IPA ASSIGNMENT II

NAME : DHARMESH KUMARAN

CLASS : 1st BA PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

ROLL NO : 20BPA003

DEPARTMENT : PUBLIC ADMINSTRTION

SUBJECT : INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION

TOPIC : NEW PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION

SUBMITTED TO : MR. B. CHANDRU MA, MPHILL

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION
NEW PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
INTRODUCTION:
The Minnowbrook Conference held under the patronage of Dwight Waldo gave rise
to ‘new public administration’ in the late 1960s. The following are the major landmarks in
the rise and growth of new public administration.

(i) The Honey Report on Higher Education For Public Service, 1967,in the USA.
(ii) The Philadelphia Conference on the Theory and Practice of Public
Administration, 1967, in the USA (Chairman: James C. Charlesworth)
(iii) Publication of Dwight Waldo’s Article Public Administration in a Time of
Revolutions
Toward a New Administration The Minnowbrook Perspective
Public Administration in a Time of Turbulence
New Public Administration

THE FIRST MINNOWBROOK CONFERENCE (1968)

The First Minnowbrook Conference was an off-shoot of two factors:

(i) The 1960’s in the USA was a time of turbulence due to war in Vietnam (in
which America over-involved), black American movements, urban riots,
campus unrest, political violence and so on. On the other hand, as Dwight
Waldo puts, “neither the study nor the practice of public administration was
responding in appropriate measure to mounting turbulence and critical
problems”. Robert T. Golembiewski says, “public administration was shaken
and affected by the turbulent or revolutionary 1960s, public
administrationists, the 1960s were like war”.
(ii) In 1960s, public administration came under the influence of younger
generation, which was feeling restless with the prevailing status of the
discipline as highlighted by the Honey Report and Philadelphia Conference. In
brief, public administration was facing some sort of ‘generation gap’. In
September 1968, thirty-three young scholars and practitioners of public
 administration gathered the Minnowbrook Conference Centre (Syracuse
university in USA) under the inspiring leadership of Dwight Waldo and
challenged the traditional public administration. It was this youth conference
on public administration, which gave rise to ‘new public administration’.

ANTI GOALS

According to Robert T.Golembiewski, the following three anti goals stand out
in new public administration—

(i) Its literature is anti –positivist which means

a. Rejecting a definition of public administration as ‘value-free’,
b. Rejecting a rationalist and perhaps determinist view of human kind, and
c. Rejecting any definition of public administration that was not properly
involved in policy (as was the case with the naïve politics—administration
dichotomy).
(ii) It is anti-technical, that is, it decries that the emotive – creative mankind is being
sacrificed to the logic of the machine and the system.
(iii) It is more or less anti-bureaucratic and anti-hierarchical.

GOALS OR THEMES

Frank Marini summarizes the themes of new public administration under five heads:
relevance, values, social equity, change and client-focus. These are explained below:

1. RELEVANCE : The new public administration points out that public administration
has traditionally been interested in efficiency and economy. It stresses that the
discipline had little to say about contemporary problems and issues and was
therefore becoming irrelevant. It demands meaningful studies oriented toward the
realities of social life.
2. Values : The new public administration , rejects the value-neutral stand taken by the
management oriented public administration. It makes clear its basic normative
concern in administrative studies. It advocates openness about the values being
served through administrative action.
 3. Social Equity : According to new public administration, the realization of social
equity should be the objective of public administration. Social equity means that
public administrators should become champions of the under-privileged sections of
the society. They should use their discretion in administering the programmes to
promote the interests of the poor.
4. Change : The new public administration emphasizes that the public officials should
become active agents of social change and non-believers in status-quo. It does not
allow enslavement to permanent institutions which become self-perpetuating power
centres of dominant classes. It suggests innovations in administrative machinery for
bringing about social transformation.
5. Client-focus: The new public administration advocates a client-focussed approach. It
stresses not only on providing goods and services to the clients but also giving them
a voice in how and when and what is to be provided. It requires positive, proactive
administrators rather than authoritarian and ivory-tower bureaucrats.

According to Robert T. Golembiewski, five goals (features) provide a sense of the

new public administration from a positive perspective (what it want to approach):

(i) It implies a view of mankind as being substantially malleable and potentially

perfectible. In its vision, people are in the process of becoming and growing.
This view contrasts with that of people as a constant factor of production.
(ii) Its pervasive theme is the demand for relevance. It stresses the central role
of personal and organisational values or ethics.
(iii) It advocates social equity as the most common vehicle for guiding the task of
human development. It recognises that administrative value-neutrality is
neither possible nor desirable.
(iv) It is determinedly relational as against the classical public administration’s
emphasis on organisations and their internal processes.
(v) It places a definite emphasis on innovation and change.

Dwight Waldo identified the positive and negative features of the new public
administration. Positively, it is a some sort of movement in the direction of
normative theory, philosophy, social concern and activism. Negatively, it turns away
 from positivism and scienticism. He pointed out that new public administration
projects three perspectives clearly:

(i) Client—oriented bureaucracy

(ii) Representative bureaucracy
(iii) People’s participation in administration

According to Frederickson, new public administration is:

(i) Less generic and more public.

