Jeremy F. Plant

Public official associations and state and local government : a bridge across one hundred years

This volume is an authoritative description of a little-recognized element of modern governance: associations of public officials in state and local government. These associations, whose membership consists of elected and appointed officials such as mayors, legislators, council members, city and county managers, and planners, play an often overlooked role in public administration and governmental policy on state and local levels. This work provides an incisive analysis of their role using a combination of documentary sources and extensive personal interviews with a special interest in association management. It traces the historical development of associations from 1890 to 1990 within the context of the Progressive Movement, the New Deal, the Great Society, and the era of cutbacks and devolution. In addition, an examination of the effects of associations in the evolving administrative state touches upon many of the most important topics in public administration, including intergovernmental relations, by professionalism, ethics, and leadership. The text is augmented by an appendix of association profiles, an annotated bibliography, and an index.

Education for Ethics and Human Resource Management

Many public administration ethicists argue that a single stand-alone course in ethics should be a part of every M.P.A. curriculum, but some programs may prefer to incorporate ethics into several courses. This article suggests that a series of courses would be a promising alternative to a standalone ethics course. It would begin in the M.P.A. introductory course by setting a foundation for the study of ethics and then relate ethics to human resource management (HRM) in a sequence of required and elective HRM courses. The long and evolutionary relationship between ethics and HRM can provide a strong basis for ethics education with two purposes in mind: first, to show the generalist public administration student the ethical issues involved in managing personnel systems, and second, to acquaint students interested in careers in HRM to be ethically aware in situations they are likely to face in their careers. The literature in HRM and ethics is reviewed to develop a conceptual linkage between the two topics. The article concludes by showing how the two have been integrated in a three-course sequence in a NASPAA-accredited M.P.A. program.

Public Values, Public Official Associations, and Professionalism: A Cross-National Analysis

This article explores the role of public official associations (POAs) in the articulation of public values, the development of policy, and the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the effective management of the public interest. The research is comparative and includes examinations of POAs in the United States, Sweden, and India. The examination of these cases suggests that POAs play a significant role in governance, albeit one defined by the structure and history of any particular system. As organizations that are “of the state, but not in the state,” they serve important roles in mediating between center and periphery, between political and administrative perspectives on policy, and help integrate professional and public service values. The exploration also indicates that POAs are important in forming elements of networks on important policy issues and that they are frequent sources of innovation, such as general revenue sharing in the United States and fiscal reform in Sweden.

Planning Under New Federalism Coping with Conflicting Roles

Abstract Planners involved in administering local programs funded by the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program are often confronted with a dilemma: they are expected to coordinate the activities of line agencies in the interests of better management, yet they also serve as a link to citizens groups and formal citizen advisory boards which may resist efforts at making local administration more rational. Case studies discussed herein show a number of responses planners have and can make to this dilemma. Evidence suggests that planners must develop a strategy to avoid being caught in the middle of conflicts between citizens and line agencies.

Public official associations and professionalism

Associations of public officials have been an important element of public professionalism in the United States since the reform era. This paper examines the ways in which associations of public officials are helping to redefine public professionalism. The focus on the paper is on the promotion of professionalism by association activities, the sense of professional identity fostered by association involvement, and the ways in which associations integrate issues of policy, management, and professional expertise to contribute to the development of true public professionalism. The paper examines ways that professional/specialist and political/generalist associations are converging on issues of policy, strategic thinking, and role effectiveness.

Rail Security After 9/11 Toward Effective Collaborative Regulation

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, raised serious questions about the security of the U.S. rail system. The rail freight industry has been largely deregulated since the 1980s and has been prospering, raising questions about how post-9/11 public policy might affect its ability to control its operations and at the same time ensure security against terrorist events. A response to the threat has been adopted by the private sector rail industry and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that attempts to optimize and to implement a collaborative approach to regulation. Recent legislation is reviewed to show how this approach is now becoming the statutory basis for rail security.

