Public administration can be difficult to define as what is public and private varies between societies. It has evolved to encompass more than just carrying out laws, and now involves policy initiation and implementation across all three branches of government. It can be defined as cooperative group effort within a public setting that is involved in policy formulation and differs from private administration due to public oversight. The study of public administration now emphasizes policy analysis and evaluation in recognition of the administrative role in policy development.

1. What Is Public Administration?
Even providing a descriptive definition of
public administration is difficult. What is
“public” and what is “private” will vary
greatly from society to society. Public
administration has become “government’s
central instrument for dealing with general
social problems.”

2. Especially since the 1930s, the executive
branch of government has been the focus
for policy and program initiation as well as
implementation; thus, public
administration has come to mean far more
than simply those activities associated with
carrying out legislative acts and judicial
orders.

3. THE ROLES OF THE THREE BRANCHES
One approach to defining public
administration is to identify how it relates
to the three traditional branches of
government: the executive, the
legislative, and the judicial.

4. Legislative and Administrative Powers
Administration as execution―that is, carrying
out laws passed by the legislature. This view
makes a clear distinction between legislative
and administrative powers: The legislative
demonstrates the former when it passes a law,
but what the executive branch then does with
that law becomes “administration.”

5. The legislative and executive branches are
not completely separate entities. The latter
has the administrative power; thus, public
administration is “what the executive
branch does.” The judiciary stands apart
from administration, deciding cases
between private parties and restraining
public administrators from
unconstitutional, illegal, and arbitrary acts.

6. Other Involvement of Legislatures in
Administration
Legislatures directly oversee the activities of
some administrative agencies, such as, at the
national level, the Government Printing Office,
the Library of Congress, the Congressional
Budget Office, and the General Accounting
Office, which have important functions and
employ substantial numbers of workers.

7. Thus, every day’s work in an administrative
agency is characterized by very close
relationships between the executive and
legislative branches―a pattern of continuous
executive-legislative interaction found at all
levels of government.

8. Considered as a process― that is, as the use of
a body of knowledge and techniques for the
effective management of any
enterprise―administration is needed in
legislatures just as in other entities. If they are
to function satisfactorily, legislatures must
constantly improve their own internal
organization and procedures; their failure to do
so accounts for much of today’s dissatisfaction
with lawmakers. Thus, looking at the legislature
from the inside, we find that it needs good
administration.

9. The Judiciary
The Judiciary has long been a powerful force in
shaping public administration, and it is increasingly
so in present times, as members of the general
public, government employees, inmates of
institutions, and others press their rights in court.
When the courts determine the constitutionality of
legislative enactments and administrative acts, they
are determining what kinds of public services can be
rendered and under what conditions, such as when
the federal courts established the requirement for
desegregation of the public schools.

10. Besides ruling on constitutional
requirements, the courts also protect
against ultra vires acts―that is, when the
officials exceed their legal authority. Court
actions are instituted by individual citizens,
public-interest groups, other organizations,
and even legislators to force public
officials to take action required by law or
to desist from incorrect interpretations of
their responsibilities under the law.

11. POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION
The administration-policy dichotomy is the
basis for another attempt at definition: Policy is
made by the legislative in the form of laws and
is carried out by the executive branch. At first
glance this interpretation may seem identical to
to the distinction between legislative and
administrative powers.

12. Early writers in public administration made
a distinction between policy and
administration. They were anxious to keep
politics out of administration; legislators
represented politics, and with their allies in
the party organizations and their
influences on the administration in power,
they could prevent the professionalization
of the public service. Accordingly, the
concept of a neutral, nonpolicy-making
bureaucracy developed.

13. Not only do administrative officials have more
policy decisions to make, but the problems they
must resolve are more difficult, sometimes
exceedingly so. Goals established in the enabling
legislation are typically stated in very general
terms. In effect, even in implicitly, lawmakers
request the administrative agencies to study the
problems more and develop policy solutions. Many
of the problems may remain insoluble, but the
point is that the administrative branch bears the
heaviest responsibility for typing to solve them.

14. ADMINISTRATION AND POLITICS
It should be evident that there is no clear
separation between administration and
politics. “The exercise of discretionary
power, the making of value choices, is a
characteristic and increasing function of
administrators and bureaucrats; they are
thus importantly engaged in politics.”

15. Any participation in the formulation of
public policies entails involvement in
politics; it is a political act when an
administrator recommends legislation and
makes policy decisions in carrying out a law.
Since the politics is “the process by which
power and influence are acquired and
exercised,” public officials who seek power
and influence with legislators and pressure
groups in support of the programs they
administer participate in the political
process.

16. PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Any definition of public administration must
deal with how it is similar to, or different
from, private administration. The similarities
are great, for administration as a process is
by no means to the public sector. Every
human organization, the key to successful
operation is the effective utilization of
human and physical resources.

17. This is the work of administration or, as it is
also frequently called, management. The
problems of all public organizations are not
the same, just as the problems of private
ones vary from company to company. Each
organization, public or private, must meet
the challenges of its particular environment.
The exact form of administration varies
according to the kind of undertaking.

18. Because the legislature and the general
public are directly concerned with its
actions, no public organization can ever be
exactly the same as a private one. In public
administration, everything a government
agency does is the public’s business. Tax
money is being used, so every citizen has
the right to know how it is spent and to
criticize the decisions of public officials.
Public officials operate in a goldfish bowl;
they are constantly subject to searching
outside scrutiny.

19. Private companies want satisfied clients, and
they are also increasingly subject to
government regulation, all of which makes
public relations an important element in
business success. Nevertheless, companies
still remain private in character, and their
internal operations are to a large extent their
own business and not that of the general
public. Government is different also in that
no private company can equal it in its size
and in the diversity of its activities.

20. DEFINITION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
We have traveled a long way in the search
for a satisfactory definition of public
administration, but the reason for doing so
can now be appreciated. No condensed
definition can encompass all of the
preceding points. Those characteristics can,
however, be presented in the form of a brief
summary that will constitute the definition.

21. Public Administration
1. is cooperative group effort in a public setting;
2. covers all three branches of government―executive,
legislative, and judicial―and their interrelationships.
3. has an important role in the formulation of public
policy and is thus a part of the political process;
4. is different in significant ways from private
administration;
5. is closely associated with numerous private groups
and individuals in providing services to the
community.

22. THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
We offer an explanation of the statement
made earlier that public administration as a
field of study is substantially different today
from what it was at its inception. The
difference involves not only the offerings at
academic institutions but also the subjects
dealt with in the literature of the field and
discussed at meetings of the professional
societies.

23. Public Administration and Policy Analysis
The preceding discussion emphasized an important
role that the administrative branch plays in policy
formulation. The effectiveness of public programs
depends greatly upon how wisely this policy
formulation function is carried out how thoroughly
the actual results achieved with these programs are
evaluated. We use the term policy analysis to cover
both these aspects of the policy role of public
administration.

24. THE INCREASED INTEREST IN POLICY
ANALYSIS
For various reasons, public policy-making in
presently undergoing critical scrutiny. The
general public is much concerned with
government policies, as are legislators,
administrators, interest groups, the media, and
others. The larger the scope of government, the
more important the role of public policy, and
that scope is continually being enlarged.

25. The public is better educated, better
informed, and more insistent on
participating in the formulation and
administration of policies. Government,
like other contemporary institutions,
possesses the knowledge and means to
influence human destinies greatly, with
dangerous consequences if errors are
made in the policies adopted.

26. Since public administration has long had
an action-and-application orientation, it is
one of the fields now emphasizing policy
analysis. Even when the focus was limited
to management processes, the study of the
actual functioning of public agencies was
reform movements. When the
administration-policy dichotomy was
discarded, detailed analyses of policy
formulation began to be made.

27. Other writers have analyzed the role of pressure
groups―including administrative agencies―in the
formulation and administration of policy, stressing the
power exercised in particular policy areas by coalitions
of lobbying organizations, public administrators, and
individual legislators. The relationship between
organizational form and policy preferences was
documented, and the so-called Politics of Organization
emerged as a standard topic in the study of
administration. Comparative administration developed
as a distinct field, one of its contributions being to
show the relationship between cultural characteristics
and government choices.

28. SOME KEY POINTS ABOUT PUBLIC POLICY
Political scientist Charles O. Jones makes a
number of general observations about public
policy that provide a good beginning point for
consideration of policy analysis. 12 of Jones’s
“propositional assumptions”:

29. 1. Events in society are interpreted in different ways
by different people at different times.
2. Many problems may result from the same event.
3. People have varying degrees of access to the policy
process in government.
4. Not all public problems are acted in government.
5. Many private problems are acted on in government.
6. Most problems are not solved by government.

30. 7. “Policymakers are not faced with a given problem”
8. Problems and demands are constantly being defined
and redefined in the policy process.
9. Policymakers sometimes define problems for people
who have not defined problems for themselves.
10. Much policy is made without the problem’s ever
having been clearly defined.
11.All policy systems have a bias.
12.No ideal policy system exists apart from the
preferences of the architect of that system.