Chapter 8: Implementation: the public bureaucracy §

(F) Day of the week: Thursday Class: IS307 Created Time: May 20, 2021 3:40 PM Database: Class Notes Database Date: May 20, 2021 3:40 PM Days Till Date: Passed Last Edited Time: November 25, 2021 2:02 PM Type: Lecture

Public bureaucracy provides public service and help implement policies for the people

• based on direction from elected politicians

1. The organization of the state bureaucracy §

1. Roles and Functions of State bureaucracy/Civil Servant §

មន្ដ្រីរាជការសុីវិល

• Policies are created by the elected politician
• Administration of the state or the day-day work of implementing policies is carried out by the bureaucratic department or ministries.
  • Implementing policies regarding education, poverty, social order…

2. Administrative division and size §

• Administrative division and size varies in different countries decided by leadership either through
  • combination for one organization roof (education + youth & sports) or
  • separate for narrower scopes
• Public Sector: size of a ministry in terms of employment or its budget may not determine power or importance.
  • Why merge? Easier to gain funding?
  • As big/small as needed to satisfy demand from the people

3. Accountability §

• Public sector bureaucrats are appointed to be servants of the state.
  • Work directly for the general public
  • But They are not accountable to the general public but accountable to their political masters/elected politicians.
• The policies are supposed to be directed by elected politicians who work with legislative
  • ⇒ the day-to-day administrative work directed by professional bureaucrats.
  • Bureaucrats More politically neutral (fairness principle)

2. The organization of the state bureaucracy §

Three types of senior bureaucrats with administrative and policy advisor functions :

1. Permanent administrators: senior bureaucrats who are general directors of ministries
   • person based on expertise, experience, skill.
   • politically neutral civil servants because life time career till retirement
2. Political appointments: appoint new bureaucrats who are loyal to the upcoming party
   • to ensure permanent administrators are neutral in agenda to upcoming government
     • to balance influence of past party and ensure agenda of new government is carried out
   • danger of clientelism: government offer bureaucratic positions to rich government funders (nepotism, patron/client relations)
3. Policy advisors : to advise ministers, correct policies, suit to agenda. Why?:
   • Civil servants may not always be impartial because of their own personal and group interests
   • Civil servants may have worked so long and so closed with the private organizations, and the civil servants become ’ captured’ and ‘domesticated’ by private organizations and start representing their interests.

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Theories of public bureaucracy take different view of the power of administrative agencies of the states.

• Weber: He stated that the bureaucracy is powerful, but did not say much about how the bureaucrats will use their power
• Rational-choice theory: The bureaucracy is capable of controlling public policy, and it does so to promote its own interests.
• Clientelist theory: Bureaucracies are used by politicians for their own political purposes.

The rational-legal ideal-type by Max Weber §

💡 Ideal-type: An analytical construct that simplifies reality and picks out its most important features, to serves as a model that allows us to understand and compare the complexities of the real world.

• Argument: Society modernize itself by becoming more bureaucratic. Bureaucracy expresses the characteristic of the modern society because it is based upon legitimate power, and organized in a rational way according to formal rules.
• Weber defined bureaucracy as the most efficient method of performing large-scale administrative tasks, and created an ideal-type of bureaucracy with rationality, legality, hierarchy and formal rules as its core features.
• An ideal-type bureaucracy is characterized by its:
  1. Hierarchy or pyramid of command, with authority based on official position
  2. Civil service of salaries professionals appointed and promoted according to their specialized competence, training and experience.
  3. Formal rules determining individual decisions and behavior so that individual cases are treated in the same, predictable way.
  4. Rationality: the choice of appropriate means to achieve given ends.
  5. Record keeping, provide bureaucracies with an institutional memory of what has been done in the past, and the rules and precedents governing this action.
• However, no real life bureaucracy can function in this way because:
  • The mechanical application of rules is bound to create in justice, therefore, bureaucracies develop informal organization
  • Bureaucratic means will become ends in themselves.
    • Trained incapacity: follow the rules and refuse to tale initiatives or responsibility

Clientelism §

• Clientelism involves the political use of public office for personal gain like power, money, or both.

• The clientelist government acts as a patron that distributes in favor and benefits in the form of public jobs, money, contracts and pensions in return for political support.

  • Jobs: not according to merit, professional, training or experience, but those who support the government in power.
  • Contracts: not according to cost and quality of work, but for material and political gain.

• Clientelism is an institutionalized form of patronage summarized by the old adage: To the victor belong the spoils

  💡 The winner gets everything, as in He not only won the tournament but ended up with numerous lucrative endorsements—to the victor belong the spoils. This expression alludes to the spoils system of American politics, whereby the winner of an election gives desirable jobs to party supporters.

• Clientelism varies in degree

  • It is strong in less well developed democracies if Latin America, Africa and central Europe.
  • It also found in Italy and the US
  • It is mainly found in societies that are rapid modernizing, urbanizing and industrializing, and in those that are struggling to throw off a recent history of authoritarian rule that rested on clientelism and patronage.
  • Some are more or less formalized and public. Ex: supporter of a party will get a certain job of the party win
  • Mass clientelist parties in France, Italy and Mexico

The new right, rational choice and the New Public Management §

• The new right by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher

• The new right’s belief that government should be reinvented, and that the state should be hollowed out

• This theory is borrowed heavily from rational-choice theories of the state and bureaucracy

  Rational choice and bureaucracy by William Niskanen §

  • Argument: The state bureaucrats are self-interested and try to maximize their position by expanding their budgets and staff.

  • Special knowledge and experience are called agency problems

  • Criticism of rational choice theory for oversimplified:

    • Assume that bureaucrats are self-seeking, but we can say they are lazy and want an easy life
    • Pursue their own self-interest but does it mean they are not concerned about the public interest?
    • Assume that they do not care about the problem of over-production, but what if they are trying to combat this issue
    • Assume that they will not serve their political master, but it does not mean they do not have a professional ethic of public service?

  • This theory have a strong influence on the “New Public Management”

  The New Public Management §

  • NPM theory is the belief that bureaucracies are costly because they are not competitive, as the economic market is said to be, and because they interfere with the efficient workings of the private sector.
  • Public bureaucracies should therefore be cut, privatized and decentralized leaving a small core of top civil servants to steer, not row.
  • Consumer side of public services NPM reform have tried to reduce the problem of bureaucratic inertia, secrecy and unresponsiveness to the public. It re-defines public service as customer.