PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Local government autonomy means that a local government should exist as an independent entity in the sense of being able to exercise its own will in the conduct of its affairs.

It also implies that the local governments posses the power to take decision within the limits of the law that established it without being dictated to or influenced by external authorities like the state or the federal government. In Nigeria context, local government autonomy implies that the local government as a federating unit should not exist as an appendage of either the state or federal government. This means that local government autonomy is realized in a situation where governments are not constitutionally bound to accept directives from another tier of government.

Types of Local Government Autonomy

• Initiative and Immunity Autonomy: this type of autonomy gives the local government power and freedom to initiate actions, develop programmes and policies and as well protect local government from control ad supervision from higher tiers of government like the state government. The only form of control on the local government in this situation of immunity and initiative autonomy is the local population from who its legitimacy is derived.

• Initiative and No Immunity Autonomy: the situation of initiative and no immunity autonomy implies that local government have the right and freedom to decide their own agenda, functions and actions but, have their actions closely supervised, scrutinized and reviewed by a higher tier of government like the state or central government. This implies limited autonomy as their actions can be constrained, in the process of such supervision by higher authorities or tier of government.

• No initiative and Immunity Autonomy: no initiative and immunity autonomy situation implies that local government cannot choose what to do on their own and as well subject to strict control and monitoring by higher tiers of government. In this context, local government does not have initiative but only execute tasks and functions assigned to them by higher order of government, and in such ways as prescribed or instructed. The implication of this type of autonomy is that local governments are mere representatives of the interest of higher tiers of government and are only responsive to local concerns regarding appropriate forms of implementation of development programmes or projects as may be initiated by higher order of government.

• No Initiative, No Immunity Autonomy: in this situation of no initiative and no immunity autonomy, all the agenda and actions of the local government are set by higher tiers and with the higher tiers of government monitoring. This implies total absence of autonomy as local governments in such scenario are actually mere administrative apparatus of higher tiers of government like the state or central government. In this case, authority and responsibility for local actions are highly centralized. From the foregoing discussion, the type one autonomy (initiative and immunity autonomy) implies full autonomy for local government while the type two autonomy (initiative and no autonomy)  and type three autonomy (no initiative and autonomy) are partial forms of local government autonomy. The type four autonomy, (no initiative, no immunity) implies a situation of total lack of autonomy for local governments.

CHARACTERISTICS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY

• Ability to make its own laws, rules and regulation;
• Ability to formulate, execute and evaluate its own plans.
• The right to recruit; promotes, develop and discipline its own staffs.
• According to Odenigwe, local government is “a system of local administration under which local communities and towns are organized to maintain law and order, provide some limited range of social services and public amenities and encourage the cooperation and participation of the inhabitants in joint endeavor towards the improvement of their living.
• It provides the community with formal organization framework which enables them to conduct their affairs effectively and regulate the actions of their members for the general public.
• Finally, the local government must be legitimized by a higher government, state or central for effective administration at the grassroots. The focus is on the grassroots of the nation.

Development administration is defined as the aspect of public administration in which the focus of attention is on organizing and administering public agencies in such a way as to stimulate and facilitate defined programmes for social and economic development or progress.

It is also a process of guiding organizations towards the attainment of development objectives (Weiden, 1994). From this definition, the understanding is that development administration is action oriented and it places administration at the centre of development objectives.

It also involves developing the administrative capacity to obtain desired results and to improve the structure of public administration in order to bring about development (Okoli and Onah, 2002).

In other words, development administration deals with reforms or innovation for capacity building of the existing bureaucracy, equipping it with necessary tools and techniques for introducing and administering policies, programs and projects to serve developmental purposes.

Origin of Development Administration

Several factor after the Second World War has led to it’s emergence.

• The activities of the comparative public administration group: the emergence of development administration is largely incidental to the circumstances surrounding the activities of comparative public administration group in 1950s and 1960s.

