Comparative Public Administration Midterm Answers


Part I. Short Answer

1. Pump-priming measures refers to the combination of fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate the economy during times of recession or stagnation.  Both of these policies involve government intervention into the ecomony as formulated by the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes.  Fiscal policies refers to taxing and spending.  During times of recession, the government can spends more and tax less as a way of stimulating demand.  Government purchases of products reduces excess supplies also. Governments also engage in monetary policy, especially in regards to the total available money in circulation and the interest rates. Reduction in interest rates encourages greater consumption and possibly investment.  When government decides to spend more, public administrators may experience a change in their operational climate.

2. Efficiency refers to the cost of delivery services and effectiveness refers to the scope of service provision.  In the public sector, efficiency and effectiveness must be balanced.  While customer satisfaction is often used to measure effectiveness, it is difficult to obtain quantifiable data regarding effectiveness that captures this concept.  Government refers usually attempts to tackle both issues, sometimes simultaneously but also separately.

3. PPP and GINI coefficient are both measure related to income measurement.  The former is used to reconcile differences involving countries' cost-of-living and is known as Purchasing Power Parity and GINI is a measure of economic inequality.  Both of these numbers provide a mechanism for comparing macro-economic performance and statistics used to assess the performance of economic systems and public policy environment in a cross-national comparative manner.

4. Rogernomics was a term coined to collectively the policies and ideas of governmental reform in New Zealand as part of the New Public Management movement.  Finance Minister Roger Douglass sought to rapidly privatize state owned functions such as banking, airlines, post office, and insurance to alleviate the fiscal crisis of the state in 1984.  As part of his ideas of reform, the New Zealand civil service would be required to move away from a tenure system toward a performance management measurement system which would call five year contracts for upper level civil servants.  Rogernomics became the basis for the Westminster model of public management reforms.

5. Principal agent theory, a derivative of  rational choice and public choice theory, as applied to public administration suggests an explanation for the inability of elected officials to control career civil servants.  According to this theory, the bureaucrats are the agents of elected officials- who are the principals- in that the former is responsible for implementing programs and policies as the law demands.  However, bureaucrats often have more technical knowledge and information than the principal.  The central problem is how do you get subordinates with more information to perform tasks to the principal's wishes given this informational imbalance?  This question is critical to public policy and managment reform given that the bureaucracy must ultimately implement reforms and that these reforms must initiate from the standpoint of democratic accountability.

6. Reform as governance refers to the increased emphasis within OECD nations to reform public administration.  The principle responsibility of government, according to this view is that the "end" or purpose of governing is about constant reform.  The public administration reform revolution is based on this notion of ongoing and constant reform to refine the operation of the system's efficiency and effectiveness to provide increased value for citizens.  Thus the primary responsibility of government is reforming the public sector.

7. Flattened-hierarchy reflects a new emphasis in public administration which is antithetical to hierarchical model espoused by scientific managment which is predicated on the idea of specialization.  The primary emphasis of flattened-hierarchy is multitasking and the creation of versatile team orientated work in which the ranks of the formerly hierarchical bureaucracy are  compacted to produce a more integrated product and process.  Several factors including the move toward reinventing government, the changing values of employees, the increased multidisciplinary nature of problems and tasks, and budgetary stress account for the move toward flattened-hierarchies.

Part II. Short Essay

1. A variety of types of privatization exists.  However, not all products are suitable for privatization.  Foremost in the mind of elected officials and public administrators are the notion of providing public goods and democratic accountability.  Government can privatize the provision of services, but it must recognize that it will be held responsible for the failure to deliver.  As such governmental control over service provision is a serious issue.  Given that public service is a product of the democratic process, the political control over these services is critical, otherwise the principle of democratic accountability is diminished or abborgated.  Thus, products or services involving that of a political and legal nature are not suitable products for privatization.  These include the justice system, national defense, and welfare.  However, some attributes or aspects of these products can be privatized if they are peripheral to the core mission of the bureaucracy.  These include data processing, cleaning, security, and cafeteria sevices.  Even if these services are contracted out, the public officials, both elected and appointed, are held responsible for service delivery.

