Impact of Liberalisation on Public Administration

Globalisation, Liberalisation, and Privatisation (LPG) are reshaping the state and public administration.
Responding to globalisation and liberalisation poses challenges for Public Administration.
Strategies have been adopted to cope with the pressures of liberalisation.
The impact of globalisation/Liberalisation is observed in areas like:
- Public Service Reforms
- Reinventing Government
- Entrepreneurial Government
- Changing Role of Bureaucracy
- Good Governance
- E-Governance
- Bringing the State Back IN
- Empowering citizens

Public Service Reforms

Adoption of free market economy in the 1980s (UK and Western countries) and 1990s (India) necessitates public service reforms.
Terms associated: New Economic Policy, Structural Adjustment Programme, privatisation, liberalisation, deregulation, contracting out.
Free market economy impacts government, structure, and governance.
Based on the perception that "private is good and public is bad."
Consequences of free market reforms influenced by concepts like "government by the market", "sharing power", and "hollowing out of state".

Reinventing Government: New Public Management (NPM)

New Public Management (NPM) significantly reshapes public administration to address globalisation challenges.
Developed and developing countries' policies are increasingly influenced by NPM and reinventing government prescriptions.
Includes privatisation, deregulation, market-like mechanisms, decentralisation, and debureaucratisation.
Business principles need to be introduced and adhered to in public business.
Advocates of NPM suggest governments adopt business techniques and values.
Principles for reinventing government:
- Steering rather than rowing
- Empowering rather than serving
- Injecting competition into service delivery
- Transforming rule-driven organisations
- Meeting customer needs, not bureaucracy
- From hierarchy to participation
- Leveraging change through the market
NPM focuses on management, performance appraisal, and efficiency, not policy.
Converts public bureaucracies into agencies dealing on a user-pay basis.
Uses quasi-markets and contracting out to foster competition.
Aims at cost-cutting, reducing public expenditure, emphasising output, providing monetary incentives, and empowering managers.

Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG)

Since the 1980s, many countries adopted Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG).
India started the process of LPG in the 1980s.
Forms of LPG:
- Management of public sector enterprises partially or fully entrusted to private companies.
- Disinvestment in public sector enterprises.
Public sector enterprises face competitive environment.
Public Administration's role under LPG remains significant.
Requires dismantling of regulations, controls, restrictions, licenses, secrecy and delay.
Bureaucracy must be investor-friendly, responsive, transparent, open, and competitive.
Administrative reform should eliminate redundant practices, procedures, and administrative laws to combat corruption.
LPG affects the role, values, and skills of public bureaucracy.
Decreases state functions, resulting in minimal state interference; the state becomes a regulator.
Public administration shifts towards governance, enabling, collaborative, cooperative, partnership, and regulatory roles.
Governance implies public administration operating in a wider context, coordinating governmental agencies with the market/private sector, civil society, NGOs, local bodies, and self-help groups.
The role and image of Public Administration undergoes major transformation.

Entrepreneurial Government

Government offices are often perceived negatively as inefficient and outdated.
Entrepreneurial Government is presented as the solution to administrative malaise.
Efficiency and productivity are hallmarks of entrepreneurial government, driven by globalisation.
Public sector organisations face worldwide pressure to enhance productivity by increasing efficiency.
Public bureaucracies aim to cut waste, increase output, and improve service delivery.

Changing Role of Bureaucracy

Economic liberalisation seeks reduced governmental intervention in the economic sector, implying a reduced role for bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy must act as a catalyst for change in the new economic order.
Bureaucracy should function as a helper, accelerator, and booster.

Industrial Policy, 1991

India experienced the "license raj" under the Industries (Development & Regulation) Act, 1951, discouraging liberalisation.
The 1991 policy aimed at de-licensing, foreign investment, liberalisation, competition, and redesigning public sector policy.
Salient features and objectives of Industrial Policy, 1991:
- To maintain sustained growth in productivity
- To enhance gainful employment
- To achieve optimal utilisation of human resources
- To attain international competitiveness
- To transform India into a major global partner
- Policy focus on deregulating Indian Industry
- Allowing industry freedom and flexibility in responding to market forces
- Providing a policy regime that fosters growth of Indian industry

Good Governance

Reform of public administration and issues of governance are priorities on the development agenda of the 1990s.
'Governance' deals with the capacity of the government to formulate, design, implement policies and discharge functions.
Good governance is more than efficient public administration; it builds bridges between the state and society.
The concept was conceived in 1989 and mentioned in a World Bank report on Sub-Saharan Africa.
Defined as 'a public service that is efficient, a judicial system that is reliable and an administration that is accountable to the public'.
Associated with efficient and effective administration in a democratic framework.
Equivalent to purposive and development-oriented administration committed to improving the quality of life.
Implies high level of organisational effectiveness; citizen-friendly, citizen-caring, and responsive administration.