This is understandable as the major emphasis of comparative public administration is on theory building and development administration. Researches undertaken in comparative public administration were essentially intended to serve mainly development purposes.

• American effort to enhance her expansionist interest: historically development administration appears to be a product of conscious effort of the American government in the aftermath of the Second World War to enhance further American expansionism (Nobert, 2010).

This effort was essentially directed to the third world countries where large sum of money were to be channeled via the American National Budget to aid development and more importantly, to influence the ideological orientations of those nascent states. The end of second world war saw the emergence of the bipolar world order of capitalism and socialism led by America (for the western bloc) and soviet union (for the Eastern bloc) respectively.

America was quick to adopt a foreign policy stance of checkmating socialist expansion by giving technical aids to revamp the economy of the emerging new states and through the building of their administrative system to be able to administer development effectively and rapidly.

It is no wonder, therefore according to Nobert (2010) that development administration as a field of study and practice gained popularity in the wake of the cold war as Marxism and socialism made a strong appeal to many ex-colonies fighting for liberation and independence.

• The developed world effort to realize/enhance their collective self interest: the developed world realized that developing the third world nations is in their own interest. Nobert (2010) notes this in his observation:

The developed nations realized that a sustained programme of development in the Third World is not only a moral case to raise living standard in the third world but also a practical case which would be in the self interest of the developed countries themselves. The ability of the poor countries to sustain their growth and development means a greater demand for the goods and services of developed countries which generates outputs and employment directly and which also helps to maintain the balance of payment ability of these countries. This is crucial if there is to be a reciprocal demand for the goods of developing countries.

In essence, the development of development administration arose as a result of the need to evolve and influence policies that would aid in the transformation of the administrative capabilities and socio-economic positions of the third world nations of Africa, Asia and Latin.

In line with this Okoli and Onah (2000) argue that the concept of development administration was used to differentiate the administrative system needed for developing countries and the traditional administrative system.

While the focus of traditional public administration is on establishment of basic infrastructural service, development administration is concerned with institution building and achievement of change in these developing nations.

The Basic Aspect of Development Administration

There are two basic aspect of development administration: the development of administration and administration of development.

• Development of Administration: this refers to the nature of administrative capacities for development and the methods of enhancing these administrative capacities. It means improving administrative capabilities and strengthening the principles of administration in order to achieve the overall administrative goals.

In essence development of administration deals with the nature of governmental administration capacity which is necessary for assisting in the formulation of development policies and for carrying out these development plans, programmes or projects.

Administrative capacity itself may refer to the management capacity of government or the public sector as a whole to formulate development policies and to carry them out or to properly and effectively implement them. An organization is said to have an administrative capabilities for development if it as the ability to achieve declared developmental objectives.

• Administration of Development: this refers to the implementation of development policies, programmes or projects. These projects or programs, could be in the areas of health, education, transportation, agriculture, security, housing, rural development and basic infrastructural development.

In this case, administration of development refers to public administration as an instrument for administering development or carrying out development plans in the various aspects of public life. Usually, the task for realizing development goals rests with government.

It is the job of government to make projections, decide on policies and implement policies. This is very necessary because development is integral to the aims and activities of the government especially in the developing countries where the private sector is not highly developed and where the state looms largely in the steering of development and growth generally.

In order to understand the relationship between these two aspects of development administration; development of administration and administration of development, we note that following the paucity of human and material resources in developing nations, the need for making optimal utilization of available means and augmenting new means assume a great importance.

One of the key factors in the effort by government to administer development is to enhance its administrative capacity for development. Once this is done, government can now develop and formulate policies, set development goals and be able to realize the set goals objectives.

Strategies to Enhance Development Administration in developing Nations

• Government of the developing nations will have to introduce more public sector reforms to make the public bureaucracies more accountable, responsive, transparent and development oriented.

• Laws, rules and regulations that would reduce bribery and corruption need to be enacted and very importantly, mechanism introduced to ensure their strict enforcement. This is necessary to forestall the misappropriation of funds allocated for administering development project or programmes.

