Public Administration and Governance Fundamentals
Public Administration and Governance Fundamentals covers how the state organises itself to deliver policy: bureaucracy, hierarchy, delegation, accountability, budgeting, and reforms such as New Public Management and good-governance agendas.
Core rules
- Weber's bureaucracy rests on hierarchy, written rules, impersonality, merit appointment and recorded files; its strengths (predictability, equity) are also its criticised weaknesses (rigidity, red tape).
- POSDCORB - planning, organising, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, budgeting - remains a checklist for administrative functions.
- Delegation transfers authority, not accountability. The delegating officer remains answerable.
- Span of control: narrow spans create delay; wide spans dilute supervision. Structure should follow function.
- New Public Management imports market mechanisms - contracting out, performance indicators, citizen charters, service-level targets - while senior officers retain public accountability.
- Good governance benchmarks: transparency, participation, rule of law, responsiveness, equity and efficiency.
Worked example
A municipal body contracts out refuse collection. The contractor underperforms. The correct analysis is that accountability has not been transferred: the authority must enforce contractual key performance indicators, publish performance data and retain the ability to terminate. "The contractor is responsible, so we are not" is wrong in law and in governance terms.
Traps
Confusing delegation with abdication; assuming privatisation removes public responsibility; treating hierarchy as inherently efficient; and treating good-governance terms as slogans rather than measurable tests.