E-Governance

A search for alternative delivery systems has attracted experts in public administration since the 1980s.
E-Governance is the application of IT to government functioning for Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent (SMART) governance.
Speed and transparency of E-Governance can make public administration responsive and efficient.

Bringing the State Back IN

Globalisation is perceived as spreading liberalisation universally, freeing the economy from state control.
The state is withdrawing/retreating/abstaining from many economic areas.
A liberalising state focuses on core areas like defence and foreign affairs, opening other areas to private players.
Private enterprises, voluntary agencies, self-help groups, and community-based organisations fill the vacuum left by the retreating state.
The trend is toward capitalist subjugation of the globe in the garb of neo-liberalism.
For the Third World, the issue is changing the character of the state to shift power from the bourgeoisis-feudalism-bureaucracy combine to a genuine people's democracy.
A market-friendly, marginalised state would pave the way for capitalist world development.
The Third World needs a different development model assuring general welfare and egalitarian social life.
The World Bank sponsored 'rethinking the State' is a fraud on political theory.
The World Bank-touted State-minimalism and market-friendly approach to Third World development pose problems for State-led development efforts.
A strong State with an expanded agenda is needed, differently implemented than in many developing countries.
Ensuring the state maintains its regulatory function while withdrawing from non-essential sectors is beneficial.
The state should maintain a presence in social sectors like education and health.

Empowering citizens

Globalisation from below witnesses grassroots people's participation at the local level.
Includes women's empowerment, education for all, human rights, consumer rights, environmental protection, and decentralisation.
Empowering citizens is a key component of recent reform waves in public administration.

LPG and Its Impact on Public Administration

Governments in the West adapted to new technologies, societal demands, and competition in the 1980s and 1990s.
This led to a new managerial-oriented public administration.
Criticism of control-oriented, people-avoiding and rule-bound Weberian bureaucratic model.
Emphasis on results and cost-effectiveness in public governance.
Flexible organisational designs and practices from the private sector were introduced in public administration.
Reforms like debureaucratisation, downsizing, disinvestments, marketisation and privatisation were attempted.
These brought discernible changes in the approach and philosophy of public administration.
Globalisation and the new world order have implications for public administration and its sub-fields.
Globalisation, marketisation, and privatisation processes have altered the boundaries of public administration.
Issues arising out of globalisation have radically altered the nature and scope of public administration.
Salient emerging features:
- Application of Public Choice theory to public administration;
- Emphasis on 'public management' via the market model of governance;
- The Governance paradigm has challenged State-centric public administrstion…Governance is not merely governmental, but a design which is both market driven and civil society induced;
- The market has become the key determinant of public policy;
- Decentralisation and democracy-underlining the participation and empowerment of people at the grassroots;
- Performance partnership-public-private joint-venture;
- Transparency of governance and an open, citizen-friendly administration;
- Small government in terms of downsizing and grassroots people's efforts.

Conclusion

Public administration seems to be moving more towards protection of citizen's rights, accountability, ethical values, research and training.
Emphasis has shifted to good governance, E-governance and corporate governance as the framework of administrative analysis.
The concepts of work, authority and role of state are changing.
The accent on participation, transparency, decentralisation and accountability is urging the scholars to revamp administrative structure and process to meet emerging challenges.
A basic requirement in the context of economic reforms is the dismantling of the regulatory structure.
Necessary to shake off the sloth of public administrators to provide a vigorous response to the challenges posed by the economic reforms.

Civil Service in the Process of Transformation

The ICS men were trusted agents of the British Government even though there were also many patriots among them.
The ICS was the instrument of the imperial power, and the leader of the Indian National Congress had made it clear during their struggle for independence that they wanted to abolish the ICS and all it stood for.
Jawaharlal Nehru was 'quite sure' in 1934 that 'no new order can be built in India so long as the spirit of the Indian Civil Service pervades our administration and our public services', it being there fore, ‘essential that the ICS and similar services must disappear completely'.
Yet in the years afterwards the ICS tradition not only survived, it prospered. In the spring of 1964,