• There is the need to ensure the existence of a strong, responsible and purposeful leadership to steer effectively and in a focused manner the affairs of the developing nations. The democratization process in the developing nations may be of help in this direction as responsible leadership may be elected through fair and free elections in democratic settings.

• There is the need for the government to embark on programme of motivation of staff particularly through improved remuneration like salary and other incentives. This will help to rebuild moral, integrity and commitment to public service among the public servants.

• There is the need to put in place measures that will ensure a greater realization of politics – administration dichotomy. This will enable the bureaucratic in authority to exercise real control and administer development programmes professionally.

• The administrative atmosphere needs to be innovative. The authority or management of public bureaucracies in developing nations needs to allow for innovation and change that could facilitate group effort and initiative. After all, innovative ideas could come from any level of the organization hierarchy. This could be ensured by decentralization and proper delegation of authority.

• There is the need for shared operational planning goals. To enhance development administration, there is need for operational – shared planning goals as one person cannot effectively and reasonably conduct the affairs of an organization. in this case, the adoption of management by objective (MBO) in executing government development projects or programmed is advocated.

• There is need for administrators to be extra sensitive. In this case, development administrators have to understand and respond to the need for change and redirection of projects, policies or programmes for the general good of the people. The interdependence and coordination of the functions of different units of an organization and among organizations should be ensured in order to achieve the collective need or goal of the society.

• Bureau pathology needs to be avoided. Even though ideal bureaucratic model encourages adherence to rules and regulations, this should not be seen as a end in itself. Rather, it should be seen as a means to an end. Therefore, dreadlocks that often occur in administrative process which can often result to red-tapism and slowing down of development process should be avoided.

• Staff training and development should be taken serious as it helps to improve their skills and knowledge on current administrative techniques and activities and also on the use of modern office technologies. This is necessary because for effective administration of development, there is the need to modernize their administrative tools, organizational techniques, patterns of planning and adapting to the requirements of the development needs.

Reference

1. Ele, C. (2006) Evangelization through Rural Development. Nsukka: Great AP Publishers Ltd.
2. Nobert, C.A (2010), Development Administration: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach. Enugu: John Jacobs Classic Publishers.
3. Nwankwo, B and Apeh, G. (2008), Development Administration-Principles and Practice. Enugu: Zik Chuks Publishers.
4. Nwizu, G, (2002), Studies in Modern Public Administration. Enugu: NGIB Publishers.
5. Okoli and Onah, (2002), Public Administration in Nigeria: Nature, Principles and Applications. Enugu: John Jacobs Classic Publishers Ltd.
6. Olewe, B. (1995), Development Administration. Aba: Grace Ventures.
7. Weidner, E. (1962) “Development Administration: A New Focus on Research” In Ferrel Heady and Stocks S, (ed) Papers In Comparative Public Administration Institute of Public Administration, Michigan: University of Michigan.
8. Weinder, E. W. (1994), “Technical Assistance in Public Administration Overseas: A case for Development Administration”. Chicago: Public Administration Series.

There has been an intellectual debate on the issue of politics and administration dichotomy since the emergence of public administration as an activity and field of study. As Ademolekun (1986:13), notes that: There is hardly a basic textbook published since the emergence of the discipline of public administration as a distinct field of study at the dawn of the century that does not devote some space to the subject of politics and administration dichotomy

Early scholars in their writings in public administration particularly, maintained that there should be a difference between politics and administration and argue that politics and administration are two distinct spheres and each has its own group of functions.

Woodrow (1941) whose view formed the starting point of politics–administration dichotomy contend that politics and administration are separate, each having its own major task ans that political question are not administrative questions even though the former sets the task for the latter.

He holds that politics is the special province of the statesman (politicians or political office holders), but administration is the special province of the technical officials (administrators or bureaucrats/civil servants). Focusing on a specific example, Woodrow Wilson, through an article in 1887 entitled “the study of Public Administration” differentiated the domain of constitutional law and that of administrative functions.

