Suchergebnisse

Books reviewed:Richard Stillman II, Creating the American State: The Moral Reformers and the Modern Administrative World They Made.Camilla Stivers, Bureau Men, Settlement Women: Constructing Public Administration in the Progressive Era.David H. Rosenbloom, Building a Legislative‐Centered Public Administration: Congress and the Administrative State—1946–1999.

E-Government consists of a strategic instrument for re-formulating the organization and the operation of Public Administrations, acting as a catalyst of trends and changes. It not only represents a resource that allows economic and operational advantages to be obtained, but is also an instrument that is capable of modifying the pre-existing operational mechanisms of the organization, guaranteeing a fast adaptation to continuous changes in the external environment. The use of e-Government not only facilitates the internal activities of the Public Administration, but also has the advantage of facilitating the relationship between different administrations, as well as the interaction with citizens and with businesses. The impact that e-Government can have is that of a better Public Administration, in that it allows public policies to be optimized, the quality of services to be raised, the involvement of the citizens to be widened, and other specific fundamental activities to be improved.The present work intends to illustrate the comprehensive framework of the public administration system in Italy and of the main tendencies in progress, paying particular attention to the development of new management logic, considering e-Government not only as a merely technological phenomenon, but also analyzing it in its full meaning with regards to the process of change and modernization of the public administration.

Intro -- Endorsements -- Acknowledgment -- Abbreviations -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: A Public Administration Perspective on International Organizations -- Introduction -- Perspectives and Gaps -- Contours of a PA Approach to IPAs -- Central Conceptual Perspectives on IPAs -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 2: A Matter of Will and Action: The Bureaucratic Autonomy of International Public Administrations -- Introduction -- Bureaucratic Autonomy: The PA Perspective -- Bureaucratic Organization at the International Level: How Is It Different? -- Approaching Autonomy from a Relational and Sociological Perspective -- Conceptualizing and Measuring International Bureaucratic Autonomy -- Empirical Results and Possible Implications -- Conclusion and Way Forward -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 3: Administrative Styles of International Organizations: Can We Find Them, Do They Matter? -- Introduction -- Administrative Styles: State of the Art and Research Gaps -- A Refined Concept of Administrative Styles -- (1) Policy Initiation Styles -- (2) Policy Drafting Styles -- (3) Policy Implementation Styles -- Toward Explanation: Determinants of Administrative Styles -- (1) The Policy Ambitions of the Bureaucracy -- (2) The Institutional Orientation of a Bureaucracy -- Four Ideal Types of Administrative Styles -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4: Orchestrating (Bio-)Diversity: The Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity as an Attention-­Seeking Bureaucracy -- Introduction -- Heuristic Framework: International Secretariats as Attention-Seeking Bureaucracies -- Treaty Secretariats as Attention-Seeking Bureaucracies -- Seeking Attention from the Inside: Treaty Secretariats' Cooperation with Chairpersons of Multilateral Negotiations.

"Public Administration Ethics for the 21st Century lays the ethical foundations for a uniform professional code of ethics for public administrators, civil servants, and non-profit administrators in the US. Martinez synthesizes five disparate schools of ethical thought as to how public administrators can come to know the good and behave in ways that advance the values of citizenship, equity, and public interest within their respective organizations. Using case studies, he teaches American administrators how to combine the approaches of all five schools to evaluate and resolve complex ethical dilemmas within the constraints of the U.S. democratic values set. Martinez enunciates the common ethical principles that guide public administrators in their practice within the specific ethical parameters and organizational cultures of a myriad entities at the federal, state, and local levels of government in the United States, as well as in non-profit organizations. Along the way, Martinez addresses a number of crucial issues, including personal gain, conflict of interest, transparency, democratic impartiality, hiring, hierarchical discipline, media relations, partisan pressure, appointments by elected officials, and whistle-blowing. The striking, high-profile case studies - Nathan Bedford Forrest, Adolph Eichmann, Lieutenant William Calley, and Mary Ann Wright - illustrate ethical dilemmas where, for better or worse, the individual was at odds with the organization."--Publisher's description

Disappointing results and negative consequences of government reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM) ideas have recently stimulated Public Administration scholars to develop alternative approaches to governance. Prominent alternatives in current debates are the Neo-Weberian State, Public Value Management, new arrangements of civic participation, and evidence-based policy making. In this article, the authors build on a reconstruction of the ideas of Alasdair MacIntyre to argue that these alternatives are likely to become as disappointing after their implementation as NPM, as they share its basic modernist and managerialist flaws. They believe MacIntyre's lessons for Public Administration point toward a more promising route. © 2011 SAGE Publications.

Several reasons can be identified which discourage issues from being defined as "ethical" issues in public policy making. One is the cost of resolving ethical issues, another is that it is harder to predict what the outcomes will be of argument and discussion about ethical issues, and a third is that identifying issues as ethical makes salient the prospect for allocating moral responsibility and blame. Efforts to increase the scope of market mechanisms are associated with avoidance of ethical issues, since markets offer routine, quasi-mechanical processes to resolve disagreement. However, to avoid definition of issues as ethical problems tends to push aside some concerns which it is important to address as part of human life.

Governments serve as a vehicle through which citizens, communities and societies express their values and preferences (Bourgon, 2007). Some of these values and preferences remain constant; while others change as societies confront new situations and evolve. Periodically, new values surface whose energy transforms the role of government and the practice of public administration. Reflecting back on the last three decades, we can see how public administrators around the world embarked on a journey of experimentation and innovation in response to changing circumstances and public expectations (Bourgon, 2008a). The nature and pace of change has been astonishing. The theme of the conference is `New Directions in the Study and Practice of Public Administration'. In addressing this theme, I will argue that the search for new directions in research and the practice of public administration should relate to the search for a new balance in the role of government.

In spite of alarms raised by economists and journalists over the decreasing availability of private pensions, relatively little is known about the topic. This paper explores the political aspects of pension policy, analyzing congressional hearings and organized interest group data from 1970 through 1994. Changes in committee influence, increased executive pressure for revenue without raising taxes, and interest group activity increasingly skewed toward business rather than workers are shown to underlie the present dilemma. This study thus adds to our understanding of pension policy and assesses current policy against competing theoretical models offered by pluralism, hyperpluralism, market as prison, and market justice. It concludes that pension policy is a case of market as prison and argues for renewed focus on the influence of private interests on public policy.