perform their daily work and respond to incentives, constraints, and uncertainty.

What does Seidman's phrase structure is power mean?

The organization of government institutions influences authority, access to decision-makers, jurisdiction, and policy outcomes.

Why does organizational structure matter in public administration?

Assigning responsibilities and authority to different institutions affects which actors can influence decisions.

What is representative bureaucracy?

The idea that the public service should reflect the population it serves, potentially strengthening responsiveness, fairness, and legitimacy.

What is the central concern of Long's representative bureaucracy argument?

Whether bureaucratic representation can help connect administrative institutions to society and strengthen their democratic legitimacy.

What is Dwight Waldo's criticism of treating efficiency as neutral?

Efficiency is a political value because deciding what to maximize and what to sacrifice involves normative judgments.

What does normative mean in public administration theory?

Concerned with what ought to happen, including judgments about values, fairness, legitimacy, and appropriate government behaviour.

What is the difference between descriptive and normative analysis?

Descriptive analysis explains how government operates; normative analysis evaluates how government should operate.

Application: Government uses private providers and competition to improve public service efficiency. Which framework applies?

NPM, because the reform emphasizes competition, performance, and market-inspired service delivery.

Application: A government works with nonprofits and municipalities to address homelessness. Which framework applies?

NPG, because the policy relies on collaboration and coordination across organizational boundaries.

Application: A public health policy succeeds but excludes affected communities from consultation. What legitimacy problem exists?

Input legitimacy is weakened by exclusion, even if the policy achieves effective outcomes.

Application: Health and corrections departments disagree over involuntary care because each prioritizes its own mandate. Which theory applies?

Allison's bureaucratic politics model, because institutional positions shape competing preferences and bargaining.

Application: Government transfers a policy responsibility to a different agency, changing who influences decisions. Which scholar's argument applies?

Seidman's structure is power, because institutional design affects the distribution of authority.

Application: A government selects a policy solely because it is cheapest, despite serious equity concerns. Which scholar's criticism applies?

Waldo's critique of efficiency as a political value, because administrative choices require balancing efficiency against other public values.

What is the politics–administration dichotomy?

The idea that elected politicians determine policy while neutral administrators implement it, treating politics and administration as distinct activities.

Why is the politics–administration dichotomy a normative argument?

It suggests not only that politics and administration are separate but also that they ought to remain separate.

What is Waldo's criticism of the politics–administration dichotomy?

Administration cannot be completely separated from politics because administrative choices involve judgments about values, priorities, and the distribution of public resources.

Why does Waldo argue that efficiency is a political value?

Choosing efficiency over equity, accessibility, or other objectives involves deciding which public values and interests deserve priority.

How does BC's involuntary-care debate illustrate input legitimacy?

It raises questions about whether affected patients, families, healthcare professionals, and community groups meaningfully participate in decisions that affect their rights and treatment.

How does BC's involuntary-care debate illustrate output legitimacy?

It raises questions about whether involuntary treatment actually improves safety, health outcomes, and access to effective care.

Why can involuntary-care policies produce conflicts between public values?

Governments must weigh public safety and access to treatment against individual autonomy, consent, liberty, and concerns about coercion.

How can Charter rights become relevant to involuntary-care policies?

Involuntary treatment or detention may engage constitutional protections concerning liberty, security of the person, and potentially equality, requiring legal justification.

How does public value governance differ from New Public Governance?

NPG emphasizes collaborative networks and relationships among governing actors, while public value governance emphasizes collectively determining and creating outcomes valued by the public.

Why is democratic legitimacy important in public value governance?

Government decisions should be justified through democratic values, public participation, and accountability rather than being evaluated only through managerial efficiency.

What is co-production in public services?

The involvement of citizens, service users, or community organizations alongside public institutions in producing or improving public services.

Why does public value governance go beyond customer satisfaction?

Public value includes broader collective objectives such as equity, democratic legitimacy, public trust, and social wellbeing, not only individual service-user preferences.