According to him, public administration is the detailed and systematic execution of public law and that every particular application of general law is an act of administration. For instance, the collection of taxes, the hanging of the criminal, the delivery of mails, the recruitment and training of civil servants are obviously acts of administration.

On the other hand, the general laws which direct these things to be done are obviously outside and above administration. In effect, the broad plans of government actions (policy making) are not administration but the detailed execution of such plans is administration (policy execution).

In essence, Woodrow’s argument is that politics and administration are two distinct functions of government and that politics has to do with policies or expression of the will of state while administration has to do with the execution of these policies.

Another proponent of politics and administration dichotomy is Pfiner (1967), he argued that politics must be controlled and confined to its proper sphere which is the determination and crystallization of the will of the state.  He posits that administration is the carrying into effect of this will once it has been made clear by political process.

He advised that politics should stick to its policy making determination sphere and leave administration to apply its own technical process in the implementation, free from the blight of political meddling. In essence, politics should be concerned with the implementation of the policy made.

This entails that policy makers should not then dabble into administration (policy implementation) and that administrators should only concern themselves with how best to execute policies. Politics should best be seen and played as an independent and separate activity from administration.

The need to separate politics from administration is to ensure professionalism of the public service and restrict the administrators to the implementation of public policies only. On the other side are the scholars who maintain that there is no dichotomy between politics and administration. They contend that a rigid distinction cannot be maintained between public administration and politics.

Cross (1964), in a comprehensive review of organizations and administrative theory, described politics and administration dichotomy as an “exploding fallacy” and argues essentially that making and execution of policies are inseparable intertwined.

Luther Gulick who was also a strong proponent of the politics–administration dichotomy maintained that there is “a seamless web of discretion and interaction between politics and administration”.

The challenges that politics-administration dichotomy faces are rooted in the divergence between what it claims and what obtains in practice or reality. For instance, administrative officers are involved in the policy making process especially in the provision of relevant information and advice needed in policy making.

By this, administrators use a lot of discretionary power in the implementation of policies. Most often, administrators use their discretion to alter or adjust policy guidelines substantially. In reality too, public servants have partisan prejudice and their personal partisan opinion do affect their work, despite every attempt to maintain neutral posture.

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Comparative public administration is a systematic comparison of public administration systems, concepts or categories. It is also the theory of public administration applied to diverse culture and national settings and the body of factual data by which it can be explained.

It is concerned with making rigorous cross-cultural comparisons of the structures and processes involved in the activities of administering public affairs in the states. Comparative public administration means identifying similarities and difference between administrative systems with the main purpose of explaining these difference and similarities between the different systems and understanding the circumstances, context, environment, and the conditions (political, social, cultural, economic and technology) that respectively influence or shape them.

For instance, in a comparative public administration, one may decide to study and compare administration system of a country to find out their public financial management system, staff recruitment, training, promotion process, budgetary system, electoral system, political leadership succession and their legislative, executive and judicial structures. Comparative public administration stands for cross cultural and cross-national public administration comparison and understanding.

Factors that led to the Emergence and Growth of Comparative Public Administration

The study of comparative public administration started at the end of the Second World War in the United States of America. Research in comparative public administration can be traced by the following specific factors:

USA World War 11 Experience: after the Second World War, USA embarked on aid programmes and projects in the developing nations of Africa and Asia through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  In administering these aid programme and in assisting in the rebuilding of the administrative system of these developing nations, America discovered that her own administrative system that were being adopted in those nations were not working the way it works in the United States.

As a result of this experience and understanding, the American administrators recognized the importance and influence of environment in the practice of public administration. Therefore they came into conclusion that there is no universal principle in the practice of public administration.

The Setting up of Comparative Administrative Group:  this group encouraged research in comparative public administration. The objective of this group was to encourage research in comparative public administration, to encourage teaching of comparative public administration and to contribute to more effective public policy formulation and implementation in the field of development administration.

