H. George Frederickson

Toward a Theory of the Public for Public Administration

In American public administration there is neither an extensive literature on the public nor an agreed-on conception of the public. Five conceptions on the public in public administration are offered, including the pluralist, public choice, legislative, client, and citizenship perspectives. Building on these five conceptions of the public, a set of requisites for a general theory of the public in public administration is offered.

The Adapted American City A Study of Institutional Dynamics

Almost all U.S. cities are established by state charter as either mayor-council or council-manager cities. For decades, these two legal-statutory categories have been used by researchers as dichotomous variables in descriptions of city government form and in statistical equations. This study indicates that the mayor-council and council-manager categories, although legally based, mask several important empirical characteristics of U.S. city government. Using a large data set, the authors indicate that the structures of U.S. cities are surprisingly dynamic. Cities tend to change their structures incrementally. Over time, cities with mayor-council statutory platforms will incrementally adapt many of the characteristics of council-manager form cities to improve their management and productivity capabilities. Over time, cities with council-manager statutory platforms will adopt features of mayor-council form cities to increase their political responsiveness, leadership, and accounting capabilities. Because each of the two legal forms of cities adopts primary features of the other, these cities now constitute a third form of the U.S. city—the adapted city.

Confucius and the Moral Basis of Bureaucracy

The moral justification for bureaucracy in systems of democratic self-government is stronger in Eastern thought than in Western philosophy and practice. In East Asia, moral justification for bureaucracy is broadly understood to be based on the work of Confucius and his followers. Modern scholars confirm that the primary countries of East Asia have distinctive bureaucratic cultures tracing to Confucian ideology. Distinctive elements of Confucian ideology include rule of man versus rule of law, distinctive characteristics of good public officials, the nature of moral conventions and practices in governing, the importance of education and merit for public officials, how good officials should deal with those in political power, the logic of civil reciprocity, and the nature of order in society. Following descriptions of each of these elements of Confucian moral justification for bureaucracy, the article closes with a comparison of Western and East Asian approaches to the moral justification for bureaucracy.

Can Public Officials Correctly Be Said to Have Obligations to Future Generations

Consider the oath taken by citizens of the Athenian city-state: We will ever strive for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many; we will unceasingly seek to quicken the sense of public duty; we will revere and obey the citys laws; we will transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us. With this oath, citizens accepted the responsibility to conduct effectively the temporal affairs of the city. They also pledged to pass the city on to the next generation in better condition than they received it. The Athenian public service ethic called for more than equality between the generations.(1) My purpose in this article is to consider issues of intergenerational equality and to ask the question: can public officials correctly be said to have obligations to future generations? It seems that issues of intergenerational fairness are all around us. The current debate over the national deficit rings with charges that the debt was incurred by a profligate generation to be paid for by their children and their childrens children (Aaron, Bosworth, and Burtless, 1989). This debate is aside from the issue of which groups--lower, middle, or upper classes--benefitted most from the run-away federal borrowing of the 1980s. Proposed solutions turn entirely on the question of who will pay if much of the deficit is not passed on to coming generations (Kotikoff, 1991). The health care finance issue is also mostly about fairness and equity between the insured and uninsured in present generations; the old and those not yet old; the medical and pharmaceutical professions; and the insurance companies. It is claimed with considerable evidence, that unless health care costs are contained the deficit cannot be reduced. Much of the essential thrust of the environmental movement is to preserve the earths resources for coming generations. The Social Security system is by definition intergenerational. These are but a few of the more visible policy issues that have mostly to do with questions of fairness and equity both between groups in present generations and between present and future generations.(2) The economic growth of the last half of the 20th century, particularly in the United States, seemed to indicate that successive generations do better. Based on this experience it appeared that successive generations have always done better. In fact, in the longer sweep of history intergenerational well-being has never been linear. Changes in human conditions such as nutrition, education, employment, and housing have been cyclical (Neustadt and May, 1986; Smith, 1988; Schlesinger, 1986; Kennedy, 1993; Strauss and Howe, 1991). It is now clear that the generation born from the mid-1960s through the 1970s will likely do less well than their parents at least in terms of comparative income. Indeed, in a recent review of social science research on generational differences it was concluded that the next generation will do worse psychologically, socially and economically than its parents (Whitehead, 1993). Projections are that the differences between generations will widen as the baby-boom generation retires and the children born in the late 1970s and the 1980s start to enter the work force. There is no doubt that elected officials are now especially sensitive to intergenerational issues. This sensitivity is particularly evident in political rhetoric and symbols. Do public officials, including public administrators, in fact, have definable responsibilities to future generations?(3) If so, what are these responsibilities? Are there theories or ethics in public administration that inform our thinking about future generations? Can there be social equity between generations? I deal with these questions, first, with a consideration of the philosophical and ideological perspectives on intergenerational equity; then with a presentation of the compound theory of social equity as a tool for working with intergenerational issues; and finally, with an application of the compound theory of social equity to intergenerational questions of fairness and equity. …

Can Bureaucracy Be Beautiful

Public administration has long been understood to be both a science and an art. In its artful aspects, public administration can also, in fact, be beautiful. At their very best, public organizations and processes have forms, designs, experiences, and languages which are beautiful and compelling. It is this beauty and its potential which draws us to public work. And, there is very great beauty in ideas of high and noble purpose and in the organizations and processes we build to achieve those ideas.

