The identity of Public Administration as a discipline

Lorenz von Stein, an 1855 German professor from Vienna, is considered the founder of the science of public administration in many parts of the world. In the time of Von Stein, public administration was considered a form of administrative law, but Von Stein believed this concept too restrictive. He taught that public administration relies on many pre-established disciplines such as sociology, political science, administrative law and public finance. Further, public administration is an integrating science.

Public administrators need be concerned with both theory and practice. Practical considerations are at the forefront of the field, but theory is the basis of best practices.

Public administration is a science because knowledge is generated and evaluated according to the scientific method.

The identity of the academic discipline of Public Administration and the “battleground of administrative theory” has been discussed on both sides of the Atlantic since World War II. Some theorists believe that the crisis concerns the question: is Public Administration a unified, coherent study sufficiently independent from other studies? Given PA as a study must draw upon a variety of approaches to understand public administration, then PA cannot be anything but a differentiated study and that continuous crisis is, in fact, its identity. Other scientists indicate that Public Administration theory draws its greatest strength and its most serious limitation from this diversity. On the one hand, Public Administration theorists are required to understand a broad range of perspectives relevant to their theory building task. On the other hand, the diversity of Public Administration often means that the field lacks a sense of identity. In organizing the study of Public Administration we ought to consider what government is and reflect about its core functions (the governance of society). It is from this basis that we can start to develop a coherent study of PA.

The focus of PA as an academic discipline has very much depended on the background and orientation of the academic community leading PA research and teaching in their particular countries. As the field has been developed and transformed during the 1990s, individuals, not governmental objectives or structures have designed the identity of PA in the various CEE countries. It may be argued that this is also a feature of the discipline in Western Europe.

The discipline of Public Administration, “government in action”, is therefore academic and professional at the same time. This can easily raise the question whether PA education should be more skill-based or “technocratic”, on one hand, or addressing more fundamental values of public administration, on the other. Public sector goals can be conflicting by combining values which in their transfer to concrete policy proposals may tend to be contradictory. For instance, several ‘democratic’ goals such as representativeness, transparency, equal opportunities, equal access to services, citizen participation in decision-making etc. may be conflicting with more ‘technocratic’ goals such as efficiency, effectiveness, value-for-money or fast decision-making. This kind of contradiction can be especially hard to understand in CEE countries, where the above-mentioned democratic principles are not as ingrained and broadly accepted as in countries with long democratic traditions, and where limited resources put pressure on governments to follow “technocratic” goals. The dilemma of democratic versus technocratic goals may, in turn, affect the way the discipline of PA is perceived and developed in particular societies.

Finally, it is obvious that the Europeanization of public administration will substantially change not only how the public administrations work in Member States but also the identity of the field of PA as an academic discipline. If Public Administration wants to be in line, or ideally, ahead of the developments in public administration practice, it has to take into account the European context in the research and teaching of each sub-field within Public Administration.

3. Find Russian equivalents.

(n) concept, discipline, science, consideration, forefront, battleground,

variety, approach, identity, feature, value, transparency, goal, development, resource, core.

(adj.) technocratic, contradictory, relevant, fundamental, various, coherent, restrictive, pre-established, equal, concrete, contradictory.

(v) rely on, accept, ingrain, perceive, put pressure, reflect, combine, design, affect, follow, tend, transform, lack, concern, consider.

4. Read and translate the following texts into Russian.

Text 1