Marxian Traditions and their Approach to Public Administration

Karl Marx has often been cited as the most powerful personality in the history of human civilization. He was a philosopher while being an economist, a socialist who was also a journalist and a historian who proposed the materialist conception of history. His views regarding his areas of work and interests are collectively termed as Marxian.

Karl Marx was a rebel in many ways which also contributed to his abilities to look and understand beyond the obvious. He firmly believed that the world cannot be changed just by generating ideas; changes can be brought in, only by real, physical activity. Even as s student Marx was deeply influenced by the work of German philosopher G.W.F.Hegel. It was Hegel who inspired Marx to switch from legal studies to philosophy; a fact Marx admitted in a letter to his father, justifying his decision. What is interesting is that, Hegel and his inspiration did not prevent Marx from comprehending the lacunae between the rational and the real in the philosophies of Hegel. One of his important works was his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the Right. It is advisable to the reader to do a little background study about the philosophy and works of G.W.F. Hegel, to understand the above discussion in a better light.

It would only make sense to point out to the readers at this stage is that Marx wrote very little about bureaucracy as such, and mostly after 1843. However whatever little he wrote gives a clear understanding of his stand regarding the need and relevance of bureaucracy in a modern State. Marx believed that understanding the functionalism and structuralism of bureaucracy was critical because it is the political expression of the division of labor.

In his The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx calls France as the abode to bureaucracy as opposed to Germany which in his opinion, up until then was the supreme example of oppressive bureaucratic conditions in the states. He suggests that bureaucracy create conditions which subjects people to gross manipulations.

Another important deviation from the Hegel influence can be viewed in the manner Marx and Hegel understood bureaucracy. According to Hegel public administration was a bridge between the State and civil societies. The state through bureaucracy joined various particular interest to arrive at one general interest.

On the other hand Marx viewed that the State did not represent the general interest but the interests of the ruling or the dominant class. And obvious enough, this class was a part of the civil society. He went on to say that in a capitalist economy, the bureaucracy is aligned with the dominant class and it masquerades the interests of this dominant class as the general interest which is subsequently forced on the society.

While reading Marx on bureaucracy one can visualize it as an oppressive, mysterious system beyond the understanding or control of common people. It has certain symbols and secret ways of working and staunch traditions which makes it inherently incompetent in so many ways. Lenin was a follower of Marxian approach on bureaucracy and had ruled out any scope of it when the capitalism would be thrown out of Russian. But, after 1917, when he came into power, he could not help but rely on bureaucracy to help him run the State.

Marx was never oblivious to the growing popularity of bureaucracy and the need of public administration as an aspect of Government functioning, around the world. Nevertheless, this promulgation of bureaucracy did not prevent him to see the dangerous loopholes it carried.

The Future of Public Administration

Future belongs to Flexible Public Sector rather than Machine Bureaucracies

As the world around us is changing with concomitant changes in politics, business, economics, and society, the field of public administration cannot be aloof from the need to innovate and change. As the public sector in many developed countries feels the need to move beyond the static and machine bureaucratic paradigm, the public sector in the third world and the developing countries is also in the throes of adapting to the broader changes happening in society.

With the increased awareness among the citizenry and the rapid spread of information along with use of technology and social media, the public sector in the west and the east has to wake up to the new realities and cannot be an ostrich or a fossil among the nimble and agile private sector. This is the key theme of this article that looks at the future of public administration around the world in an era of rapid change. There cannot be a more compelling case for proactive public sector rather than a reactive public sector as the future catches them and they can only survive by adapting to the future.

Need for Change and Innovation

The Great Recession of 2008 put paid hopes to the public sector in the west as the bureaucrats were suddenly faced with shrinking budgets, downsizing, and a general tendency to squeeze the public sector to get “more bang for the buck”. This meant that the public sector in the west had to innovate to cope with the broader changes in the countries. Innovation is often defined as the ability to create something new and find newer ways of doing things. This means that the public sector in the west had to find innovative ways to save money, cut down on costs, and generate more returns for their investments.

On the other hand, the public sector in the east had to contend with radical changes as the long-suffering masses who were frustrated with red tape and bureaucrats finally summoned the courage to use technology and protest to fight against them. Further, many governments in the developing world faced pressure to divest their stakes in the public sector and make the bureaucrats more accountable as they needed to generate funds for the other items on their agendas. The net result of all these pressures meant that the public sector in the east had to change fast as otherwise they would be faced with disruption and obsolescence.

Ways to Innovate and Change

The ways in which the public sector can innovate include using technology more proactively, collaborating and communicating within and with the external world, adopting a more humane approach to administration and attending to the grievances of the citizenry, and most importantly “walking the talk” which meant that they had to not only declare their intent but also have to act accordingly. In other words, merely having a gazette is not enough and the public servants have to follow it in the spirit of the law as well as the letter of the law. As for using technology and social media, the public sector and the public managers are gradually taking to IT to communicate and collaborate among themselves as well as with the external world. The other key imperative here is that public sector managers must not initiate a change and then give up midway because of resistance from vested interests and those with hidden agendas. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing public sector managers is that they plan to work but not work to the plan.

