1. The purpose of this response is to assert the active role of public managers in policy making. By using their technical, analytical and managerial skills public managers can be effective in the policy process and just in implementation. Public Managers have to participate in the policy making process. Previously, according to scholars, “policy process” was considered “decision making” (Wu, Ramesh, Howlett, & Fritzen, 2010). Under such pretense, public managers considered their role merely with policy implementation. However the recent theories that define public policy, have demarcated public policy as an activity that involves a broad range of activities ranging from defining problems, ensuring the defined problems to make it to agenda, developing alternative solutions of addressing these issues, implementing the results and evaluating the outcomes. Public Managers are uniquely positioned to positively affect policy process due to their tenure, job security, absence of political pressure and expanded role in the society. The …show more content…
United States being a federal system, large number of decisions is not only made by the Federal, but also by state and local governments. Government uses various tools like Law, services, money, taxes, other economic instruments and suasion to influence policies. These tools are unique to the Government and may not be available to private parties. Peters suggest that a huge amount of money flows through the government and it gets redistributed to different people in forms of goods and services (Peters, 2013). Since governments have the resource and rights to influence social agendas, Government has to be involved in policy making. Since public policies are results of collaborations between various groups and backgrounds, the environmental factors contribute as an uncontrollable attribute to policy making. These environmental factors that affect policy making
The main aim of public service is to deliver services that are of need to its people. How fast a public manager can address its people’s problem and concerns indicates its effectiveness. Responsiveness of the manager develops trust between him, the government, and the people. According to (Rainey, p106) bureaucratic responsiveness implies two things; responsiveness to the people’s wishes or responsiveness to the interest of the government.
Wilson described public administration as “the most obvious part of the government; it is government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself.” Furthermore, public administration is efficient and detailed implementation of public law. Every particular application of general law is a demonstration of administration.
Among the various historical Public Administration personalities, Wilson (1887) has presented the many facets of what and who a Public Administrator was and should be. He initially identified the Public Administrator as the absolute ruler like a king in a monarchy, a tyrant, despot, monopolist/s or oligarchs. When the absolute rulers were overtaken by “popular control”, the administrator would refer to the state, the sovereign people or popular sovereignty or popular rule. Governor was another term used to denote administrator, acting as a servant (civil servant) of the governed – great office of public trust. At this point, public opinion evolved just like a monarch but is comprised of many people / minds with different opinions. Wilson said, “wherever public opinion exists it must rule”.
In the role of government, the public sector is the sole actor of implementing a strategy. But as the limits of public intervention were recognised and accepted, state action turned to governance. In this mode, the state recognise that more stakeholder must be involved in the formulation and implementation of strategies and this involve the private sector as well as citizens. This shift was also brought because of the private sector has the financial recourses that the public sector has not anymore (Rydin, 2013, p.3-5).
Public policies are developed in response to the existence of a perceived problem or an opportunity. The analysis delves into a public issue or problem and assesses a set of proposed government action for addressing the issue. The job of the analyst is to describe the background and status of an issue and then, using research and analysis, determine a proper government action to resolve the issue. By comparing options and weighing their expected benefits, the analyst should conclude with a recommended course of action or inaction to addressing the issue.
This is broken down into two categories; agenda setting and the development of legislation. Managing human resources, and financials are part of the implementation phase of the public policymaking process. The most important point in understanding policy implementation, as part of the larger process of policymaking, is that it is primarily a management undertaking. It is important to realize the cyclical relationship between rulemaking and the operational activities involved with implementation of a law. This cyclical relationship means that experience gained with the operation of policies can influence the modification of rules or regulations used in the implementation phase. In a practical sense, this means that the rules promulgated to implement policies undergo revision sometimes extensive and continual revision and that new rules can be adopted as experience dictates. This characteristic of policymaking tends to make the process much more dynamic than it would be otherwise. Per Longest (2009), “Feedback from individuals, organizations, and interest groups experiencing the consequences of policies, combined with the assessments of the performance and impact of policies by those who formulate and implement them, influence future policy formulation and implementation. the activities involved in providing that protection. Such operational activities might include measuring and assessing dangers from substances in the environment or imposing fines as a means to prevent or restrict environmental pollution. Depending on the scope of policies being implemented, the managerial tasks involved can be fairly simple and straightforward, or they can require massive
A policy is a plan of action for tackling political issues. Simeon (1976 ) describes public policy as “a consequence of the political environment, values and ideologies, distribution of power, institutional frameworks, and of decision-making processes.” These strategies will be constructed by pol...
The study of public administration only continued to grow over the course of the next two decades. As the study of public administration expanded, so did the development of s...
Public sector reforms adopted in a number of countries such as USA, UK and New Zealand in the last fifteen years and characterised by efficiency units, performance management, contracting out, market type mechanisms, and agency status have come to be known as the New Public Management or NPM. Appearance of the NPM as shifting the paradigm from the old traditional model of administration has been promoted by a remarkable degree of consensus among the political leadership of various countries and is presented today as the major tool for public sector management reforms.
The government’s intensive challenge to address concerned issues that affect the public within a given nation is called Public Policy. Public policy is an effort by a government to address a public concerns by establishing rules, guidelines, results, or movements appropriate to the problem at hand. Many issues can be handled by public policy including crime, education, foreign policy, health, and social welfare. Leadership is a vital part of a prosperous public policy making process. To comprehend the past, one studies the leadership who have formed the past. The vision of these modern leaders, holds the key to the future. This paper will address the leadership traits that are the most important in the creation of sound public policy.
Over time, how have members of the field of public administration examined the subject of policy and administration (has the dichotomy changed)?
The New Public Management plays a valuable role as a policy tool and as a means by which to advance rhetoric of efficiency, prudence and efficacy in state management, at a time when these values had re-emerged as a primary driving force behind mass-liberation of national economies and the international political economy in general . This new policy was implemented with a mind to change the old running of the public sector into a new form by imitating the business style of the private sector. This is because some of the politicians felt that the public servants lucked the drive and determination of the many citizens that worked outside of the public sector. So the idea was to become more like the private sector in terms of implementing better services to the citizens, as well as being more challenging when producing policies which conflict with others in the public sector. One of the major reasons why this policy gained more than enough support in earlier years was as a result of the Cold War.
Policies taken by the respective Governments of each and every country in the world are an important aspect of our life whether we choose it or not. Policies are normally adopted to solve major problems faced by the public. It is the duty of the State to see to it that the problems are solved keeping the majority and at the same time ensuring proper justice is done and ethically on the right side of it. So, it is important that there be a public policy and it matters that they need to cater to the majority and aid them by providing solutions to their problems and ensure a smooth functioning of the state. And as a citizen of the nation, public policy matters to me because it provides me a platform to assess the decisions taken by the state on behalf of the nation and with proper knowledge people like us can aid in the betterment of the society by providing inputs or question the policy if it seems improbable.
Public policy can be defined as “What ever governments choose to do or not do” (Dye, 2008, p 2). In the context of this essay, public policies are a set of actors by the government in order to reach out to the masses. The ministries and departments are mandated to deliver specific mandates in the form of public goods and services.
Public personnel administration consists of three general systems. The first one I’ll talk about is civil service. The civil service helps to protect employee rights and safeguard efficiency. Historically, personnel administration shifted from emphasizing the value of responsiveness to emphasizing political neutral competence among public employees. Before they would use the spoils system and the patronage system, which selected employees and awarded government contracts based on loyalty or party affiliation. In this present day, we are using more of the civil service system, which is a method of choosing employees based on certain formal qualifications such as competitive exams instead of political patronage. It all start...