Comparative public administration got further impetus in 19662 when the comparative administrative group received fund for research and development in comparative public administration from Ford Foundation. This fund enabled the group to engage in wider research in the administrative system of other countries.

The need to develop and implement sound policies: after the Second World War, there was a need to formulate effective public policies and to ensure their effective and efficient execution in order to meet the critical and urgent development challenges, needs and objectives of the developing nations.

The possibility of achieving this requires practical knowledge of any given public administration system either by foreigners or indigenous bureaucrats. The research undertaken to compare public administration system were intended to serve or promote development.

Dissatisfaction with traditional Public Administration: the traditional public administration dominated the administrative study and practice during the first half of the nineteenth century. The traditional public administration after the Second World War became perceived as too arrow and parochial as it was based essentially on Western model particularly the United States.

Beside, the traditional approach consisted in merely providing parallel description of the administrative institution without any conscious and systematic effort to compare them. Riggs in 1961 argue that American Public Administration should just be viewed as a subfield because public administration is global in scope.

Ecological Approach on Comparative Public Administration

Ecological approach on comparative public administration emphasizes the ecological approach that involves studying the dynamics of interaction between administrative system and its environment. Fred Riggs through his books entitled “Administration in Developing Nations” published in 1964 suggested that public administration is related to its environment in much manner that organisms are studied in relation to the habitat.

The argument being made by Riggs and other ecological theorist is that bureaucracies or administrative institutions can better be understood if the surrounding conditions like politics, economy, and social values are properly analyzed in relation to the administrative system. This is because these ecological factors exert significant influence or impact on administrative actions and behaviours through different means and channels, stimulating or stifling traits and performance.

The concept of ecology has been accepted as very important in studying and understanding public administration. This is because the conduct of public administration has been observed to be actually shaped or influenced by its environment.

It is generally accepted that within any society, political, economic and socio-cultural factors interact with the administrative sub-system, influencing and being influenced by it. For instance, from the social environment comes in the influence of traditional, religious and other primordial and cultural values.

In comparison, one finds out that bureaucrat in Nigeria, for instance, are more likely to succumb to primordial pressure and ignore the bureaucratic principle of impersonality. Again from the political environment comes reasonable level of influence. For instance, the extent of the realization of politics-administration dichotomy which influences public administration is dependent on the nature and pattern of political influence.

For instance, in Nigeria where political control of the bureaucracy is tightly exercised without effective institutionalized control, the existence of neutral or impartial bureaucracy is very difficult.

This is quite in contrast to the situation in a country like the United States of America where there is greater separation of politics from administration and where the bureaucracy is more autonomous from contending social and political forces within the country.

Again, the difference evident in various forms of government (like federal, unitary, parliamentary, presidential, military, autocratic, monarchical, republican or democracy) can lead to variance in the administrative system as they may respectively define who is in charge of administrative departments, who controls the administration and the relative participation of administrators in policy formulation and that of political officials in policy implementations.

For instance, in democratic governance, the scope and objectives of public service and values to be applied when delivering services may be different from that in autocratic governance.

Generally, a look at the structure and functions of public administration in different countries will reveal that, though there are manifest similarities in formal organization, yet their informal behavioral patterns posse’s considerable diversities, each being shaped by its societal environmental factors.

And so even in western developed nations which are often grouped into one administrative category, their administrative system have never developed and functioned in a uniform pattern. So is the case in the category of developing nations.

The conclusion from this is that public administration is culture or environment bound. The structures of public administration of one environmental setting cannot be easily transplanted into a different cultural environment or society.

Institutions transplanted as such may even develop in an unpredictable ways and may serve needs different from those satisfied in the place of origin. Despite the fact that Nigeria bureaucracy is modeled and developed by the British on principle of merit, impartiality, political neutrality among others, its nature and functions cannot be understood in terms of these ideal principles but in terms of Nigeria’s cultural, political and economic environment and which made it to function in almost entirely opposite direction.