Book Review: Dynamics of Leadership in Public Service: Theory and Practice, 2d ed. by Montgomery van Wart:

Leadership is a topic that the field of public administration has in some way or another tried to come to grips with throughout its history. A number of troubling questions has complicated this effort. Is leadership a separate topic, or subsumed in the study of organization and management? Should degree programs in public administration devote specific courses to leadership, or (as in the case of ethics in many MPA programs) see it as embedded within the discussion of such areas as human resource management, public finance, and organization theory? If taught, what is the proper approach, stressing theoretical models and research or looking at public officials judged to be exemplary leaders? In short, how does leadership fit into the teaching and research agenda of the field? The publication of James MacGregor Burns’ milestone book, Leadership, in 1978 led to a veritable explosion of interest in the topic of leadership. In particular, Burns introduced the concepts of transactional and transformational leadership approaches that galvanized much of the research agenda on leadership for the next two decades. Transformational leadership in particular seemed attractive to those for whom the traditional POSDCORB approach of public administration seemed stale and mechanistic. Stand-alone programs in leadership began to emerge in universities in the 1980s, as did courses and growing research in the topic within public administration. No figure in public administration has worked harder and longer to bring some order to the chaos of leadership studies in the field than Montgomery Van Wart. His influence on the topic within public administration is evidenced by a continuing body of work on the subject beginning with his influential 2003 article on public sector leadership theory in Public Administration Review and moving to several book-length treatments of leadership, the latest of which is the subject of this review. The second edition of Dynamics of Leadership in Public Service: Theory and Practice is a major step forward in providing the field with a comprehensive, single-volume text that can be used in both master’s and doctoral courses. Comprehensive is certainly an apt term for the approach taken by Van Wart. The book is organized into 17 chapters, divided into an introductory chapter followed by three parts. Part 1 looks at leadership theories. Part 2 reviews the application of theory and specific leadership competencies. Part 3, the shortest of the three sections with only two chapters included, examines how leaders can be developed and evaluated. There is only a short conclusion in the final chapter of Part 3, followed by four appendices, references, and an index. Van Wart introduces the second edition in this way in the preface:

The DPA: Perspectives on its past and present

This essay examines the origins, development and current issues involving U.S. doctoral education in public administration by focusing particularly upon the DPA degree-—the first doctorate offered in the field. The article argues that the growth of the DPA coincided with the rapidly expanding needs for professionals in governmnt and the growth of American higher education in the postwar era. As a result, early DPA education contained a significant “professionalixing component” in its course work and dissertation research. The sharp public reactions against government professionals and professionalism in the late 1970s and 1980s combined with a new scientific research emphasis for doctoral education stressed by NASPAAs Comprehensive Schools Section, October 20, 1981, called into question the older professional assumptions upon which the DPA was created as a degree program. These trends now raise fundamental intellectual issues regarding its future and serve to fragment the once cohesive programmatic orien...

Responsibility in Public Administration Ethics

The principle that public administrators act in a responsible manner has been fundamental to the development of the field of public administration as a profession and scholarly discipline since its inception. Administrative responsibility is seen as the glue that connects administrative ethics to the more general questions regarding the proper role and behavior of unelected officials in a democratic system. In the past two decades, explicit and implicit considerations of responsibility continue to be significant factors in the continuing evolution of public sector ethics, thereby providing a normative and descriptive base upon which more specific topics, such as corruption, integrity of governance, public values, and social equity, can be examined in a balanced manner.

ASPA’s Section on Transportation Policy and Administration: A Look Back

The Section on Transportation Policy and Administration (STPA) of the American Society for Public Administration was chartered in 1992 as an organization dedicated to bringing together scholars, practitioners, and students interested in the role played by transportation in society. Although transportation policy and administration is somewhat specialized as a subject matter area in public administration, STPA grew rapidly in the 1990s due in large part to a stable group of founding members who provided both intellectual and organizational leadership. This article reviews the growth and development of STPA from its early years to the present. Attention is given to section activities, including publications, newsletters, awards, and conference presentations. Two themes are prevalent throughout the review: the importance of committed, diverse, and stable leadership and the high level of intellectual and professional discourse that has characterized the work of the section.