Strategies for Governing - Reinventing Public Administration

A strange new virus was let loose on the world some 50 years ago – so strange that it lacked a name. In 1975 it caused a report called “The Crisis of Democracy” to be produced; it made states “ungovernable” and/or “overloaded” but, in recent years, has acquired the name of “neoliberalism”.

In 1989 “the state” had crumbled – at least in eastern Europe – and a huge effort was made by international bodies and consultancies to try to encourage countries in that region build on western experience and create effective state bodies which would be responsive to public needs… and deal with the new socio-economic challenges which required dramatic changes in how all state bodies went about their business…

The Brits had started this fashion in the 1970s – but, by the 1990s, everyone wanted in on the act….In How did Admin Reform get to be so sexy? I suggest (on page 21) 15 questions on the best way into the most interesting (and extensive) writing about the reform of public services and noted that

- Different parts of the world have their own very different approaches and ways of talking about public sector reform. English language material has tended to dominate the literature (with an emhasis on learning from commerical practice); but
- Scandinavians, Germans and French let alone South Americans, Chinese and Indians have also developed important ideas and experience - of which English-speakers tend to be blithely unaware.
- We are overwhelmed by texts on reform experience but most written by academics – targeting their students and other academics. Where are the writers who can help the public make sense of it all?
- At least 8 very different groups have been active in shaping our thinking about “reform” efforts. These are - academics, politicians, think-tankers, global bodies, senior officials, consultants, journalists and an indeterminate group- each uses very different language and ideas
– with academics being the most prolific (but tending to talk in jargon amongst themselves; and therefore being ignored by the rest of us)- Some “old hands” have tried to summarise the experience for us in short and clear terms. The lesson, they suggest, is that little has changed…
- What is sad is how few “social justice” campaigners seem interested in this issue (Hilary Wainwright being an honourable exception….)
- and the public, suffering from a decade of austerity, have been left blithely 

unaware of the incestuous discussions the subject of state reform has been causing amonsgt the cognoscenti

The Covid pandemic, however, brought home to everyone the damage austerity had been doing to the social fabric. 

I have been rereading “STRATEGIES FOR GOVERNING - reinventing Public Administration for a dangerous century” which a Canadian academic, Alasdair Roberts, produced in 2019. It argues that -

The field of public administration took a wrong turn forty years ago, and slowly moved away from large and important questions about the governance of modern-day states. The purpose of this book is to map a way back to the main road.

This is a book about public administration and what its aims should be. It is intended for researchers in the field, practitioners in public service, and students preparing to become researchers or practitioners, but it will also interest readers concerned about building secure and thriving societies.

My argument is straightforward: In the United States, the field of public administration was launched almost a century ago by people with bold aspirations. They were not interested only in the efficiency of government offices; they wanted a thorough overhaul of the creaking American state so that it could manage the pressures of modern-day life.

Unfortunately, this expansive view of the field’s purpose has been lost. Over the last four decades in particular, the focus within the field has been mainly on smaller problems of management within the public sector.

This narrowing of focus might have made sense in the United States and a few other advanced democracies in the waning decades of the twentieth century, but it does not make sense today.

The challenge of governing was described by the Florentine diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli a half millennium ago. Machiavelli warned the rulers of Italian city-states such as his native Florence that their work was fraught with danger. Sometimes the threat was posed by other city-states, and sometimes it arose within the city walls because people were restless and hard to please. A clever leader sought advice on how to build institutions that would bolster his authority both inside and outside the city walls. But even strong institutions could be toppled by the tempest of public affairs. They had to be renovated constantly to keep up with changing conditions, and this was very hard to do. States that did not constantly renew themselves, Machiavelli warned, were likely to collapse.

Some commentators have suggested that Machiavelli lived in unusually precarious times. In some ways, though, the rulers of sixteenth-century Florence had it easy. Florence was merely a city-state: its walls contained only four square miles of territory and sixty thousand people. Today the average state has more than two hundred thousand square miles and more than thirty million people. Compared to Florence in 1500, China has a million times as much land and twenty-three thousand times as many people. The institutional apparatus required by a state like China is more vast and complex than anything Machiavelli could have imagined.

There are additional complications for today’s rulers. Machiavelli warned about renewing institutions to keep up with the times, but the world in which he lived was relatively stable. In important ways, it was not much different when he died in 1527 than when he’d been born sixty years earlier. By comparison, the pace of change today—social, economic, technological—is blistering. The planet’s current population of seven billion is also more restless: urbanized, literate, wired, and mobile. And they have higher expectations of their rulers. Standards for security and order, public services, and protection of human rights are more demanding today than they were in the sixteenth century. The leaders of modern-day states have a difficult assignment.

• They must devise a strategy for leading their countries toward security, order, prosperity, and justice.

• Next, they must design and build institutions that translate their strategy into practice.

• And then they must deal with the vicissitudes of time and chance, adapting strategies and institutions in response to altered circumstances and unexpected events.

The first self-styled school of public administration was established in 1922, and the first textbook in public administration, written by Leonard White of the University of Chicago, was published in 1926. Woodrow Wilson’s work did not get much attention until the 1930s, when professors of public administration invented a history for their new field, which included a contribution from a well-regarded then-recent president. The first generation of scholars and practitioners in public administration were tied to a political movement in American politics known as progressivism, which coalesced in the 1890s and gained strength over the next two decades. American society was convulsed during these years by the emergence of big industries and cities, stark inequality and labor unrest, a surge in immigration, extraordinary technological advances, and shifts in the international balance of power. Americans had great hopes for their country. But many also worried that events could spiral out of control. Institutions designed for a simpler time did not seem sufficient for new realities. “The government of the part of the world in which we live,” Luther Gulick warned, “is in many respects three generations behind our necessities.”3 Gulick was one of the leading figures in American public administration in the early twentieth century. He believed that progress required a complete reconstruction of the old order. The writer Walter Lippmann called this “the fitting of government to the facts of the modern world.”