Some Recent Trends in Public Administration

In the United States, there has been a lot of criticism on the bureaucrats who were seen as holding up approvals and sanctions to the projects initiated by the private sector. Further, with outsourcing and Offshoring of many routine activities as well as the use of contractors to get the job done, the public sector in the United States has been forced to embrace innovation and change. As many experts aver, the government of the future is simpler, leaner, and more nimble rather than the behemoths that they are at the moment. The outcry against big government has reached such a crescendo that the Defense Department in the United States has more or less outsourced almost all peripheral activities and has only retained its core staff for the managerial and the combat functions. This example illustrates how the public sector in the United States is operating in the context of the changing governmental landscape.

The Government of the Future

The first item for the government of the future would be to remove the opaqueness and the secrecy surrounding its activities and instead embrace accountability and transparency as the motto. For instance, the government of the future is one where the citizenry is made aware of the decisions taken by it rather than hiding under archaic laws and regulations in the name of confidentiality. Apart from this, the government of the future is one that is proactive instead of reactive where it anticipates the changing trends and responds accordingly instead of knee jerk reactions to events and incidents. This means that the public servants have to be responsive to all the stakeholders including their superiors, the elected representatives, and most importantly the citizenry instead of favoring a particular section over the other. In other words, the government of the future would be responsive instead of secretive and accountable instead of resorting to blame game, and would be transparent instead of being opaque.

DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

What is Development Administration ?

The traditional approach towards administration has been limited in its scope and premise, the core of which was strict adherence to laid down rules and hierarchy. In essence it has limited the role administration to that of a fire fighter or overseer of law and order in the comfort of laid down principals. While, nothing is wrong in this approach, if society is utopian but, in a more practical sense it causes problems. Since, bureaucracy is that arm of government which is responsible for executing plans and allocating resources at the grassroots, it is imperative that they take some risks and be innovative in approach, especially more so when the nation is a developing one.

Development Administration is about projects, programs, policies and ideas which are focused at development of a nation, with the point of view of socio-economic and socio-political development of society in general, carried out by talented and skilled bureaucrats.

A model of Development Administration must contain the following points.

• It should reject status quo and be directed towards change and more so towards results. It is result oriented at its core and every development function should have a defined objective.
• Planning is essential to decide the framework of resources and time to be allotted for a development function.
• Innovation. It is dynamic in approach and encourages new and better ways to achieve objectives.
• It should focus on planning for the people as well as with the people. It is people-centered, must empower society as a whole and not product or profit-centered.

The concept of Development Administration should be understood using two concepts Administration of Development and administrative Development.

Administration of Development: Resources are scarce, material or human thus the need to make optimum utilization of available resources and making new means for development gathers importance. So administration of development involves following objectives:

• Innovation at all levels of planning.
• Importance to the development at grassroots level.
• Development of human capital as a resource.
• Politics and administration must go hand in hand to establish rapid change in society and bring about just and distinct social order.
• Freedom of administrative machinery to express ideas, views for the most effective and efficient use of natural resources.

Administrative Development: For effective Development Administration the structure of Administration itself must be empowered, large and capable enough to sustain the pressures by the developmental activities. In simpler words it means to develop administrative health by rationalizing and institution building and bringing about a radical change in the administrative framework, from the traditionalist approach, to handle and create socio-economic and political development and social change. In essence the objective of Administrative development can be summarized as:

• Building decision making capabilities.
• Development of skill and specialization to tackle complex issues in the personnel.
• Giving importance to training, effective use of technology to bring about change in Administrative approach.
• Increasing administrative capacity, capabilities, removing corruption and bringing in more accountability.
• Creating leaders out of bureaucrats for promotion of development initiatives.

To achieve development goals it is necessary to that there is proper planning, optimum utilization of resources, skilled personnel, accountability in actions and words, self-reliance and emphasis on technology. At the same time we need to develop the bureaucracy, innovativeness, build capabilities, integrity and decentralized decision making.

So, Administrative development and Administration of Development both are important for the effective development of Society.

Comparative Public Administration

Comparative public administration focuses on Public Administration as a field of study and research rather simple execution of tasks. Haroon A. Khan defined the Comparative Public administration as a quest for searching patterns and regularities in administrative behavior and action and to characterize them in present day nation states.

It is interesting to note why and how Public Administration has gained a place in the field of study. Woodrow Wilson is credited for his writing The Study of Administration and perhaps this was a starting point in the United States, in other countries like India, Germany Public Administration was known long back owing to influences of Arthashashtra and Kameralwissenschaft. Later half of twentieth century saw many improvements and bureaucratic internationalization between European countries in reference to Euro-zone and also to all other countries of the world with transnational organizations like World Bank, Interpol and International Court of Justice.

These changes which came about after 1960s were basically administrative reforms implemented by the legislative to make administration more decentralized, accountable and efficient. But, on the other hand some other reforms were pushed aimed at giving more control to policy makers of the bureaucracy while avoiding all the responsibilities. It was imperative to look how these two different situations affected Administration as a whole in different countries. The best way to look at this was through scientific study of comparative public administration. It is also a way to identify best practices in Public Administration so as to achieve maximum result most efficiently and to build a solid organizational structure and processes.