(ii) Less descriptive and more prescriptive.
(iii) Less oriented toward considering what exists to be unalterable and more
oriented toward changing reality.
(iv) More ready to influence policies that can improve the equality of working
life, as well as more competent to implement such policies.
(v) Less institution – oriented and more oriented toward impact on client.
(vi) Less neutral and more normative.
(vii) Less sanguine about the applicability of the natural-science model to social
phenomena.
(viii) No Less scientific.

He (Frederickson) called the new public administration as ‘second generation

behaviourism’. On the social equity theme of new public administration, he asserted: “a
public which fails to work for changes which try to redress the deprivation of minorities will
likely be eventually used to repress those minorities. “However, he maintained that the
traditional roles of the executive and legislature would not be altered under the doctrine of
new public administration.

On the goals of new public administration, Nigro and Nigro observed: “Client-
focussed administration is recommended along with debureaucratisation, democratic
decision-making and decentralization of administrative process in the interest of more
effective and human delivery of public services.”
 The new public administration is similar to development administration in one
aspect—both are goal-oriented as well as change-oriented. However, it is primarily
concerned with Western societies, unlike development administration.

CRITICISM

Though new public administration movement brought public administration closer

to political science, it was criticised anti-positivist, anti-theoretic and anti-management.

Campbell argues that it “differs from the old public administration only in that it is
responsive to a different set of societal problems from those of other periods”.

Robert T.Golembiewski describes it as “revolution or radicalism in words, and (at

best) status-quo in skills or technologies.” He opines that it must be counted a partial
success, at best and perhaps only a cruel reminder of the gap in the field between aspiration
and performance. He considers it as a temporary or transitional phenomena and thought
that wisdom might be to simply allow its memory to further fade away.

Carter and Duffey doubts whether the social equity is actually getting recognized as
an established objective of public administration, apart from the prevailing objectives of
efficiency, effectiveness and accountability.

Dunn and Fozouni argue that the new public administration has resulted in the
propagation of an illusion of paradigm shift or paradigm revolution within the field.

Further, the cries opine that the protagonists of new public administration are trying
to arrogate to the public administration what actually falls within the legitimate sphere of
political institutions, political processes and political leadership.
SIGNIFICANCE

Inspite of the above limitations, Nigro and Nigro observe that the new public
administration has seriously jolted the traditional concepts and outlook of the discipline and
enriched the subject by imparting a wider perspective and by linking it closely to the society.
Further, they say that it has certainly broken fresh ground and imparted new substance to
the discipline of public administration. What is new in it is the advocacy of social equity role
recommended for the administrator. They conclude by saying that, “Clearly, advocates of
the New Public Administration have stimulated constructive debate and their emphasis
upon the positive, moral goals of administration should have a lasting impact . Since the
New Public Administration emerged, questions of values and ethics have remained major
items in Public administration.”

Ramesh K. Arora opines that new public administration movement has provided
solid foundation to the post-behavioural revolution initiated by David Easton and others.
According to him, it has:

(i) Strengthened the policy science perspective.

(ii) Struck a coup de grace to politics – administration dichotomy.
(iii) Intensified the public administration community’s self-awareness , ecological
orientation, activism and commitment.
(iv) Pushed the discipline towards greater relevance.
(v) Brought the academic field and the profession of public administration
closer.
(vi) Strengthened client-orientation in administration.
(vii) Supported the movement of democratic humanism in public organisations.
(viii) Produced greater awareness for internal democracy though genuine
participation in public systems.

THE SECOND MINNOWBROOK CONFERENCE

The Second Minnowbrook conferences was held in September 1988, that is, exactly
twenty years after the original Minnowbrook Conference (which was held in September
1968).
 According to Frederickson, the Second Minnowbrook Conference was designed to
compare and contrast the changing epochs of public administration.

The two Minnowbrook differed in respects of composition, tone and orientation,

thematic emphasis and social environment. These are mentioned below in the Table

MINNOWBROOK—I Vs MINNOWBROOK—II

MINNOWBROOK—I (1968) MINNOWBROOK—II (1988)

1. Its composition was narrow the sense 1. Its composition was wider in the sense
that most of the participants had a that the participants had been trained
political science background. in law, economics, planning, policy
analysis, policy studies and urban
studies
2. Its mood, tone, temper and orientation 2. Its mood, tone, temper and orientation
was contentious, confrontational, was more civil, more practical, more
radical, and revolutionary pragmatic, less radical and more
respectful to senior professionals.
3. It laid emphasis on relevance, values, 3. It laid emphasis on leadership,
social equity, change and client-focus. constitutional and legal perspective,
technology policy and economic
perspectives.
4. It was decidedly anti-behavioural 4. It was more perceptive to the
contributions of the social and
behavioural science to public
administration.
5. Its social environment was marked by 5. Its social environment was marked by a
strong cynicism towards government. growing demand for retreat of the
It challenged public administration to state in the forms of governmental
make it pro-active to major social cutback, privatisation, voluntarism,
issues. social capacity building and third-party
government. It retreated from an
action perspective.

However, the Minnow brook II Conference included many of the themes and areas
of the Minnow brook I Conference such as social equity, ethics, human relations,
accountability, reconciling public administration with in democracy, and administrative
leadership. Moreover, both the conferences shared concern for the state of the discipline
of public administration. This ensured a continuity in thinking.