David H. Rosenbloom

Nonmission–Based Values in Results–Oriented Public Management: The Case of Freedom of Information

Since the 1940s, Congress and the federal courts have sought to make U.S. federal administration more responsive to democratic–constitutional values, including representation, participation, transparency, and individual rights. As manifested in the National Performance Review, the New Public Management emphasis on results may reduce attention to these values, which for most agencies are not intrinsically mission–based. Freedom of information illustrates the problem of protecting nonmission–based, democratic–constitutional values in results–oriented public management. Agencies’ annual performance plans under the Government Performance and Results Act overwhelmingly ignore freedom of information, even though it is a legal requirement and performance measures for it are readily available. This study concludes that focusing on results may weaken commitment to democratic–constitutional values by default. It suggests that using a balanced scorecard approach in performance plans could enhance attention to freedom of information and other democratic–constitutional values.

Outsourcing the Constitution and Administrative Law Norms

In the United States, the constitutional constraints and administrative law requirements imposed on government agencies generally have no applicability to private entities performing outsourced public administrative activities. In this article, the authors broadly explore the issues associated with outsourcing constitutional and administrative law norms along with government work by imposing them on private contractors. The authors seek to help frame these issues more cogently for the public administration community in an effort to promote more comprehensive and thoughtful discussion of outsourcing and a greater role for public administrative expertise in determining when and how to apply constitutional and administrative law norms to government contractors.

Public Administrators and the Judiciary: The 'New Partnership'

The bicentennial of the framing of the Constitution witnesses the emergence of a new relationship between public administrators and the judiciary. This relationship grows out of the convergence of two of the great historical developments of the past half centurydevelopments which are so central as to define much of the character of the United States polity today. One is the establishment of a full-fledged administrative state during the period since the inception of the New Deal in 1933. The importance of the modern administrative state is attested to not only by the number of personnel it employs and the amount of resources it uses, but also by the extent to which it has become a critical element in

CREATING NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORMS Lessons From Israel

The New Public Management (NPM) has been well studied in nations with previously reformed, modern administrative systems. Considerably less is known about the feasibility of adopting NPM reforms in countries such as Israel, in which national bureaucracies never gained a high degree of institutional identity, administrative, expertise, or autonomous power. What strategies and designs are appropriate for instituting such reforms and what barriers may they face? Israel’s well-designed effort to create self-sustaining administrative reform during 1994 through 1996 reveals both workable approaches and some of their limits. Considering the Israeli case along with other single-country studies can enrich our explanatory and prescriptive theories of administrative reform.

Federal service and the Constitution : the development of the public employment relationship

Preface 1. The Public Employment Relationship 2. Development of the Public Employment Relationship, 1776-18293. The Spoils System and the Public Employment Relationship 4. Civil Service Reform and the Public Employment Relationship 5. Political Neutrality 6. Equality of Access to Civil Service Positions 7. Loyalty and Security 8. Building the Public Service Model 9. The Public Employment Relationship Today: Toward Convergence with the Private Sector? Bibliography Index

Four Challenges to Accountability in Contemporary Public Administration: Lessons From the United States and China

Using the Romzek-Dubnick typology of accountability, the authors analyze challenges that reinvention and new public management reforms in the United States and China present with regard to maintaining legal controls, protecting non-mission-based administrative objectives, pursuing public values, and sustaining hierarchical authority. The authors show that reforms—especially outsourcing and results orientation—have very different consequences in the dissimilar U.S. and Chinese legal and political settings. The analysis contributes to those public administrative theories holding that when it comes to reform, law and politics matter, and that even when administrative problems are similar across nations, their solutions may differ.

Taking Social Equity Seriously in MPA Education

Abstract In this article, David Rosenbloom suggests five limitations of the 2004 J-PAE symposium on Social Equity in Public Affairs Education. He offers five injunctions, paralleling those limitations, to guide discussion: don’t forget the rule of law; define social equity; confront the inequities of social equity; explain the advantages, if any, of applying the term social equity to standard, longstanding subject matter in MPA education; and avoid stealing popular sovereignty.

Bureaucratic Representation and Bureaucrats' Behavior: An Exploratory Analysis

increasingly stressed the importance of social representation. For example, in 1970 the federal Civil Service Commission stated, &dquo;We believe that to the extent practicable organizations of the Federal Government should, in their employment mix, broadly reflect, racially and otherwise, the varied characteristics of our population.&dquo;&dquo; A year later, the CSC endorsed a policy of using goals and timetables for the hiring and promotion of members of minority groups in the federal service. The federal judiciary has also placed great importance on the creation of representative public services and where it finds personnel procedures, such as merit examinations, to have a &dquo;harsh racial impact,&dquo; it has shown a propensity to remedy this discrimination by creating quota systems which &dquo;... temporarily institute race as the final determinative factor in [the] appointment of applicants ...&dquo;2

“Whose Bureaucracy Is This, Anyway?” Congress' 1946 Answer

“Nor should we omit in our study [of public administration] the problem of legislative-administrative relations, in view of the increasing role of the public servant in the determination of policy, through either the preparation of legislation or the making of rules under which general legislative policy is given meaning and application” (Gaus 1931, 123). In the title of his 1993 Gaus Award Lecture, Francis Rourke posed the deceptively simple question, “Whose Bureaucracy Is This, Anyway?” His subtitle was “Congress, the President, and Public Administration.” Rourke, a pioneer in the field of bureaucratic politics, concluded that federal administration was constitutionally and politically under the “joint custody” of Congress and the president. Clearly, Congress has formidable constitutional authority and responsibility for the structure and operation of the executive branch. A great deal of political science research demonstrates that the legislature and its committees are a major political force in federal administration. Even as the older “iron triangle” model gives way to newer approaches, no one (other than misguided reformers) could reasonably answer Rourkes question and exclude Congress. Its oversight, influence, and intervention in agency operations on behalf of policy objectives and incumbency are central features of contemporary federal administration.

The use of case studies in public administrative education in the USA

In the USA, there is sustained interest in the use of case studies in public administrative education in management and administrative law dates from the 1940s. Public administration and law both turned to cases as teaching devices when their dominant intellectual traditions were no longer viable. Although it has since declined, a public management case study movement was very influential in the late 1940s and 1950s. Administrative law casebooks have remained popular, and there are several titles specifically intended for public administration programmes. Efforts to “reinvent” public administration are likely to generate renewed interest in management‐oriented cases.