It will be wise to understand here that simply importing those practices which have served well in other countries will not suffice, since people in general are different and they react different to same stimuli. So, what works best in one country might not work at all in other countries.

Most commonly used model for Comparative study has been to compare and contrast western and non-western methods and styles. This model has created dualistic concepts like diffused - specific, universalistic - particularistic, etc and often tends to favor one end of spectrum towards another. But, these do not help in study of development or how to increase quality of life in third world countries. The other and better method used is called description. It is more suitable for cross-cultural analysis as it relies on facts of a situation and get at the all-important aspect of context. But, it too cannot be used directly as a solution to problems faced by other societies. All the other frameworks deals with certain units of analysis or tools which help in gathering and categorizing facts efficiently they are:

• Individuals - the study of behaviors of officials, leaders and elites
• Groups - the study of social movements of parties and interest groups
• Organizations - the study of functions and capacities of cities and regions
• Bureaucracy - the study of the efficacy and performance of whole government executive branch

Clearly within the last decade there has been a very significant rise in CPA as results obtained through it are if nothing, interesting. Many international organizations have come forward and joined their hands in CPA. For example, The international Public Management Network includes individuals from many countries and they publish international public management journal to provide a forum for sharing ideas, concepts and results of research and thinking about alternative approaches to problem solving and decision making in public sector.

TYPES OF GOVERNANCE

1. Anarchy: Anarchy is from the Greek word meaning “no rule” and refers to a society without government. Because this is an impractical if not impossible condition, it is generally used in a looser sense of chaos.

2. Authoritarian: Less a form of government than a description, this term connotes an oppressive form of rule in which citizens’ rights are restricted, putatively for the society’s security and stability. A single head of state often dominates a country with authoritarian rule, but it’s likely that more than one person has significant power.

3. Autocracy: An autocracy (from the Greek words for “self” and “rule” but referring not to self-determination but to “one who rules by himself”) is a government led by one person with dictatorial power.

4. Cabal: Ultimately derived from the Hebrew word adopted for the name of the mystical Kabbalah philosophy of Judaism, cabal refers not to a form of government but to the machinations of an insurrectionary group, or to the group itself. (By extension, it can refer to any group outside of the political realm.) The term, thanks to its frequent use by conspiracy theorists, has an unfortunate association with paranoid delusions about secret societies and behind-the-scenes manipulation of government affairs.

5. Dictatorship: This term, stemming from the Latin word meaning “to declare” and originally a reference to a temporary emergency government established by the Roman Senate, now refers to an autocratic rule by one or more people. The word has a negative connotation and is rarely or ever used by such a government.

6. Federation: A federation (the word is from the Latin term for “compact” or “league” and ultimately derived from the word for “trust”) is a form of government in which subordinate jurisdictions such as states or provinces reserve some sovereignty and/or rights under a national government. (A related term, confederation, implies a more loosely allied group of sovereign states.)

7. Junta: This term — also spelled junto and derived from the Spanish word for “joined,” refers to a postrevolutionary government and carries a sense of a tightly controlled government.

8. Democracy: In its literal sense, a democracy is, as its Greek etymology specifies, a rule of the people. In practice, however, the term is interchangeable with republic, in that it refers to a system of government in which the will of the people is carried out by elected representatives.

9. Monarchy: A monarchy (from the Greek term meaning “rule by one”) is a government led by a person usually selected by hereditary succession. However, the ruler’s authority may vary from nominal (a figurehead) to absolute (a despot). Most current monarchies are technically constitutional, or limited, monarchies, meaning that the ruler is subject to laws that protects citizens’ rights.

10. Oligarchy: No government is literally an oligarchy (the word is from the Greek term for “rule of the few”), but that description is used often to refer to the fact that a nation’s wealthiest people generally have an inordinate influence on governance because of their ties to elected officials. The implication is that a government so influenced is corrupt and predicated on the oligarchy’s self-interest.

11. Regime: The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary definition of this term — “lawful control over the affairs of a political unit” — is oddly neutral, considering that the connotation is invariably of a repressive dictatorship.

12. Republic: A republic (the word is Latin for “public thing”) is a government whose authority is based on citizen voters represented by elected officials chosen in free elections, as opposed to a monarchy or a dictatorship.

13. Theocracy: A theocracy, from the Greek word meaning “rule of God,” refers to a government controlled by religious authorities. The connotation is that the government is repressive and intolerant of values that conflict with the dominant theology.

14. Totalitarian: Derived from the Italian word for “totality,” this word describes a dictatorial government.

15. Tyranny: Tyranny is a condition in which a nation is under the rule of a tyrant, who seized power illegally and governs with few or no checks and balances. The term was originally a neutral word meaning “monarchy,” but it acquired the connotation of “despot” and is by extension often employed to an overbearing authority figure such as a parent or a boss.