METROPOLITAN GOVERNANCE : INSTITUTIONAL ROLES AND INTERJURISDICTIONAL COOPERATION

ABSTRACT: Theories of metropolitan governance tend to underemphasize the salience of jurisdictional politics and jurisdictional institutions. This paper uses a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma experiment, embedded within a questionnaire that was administered to local government officials in a metropolitan region, to evaluate how jurisdictionally based institutional roles (i.e., mayors, city-council members, executive-level administrators, department directors) affect the willingness of government officials to participate in metropolitan governance. Even though the incentives of one-shot prisoner’s dilemma games favor defection, we find government officials to be generally inclined toward participating in our proposed metropolitan governance scenario. Contrary to common views that metropolitan cooperation is an unnatural and uncomfortable environment for elected officials, we find elected executives to be particularly supportive of the proposed project. We also find that local government officials are likely to consider the expected benefits to the residents of other jurisdictions when deciding whether their government will participate in an interjurisdictional project.

Local Government Management Change, Crossing Boundaries, and Reinvigorating Scholarship

This special issue of ARPA seeks to fill a void in the public administration literature by bringing to the forefront analyses of local government and metropolitan challenges from the perspective of public administrationists: Those who manage cities and counties, and those who both teach and study local government management. The public administration perspective on local government and metropolitan governance has traditionally been grounded in jurisdictions—cities, counties, school and special districts. Today, however, there is often a disjuncture between problems to be solved and jurisdictional boundaries. Accordingly, local governments have changed, and continue to change in response to boundary-crossing challenges as Wheeland, Paulus and Wood evaluate, and new patterns of metropolitan governance are emerging, as Leland and Thurmeier analyze. According to Agranoff, these patterns of change are both horizontal, between and among connected units of local government and vertical, among local governments, states, and the national government. Civic engagement in local public affairs is growing in creative new ways as citizens seek to participate, a topic probed by Nabatchi and Amsler. In the same way that all politics is local, all policy is also local and none is more important than the need to balance the risk of disaster with the need for preparedness, as Donahue, Eckel, and Wilson explore. Together these articles are a timely treatment of compelling challenges facing governments and governance nearest at hand: Our cities, counties, districts and metropolitan areas.

Public Perceptions of Ethics in Government

To explain negative perceptions of government ethics, and particularly of the ethics of public administrators, the authors use the paradox of distance and the absence of role differentiation. In the paradox of distance, the public holds negative views of government generally and public administrators in the abstract, but they have favorable to very favorable views of governmental programs with which they interact and favorable views of the bureaucrats whom they encounter. Much of the negative perception of government ethics and the ethics of public officials is based on public observations of the misdeeds of those who are elected or politically appointed. These negative perceptions are well founded. Unfortunately, the public holds similarly negative views of merit civil servants, although these public officials are much less often associated with corruption or unethical behavior. Finally, the authors suggest that several contemporary governmental reforms will, in the long run, result in more rather than less government corruption.

Municipal Reform in Mayor-Council Cities: A Well-Kept Secret

THE ERA OF American municipal reform that began just before the beginning of the 20th century is thought to have reached its apotheosis midcentury. Since then, patronage has been largely stamped out. Kickbacks on contracts, once commonplace, are now unusual. Boss-mayors with long-term tenures and precinct-based party support are now rare. The councilmanager form of city government, sometimes regarded as the ultimate expression of municipal reform, is now common. Unlike turn-ofthe-century political and intellectual leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Luther Gulick, contemporary leaders seldom talk or write about municipal reform. These days, issues of municipal reform appear to be of interest mostly to city managers and those who study and teach city management. For these and other reasons, it is assumed that the era of municipal reform is over. In fact, municipal reform is all around us, manifest in modern reforms that deal with new and different problems. Modern reforms take essentially two forms. The first, and the most well known (Frederickson 1995), is the reform of cities with council-manager legal or charter platforms—a much-studied favorite of research scholars (Svara 1999; Protasel 1995; Newland 1995). These reforms have mostly Municipal Reform in Mayor-Council Cities: A Well-Kept Secret

Sustainability, Intergenerational Social Equity, and the Socially Responsible Organization

Drawing on perspectives from several academic traditions, we argue that sustainability is best understood as intergenerational social equity. When viewed thusly, it is possible to determine what socially responsible organizations look like in practice. After reviewing historic claims and evidence of sustainability, we turn to modern applications of institutionally based sustainability. We then describe sustainability in the framework of an intergenerational social equity model, claiming that the legacies of social and cultural institutions are evidence of sustainability in action. We conclude with a discussion of what it means for an organization to be socially responsible given our understanding of sustainability.