Meaning of Public Administration

Dwight Waldo

Public Administration is the study of government in action. Public administration as a phrase leads or lends itself to two types of interpretations.

1.      An area of Practice or an Area of activity- It is concerned with the activity of the government or the state.

2.      An area of Study or Discipline- It primarily refers to the study of government in action. As a discipline, it is not easy to define because till now there have been a large number of efforts to define public administration by a great number of scholars and thereby, there have also been a large number of definitions trying to explain the meaning of public administration. There is no single definition which carries unanimity among the scholars or there is no single definition which captures the meaning of public administration in totality.

Dwight Waldo says that

“Public administration is a study of government in action. The government in action is never static, is ever changing and that is why it becomes difficult to capture fully. A single sentence definition or a single para definition is a mental paralysis rather than enlightenment which restricts the view rather than broadening it.”

Irrespective of the fact that a unanimous definition of Public administration is not possible because of its fluidic nature, still we can go for an acceptable view of public administration by looking into various definitions. Let us start this process with the Semantics of Public Administration.

Semantics of Public Administration

It comprises of two terms- public and administration. If we take into account, administration, it is an English term having a Latin origin. It has developed out of two Latin terms, Ad and Ministrare. It means to serve or to look after. Thus, administration means to look after the people. A theorist called as E.N. Gladden says that Administration is a long and pompous term but carries a humble meaning. The term ‘Public’ has been discussed and debated differently by a number of theorists. Few have referred to it as people, few have referred to it as citizen, and few have even identified it with public opinion. The ‘public’ in Public Administration has been given an identity by Dwight Waldo which carries a large amount of acceptance. Waldo refers to it as the state or the government. Thus, Public Administration is nothing but government administration. The public administration would mean the activities of the government which are primarily directed towards the welfare or well-being of the people or looking after the people. In terms of semantics, it would mean a service oriented responsibility or activity by the government.

But, the meaning of public administration is not as simple as has been given under the semantics point of view.

Narrow View Theorists- Simon, Thompson, Nigro etc. have emphasized that public administration as a discipline means study of the executive branch of the government. This view has been contested by the Broad View Theorists- Broad View theorists refer to the theorists like Willoughby, Gladden, Dimock etc. According to them, public administration as a discipline is the study of all the three organs of the state i.e. legislature, executive and judiciary.

Some theorists believe that public administration as a discipline means the study of authoritative allocation of values by the state. They emphasize that the study cannot be taken up in isolation only by restricting it to the state as there has to be the study of the whole of the political system. It is the study of state in action in the background of the whole of the political system. It includes study of public media, legislature, political parties and other such institutions which are part of the state and the political system. It is one of the most acceptable definitions of public administration.

There is another group of theorists comprising of L.D. Whyte, Woodrow Wilson, Dimock etc. who say that Public administration as a discipline means the study of implementation or the enforcement of public law. Whyte says that it consists of all those activities having for their purpose of fulfilment of public law.

Wilson says that public administration means the detailed and systematic application of public law. This definition suffers from a limitation. The limitation being that the definition makes public administration too legalistic or too formalistic. This definition tries to say that public administration refers to only those activities that are taken up to fulfil the public law. It does not take into account all those activities where the action of the state is not consistent with the policies of the state.

There is a group of theorists who emphasize that public administration refers to all those activities of the state those are undertaken in order to attain public Weal. This definition suffers from some very serious limitations. This is because not necessarily every action of the government is directed towards welfare of the people. This is especially true in case of authoritarian regimes.

POSDCORB view emphasizes that public administration as a discipline means the study of tools and techniques of the administration.

This view has been contested by the subject matter view or content view or substantive view. This view believes that public administration as a discipline is a study of public policy or the programmatic concerns of the state. Public policy is the study of government and the government is concerned with a number of functional activities. Thereby, to understand the government, it is very important to understand these functional activities. Under this view, it has been emphasized that the study of the tools and techniques of administration is not and cannot be the most important areas of study rather for appropriateness of the tools and techniques; it is to be understood in the background of the programmatic concerns of the state or the public policy. Public policy is the expression of the mind or will of the state. It explains what the state intends to do and what the state does not intend to do.

There is also a contemporary view which came up in the light of Neo-liberalism. This definition says that public administration means the study of all those activities which are funded out of the tax-payer’s money. This definition is not restricting its ambit only to the government institutions but also the institutions which are either fully funded or partially funded by the government. It is also a widely accepted definition of public administration.

Another group of theorists say that Public administration as a discipline means the study of

1.      Executive, Legislature and Judiciary

2.      Political System i.e. the study of political parties, public media, civil society, naxalism, terrorism etc.

3.      The study of tools and techniques of administration.

4.      The study of public policy.

5.      The study of all those activities funded out of tax-payer’s money.

Finally, Frederick C. Mosher says that it is best that it (Public Administration) not be defined.