Contributions of Comparative Study of Public Administration to the General field of Public Administration

• Cross cultural comparison of public administration system profoundly add to student’s capacity for better analysis and improves their appraisal of world affairs. Certainly their knowledge of other countries administrative system is the best way to achieve a balanced perspective and to reduce myopic view of others.
• It has helped to eliminate the narrowness of provincialism and regionalism in the general practice and study of public administration.
• It has broadened the field of public administration integrating it with the entire field of the social sciences by its emphasis on ecology and behaviorism.
• It has led to greater scientific outlook in theory construction. The comparative method is essential for the development of administrative theory and improvement in its application.
• It has played important role in making the subject of public administration broader, deeper and useful and liberates public administration from parochialism.
• It permits one to see wider range of administrative actions, identifying a variety of problems and improves ones understanding of the short comings and limitations of given administrative contexts.
• Comparative public administration has aided administrative improvements in many countries through reforms, innovations and system adaptation.
• Administrative knowledge and information generated through the comparative methods serves public administrators needs and expand their horizon of choice and improves their capacity to observe, learn and improve management performance.

Authority implies the voluntary obedience on the part of subordinate to the superiors or the legitimate right of superior to give orders to subordinates. For instance, a court of law has the right to punish a criminal legally as the law says.

Authority is very important in organizations and for the managers to perform their job since they need it to produce compliance. Authority also gives organization its hierarchical characteristics. Authority is guided by span of control, chain of command, authority and responsibility principles.

There are two bases of formal authority, which are: classical view and acceptance view. Classical view posits that management has the right to give orders and that subordinates have the obligation to obey. The acceptance view means that obedience to authority depends on the person receiving orders and who may or may not obey.

Authority is accepted if the person to whom order is given understands it, if the order is consistent with the purpose of the organization, if the order is consistent with the person personal values and if he/she is mentally and physically able to comply with the order.

Conditions for enhancing the Acceptance of Authority in Organization

Managers or administrators in organizations can raise the likelihood of the authority being accepted by doing the following:

• Using formal channels of communication that are familiar to all organization members.
• Assigning a communication channel to each member of the organization through which he or she receives orders.
• Ensuring direct communication as far as possible between himself as the manager and his subordinates.
• Ensuring that he possesses and displays adequate communication skill.
• Authenticating all communication as coming from him as the manager.

Types of Authority

Traditional Authority: this is the type of authority that one has by virtue of tradition or custom. Example is authority exercise by traditional rulers.

Charismatic Authority: this is the type of authority invested and exercised by someone by virtue of his personality. An example of this authority is the one exercised by religious or group leaders. In this case, such a leader might have succeeded in generating strong feeling of loyalty or commitment among his followers.

Rational/legal Authority: this is the type of authority which Max Weber associated with bureaucratic organizations. In essence, this is the type of authority exercised by bureaucratic officials or political office holders like the governor, the president, the local government chairman, the senate president, director general, a manger, an administrator or a chief executive.

Types of Authority in formal Organization

In public administration, there are basically three types of authority in formal organization that are in line with the classification of organizational personnel into line, staff and functional authorities.

Line Authority: this is the type of authority that a superior has over his subordinates. This type of authority is basic in organization and represent the ultimate authority to command, direct, act, decide approve or disapprove the activities of organization or units of organization.

Staff Authority: this type of authority refers to the right of member of organization to offer advice to another staff, or other members of the organization. the staff executives who are specialist and with technical or professional knowledge or expertise have the authority to advice chief executives on what to do or decision to take in certain situations. This is possible as there is usually the understanding in organizations that staff advice will be sought and listen to.

Functional Authority: this is the right that is delegated to an individual or a department to control specified processes, practices or other matters relating to the activities undertaken by a person in other departments. Functional authority confers upon its holder the right to command in matters pertaining to that function and across departmental lines.

The legacy of functional authority is rooted in specialized knowledge. Functional authority is commonly used as a way of integrating the work between those who have line authority and those who have staff authority.