Definition of Public Administration

The Definition of Public Administration, developed in the early 1900s, is a special field of study within the academic discipline of political science. It emphasizes the structure and operation of bureaucracies and organizations, including budgeting, personnel, and formal and informal internal controls. Some public administration programs include study of the special management skills required in governmental (as distinct from private) organizations. It's always hard to make a simple, clear and precise definition to academic subjects, this also happens to public administration. Scholars have long been trying to use a simple phrase to define it, but yet after nearly half century of hard work, it still remains in vain. Although making progress, a perfect phrase length definition is still in process. So what is the problem of defining Public Administration? Some think that it's multidiscipline characteristics contribute to the absence of a common definition.

Now we will look at various definitions of public administration to better comprehend the concept:

· “Public administration…. is the action part of government, the means by which the purposes and goals of government are realized”;

· ‘Public administration as a field is mainly concerned with the means for implementing political values…”;

· It is a cooperative group effort in a public setting;

· It covers all the three branches — executive, legislative, and judicial — and their interrelationships;

· Public administration is the use of managerial, political, and legal theories and processes to fulfill the goals of government (welfare of public).

· “Public administration is the implementation of government policies. Today public administration is often regarded as including also some responsibility for determining the policies and programs of governments. Specifically, it is the planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling of government operations”

· Public administration can be broadly described as the development, implementation and study of branches of government policy. The pursuit of the public good by enhancing civil society, ensuring a well-run, fair, and effective public service are some of the goals of the field. Though public administration has historically referred to as government management, since the 1990s the term is sometimes expanded to encompass non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that also operate with a similar, primary dedication to providing services to the public.

· Public administration is also an academic field. In comparison with related fields such as political science, public administration is a relatively new, multidisciplinary field which only emerged in the 20th century. It draws on theories and concepts from economics, political science, sociology, administrative law, management, and a range of related fields. The goals of the field of public administration are related to the democratic values of improving equality, justice, security, efficiency, effectiveness of public services; business administration is primarily concerned with profit (article from American Society of Public Administration).

· Public administration has no generally accepted definition. The scope of the subject is so great and so debatable that it is easier to explain than define. Public administration is both a field of study, or a discipline, and a field of practice, or an occupation. There is much disagreement about whether the study of public administration can properly be called a discipline, largely because it is often viewed as a subfield of the 2 disciplines of political science and administrative science (or administration).

Read the following and answer the question given afterwards.

All these definitions explain us different dimension of the subjects. These definitions might confuse us and we might say that there is really no such subject as “public administration, ” but rather that public administration means different things to different observers and lacks a significant common theoretical or applied meaning, or we might say that public administration is everywhere. However, two things definitely emerge from the above definition. What are the y?

1. Before reading text 3 answer the following questions.

1. What is for you PA as a discipline?

2. Do you consider PA as a science?

3. What disciplines does the study of public administration overlap?

4. How do they correlate with each other? Give an example.

5. How would you identify PA as a scientific discipline? Prove your definition.

2. Read and translate the text into Russian.

Text 3