2. Both the Westminster and US models of public management reform sought to introduce efficiency and effectiveness into bureaucratic systems through the process of reforming and streamlining the bureaucratic process and by making the systems more acocuntable to the elected officials.  The Westminster model relied on privatization, especially the ideas of selling off government assets as a method of decreasing the responsibility of government but the US model has few assets available for privatization because the US government owned limited enterprises available for sale.  
    The Westminster model of reform was initially dictated by the cabinet, which consists primarily of elected ruling-party leaders but the US system, based on a separation of power between the executive and legislative, had to rely on the executive branch for designing and implementing change, which was frequently derailed and questioned by Congress, because of the divided nature of government.  In addition, the Westminister model relied on bureaucrats for implementation of reform measures as it pertained to civil service administration whereas the US model was inspired by Vice President Albert Gore's "reinventing government".  The US system's reform was much more incremental and less far-reaching in contrast to the Westminster model.  Two explanations exist for this differential emphasis and nature of reforms.  First, the Westminster model resulted from an acute fiscal crisis of the state whereas the US model resulted from general dissatisfaction with government and political leadership committed to contracting government.  Secondly, the Westminster model derived from political systems previously much more committed to a social welfare state than the US model.  

3. Government expediture as a percentage of GDP product is not a reliable measure of a government's scope due to many reasons which become even more apparent upon comparative analysis.  First of all, it does not demonstrate the indirect costs which are passed on to consumers and businesses.  In particular, some government's may be small in terms of expenditures because the costs of regulation compliance rests with non-governmental entities.  Furthermore, this ratio (government spending as a % of GDP) does not consider the macro-economic conditions, including whether the country is in a recession or not (i.e., the fiscal stimuli needed) or if there was a sustained increase in private economic activity over the past several years to a decade  or the age demographics of a country (i.e., excessive greying of the population).  
    Expenditures provide only one type of evidence which does not encompass the entire scope of government.  Governments freuquently rely on regulations and laws to force compliance rather than spending.  Often, even if government decides to use financial resources, the functions and responsibilities may be diffused thoughout the variety of the levels of government including local and provincial or state levels of government.
             
Part III. Long Essay

Responding to economic and political crisis through the use of privatization requires careful planning and implementation because the government is already seen as being illegitmate.  If public opinion is not in favor of privatization, this is paticularlly the case. Often advocates of public sector reform look to privatization as a panacea for ailing governments and budgetary crisis and assume that models of privatization developed in OECD can readily be applied to developing nations.

As an advisor to the privatization effort underway in a developing economy, the following questions are pertinent.  First, is the bureaucracy capable of managing the privatization effort.  While this may appear straight-forward, in reality, privatization requires an assessment within government departments and agencies to determine that which is suitable for privatization. Without the proper technical tools, (e.g., management and accounting training), the privatization effort would likely fail.  Once the decision is made what to privatize, the bureaucracy must be able to carry out the privatization and still be able to maintain control.  Control is critical especially if the privatization involves services which directly affect citizens.  If control cannot be maintained, the legitimacy of the government could decline further if service delivery and quality are compromised.

Another important idea which must be addressed is that of competition and transparency.  If competition does not exist or is severely limited because of the command structure of the past economy, then privatization will not necessary lead to better service or lower costs.  If a market economy does not exist, then the government may not receive fair value for enterprises privatized.  

Lastly, privatization is likely to lead to short-term economic dislocations in the economy, in terms of initial increases in the cost of products produced or services rendered because the products were previously provide below costs.  As a result, consumer dissatisfaction can be transferred to political discontent as prices of products increase.  Coupled with increased unemployment resulting from the shedding of employees, the legitimacy of the regime will decrease over the short-term.