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Is public administration neutral? Scholarship does not interpret public administration as neutral, even though, on moral–ethical grounds, it frequently advises neutrality for practitioners. Five main schools of thought are surveyed. Neutrality and alternative expressions of it, such as nonpartisanship, expertise, impartiality or facilitation, are role prescriptions for practicing public administrators, and are typically offered as appropriate comportments in interacting with citizens and groups. At the same time, public administration is undeniably a political institution having political purposes and constitutive impacts. Indeed, the very existence of the administrative state is politically contestable. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Critical reflection, political philosophy, political theory.

Scholars across the various schools of thought in public administration do not presuppose the presence of a neutral public administrator. However, there is sometimes an admonition to practitioners to behave as if they were politically neutral.

Advising practitioners that their practices are neutral masks the fact that public administration is an inherently political institution.

Neutral public administration is revealed as empty cant.

Smart governance ultimately relates to the ability of political administrations to elicit trust and public confidence. Political administrations normally generate rational policies that arise from their context-sensitive goals. The capability of an administration to develop and implement policies is measured as efficacy, which can influence the value and stability of an administration. However, policy development and implementation is not only an attribute of a political administration but also of its bureaucracy. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of bureaucracies, representing them as complex and dynamic.

A traditional blueprint model of a bureaucracy comes from Weber, seen to be a servicing body for the implementation of political policy decisions resulting from a process of governance. An alternative model arises from the fictional works of Kafka, which is underpinned by a firm conceptual basis of a bureaucracy that confronts that of Weber. Agency theory will be used to model bureaucracies, and comparisons will be made between the Weber and Kafka conceptualisation.

There are broad models of a bureaucracy that arise from different propositions such as a Weber and a Kafka model, the latter being more representative of administrations. Any attempts to measure comparative efficacy across political systems or administrations may well lead to failure due to the distinctions in the nature of the bureaucracies that they maintain. The paper argues that the Weber model is an unattainable boundary representation of a bureaucracy. In contrast, Kafka’s more pragmatic conceptualisation can be modelled as a pathological autonomous system that is both complex and adaptive. Such pathologies can be harmful to the implementation of socially improving policies.

The paper shows that even where a political administration has policy initiatives that can improve society, these can be corrupted and misdirected by its bureaucracy, mistakenly believed (by the administration) to be dedicated to the service of the administration, rather than the bureaucracy’s own self-interests.

No other approach has been able to graphically represent the relative natures of different bureaucracies, or their pathologies.

The complex interaction of politics and the economy is a critical factor for the sustainable growth and development of the construction sector (CNS). This study aims to investigate the effects of type of political administration including democracy and military on the performance of CNS using the Nigerian Construction Sector (NCS) as a case study.

A 48 year (1970–2017) time series data (TSD) on the NCS and the gross domestic product (GDP) based on 2010 constant USD were extracted from the United Nations Statistical Department database. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) models were used to analyze the TSD. The ANCOVA model includes the GDP as correlational variable or covariate.

The estimates of the ANOVA model indicate that democratic administration is significantly better than military administration in construction performance. However, the ANCOVA model indicates that the GDP is more important than political administration in the performance of the CNS. The study recommends for a new national construction policy, favourable fiscal and monetary policy, local content development policy and construction credit guaranty scheme for the rapid growth and development of the NCS.

Hitherto, little is known about the influence of political administration on the performance of the CNS. This study provides empirical evidence from a developing economy perspective. It presents the relationships and highlights recommendations for driving growth in the construction industry.

Progressive era debates about politics and economics featured a concern for the effects of political and economic institutions on the civic vitality of democratic regimes. Similarly, over the course of his scholarly work on public administration and management, Woodrow Wilson developed a civic or “constitutive” conception of administration in a constitutional democracy. An examination of Wilson’s most well‐known works, as well as his lectures on administration and public law, reveals the development of Wilson’s thinking on this score. Taking Wilson’s ideas into consideration can enrich current debates about public management and its impact on the quality of democratic governance.

Looks at the reasons for the collapse of both regimes and considers the importance of repression with these developments. Contrasts the methods of Imperial Russia with the Bolsheviks looking at Court proceedings, prison conditions, education and propaganda in prison, exile and the secret police. Concludes that whilst social support is usually seen as essential for survival of a system, repression is not regarded as a positive element but can become the method for a system’s survival and stability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the absolute and risk-adjusted stock return performance of the US health care industry conditional upon the presidential administration’s political party and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy stance. It evaluates this return behavior across the 60-year time period from 1954 to 2013, and sub-divides this entire period into the pre-Medicare period (1954-1964), Medicare period (1965-1984), and Medicare-plus-high-health-care-inflation period (1985-2013).

The study uses monthly returns to the health care industry and overall market, characterizing each sample month as either having a Republican or Democratic president and either a contractionary or expansionary monetary policy regime determined by whether the Federal Reserve is increasing or decreasing interest rates, respectively. It incorporates univariate and multivariate analysis to quantify the return behavior of both the health care industry and the overall market during the entire period and all three sub-periods. Additionally, it utilizes a common four-factor multivariate regression model and associated hypothesis testing to characterize risk-adjusted excess returns (i.e. α) to the health care industry during the entire period and all three sub-periods.

The health care industry has earned robust, positive risk-adjusted returns with the magnitude of the returns sensitive to the political party of the administration and the monetary policy regime. The authors find that prior to 1965 (1954-1964), when the president was a Republican, during times of monetary contraction, health care earned an excess risk-adjusted return. There was no association between Democratic administrations and excess health care returns prior to 1965. In contrast, the authors find that after 1965 this relationship changes. The authors find that returns to health care were positive for Republicans during times of monetary expansion and positive for Democrats during monetary contraction. The authors also find this relationship has become more pronounced after 1984.

The study extends prior literature, which has shown that the health care industry is a priced factor in the US stock market and that it provides significant risk-adjusted returns in the recent past. Uniquely, this study shows that the excess returns to health care vary considerably over the past 60 years, and that these excess returns are quite sensitive to political policy, proxied by the presidential administration party, and monetary policy, as measured using Fed discount rate changes. These findings have implications for management and shareholders of highly regulated and subsidized industries and firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the anti-corruption performance of the Philippine government, particularly under the leadership of President Benigno Aquino III.

The paper evaluates the anti-corruption measures as represented by pertinent laws as well as anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) under the Aquino administration.

The Aquino government has exercised remarkable political will in acting on high-profile cases involving former government officials, including former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. However, the government’s overall anti-corruption performance is hampered by outdated and conflicting laws, lack of compliance with anti-corruption laws and regulations by public officials and employees, poor ACA operational capacities, judicial inefficiency, deficient organizational systems and change-resistant government agencies, and selective and partial enforcement of anti-corruption laws. These problems are characteristic of Philippine political administrations and are arguably rooted in a system long characterized by fragile state institutions, strong oligarchic control, and weak citizenship.

The paper is intended to update scholars, policy makers, and anti-corruption practitioners interested in corruption, ACA performance, and political reform in the Philippines. It discusses corruption-related problems of public administration within the purview of political economy. Based on this perspective, it argues that the key to effective control of corruption is a change in the political system’s configuration rather than the mere change in leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if business and public administration have distinct identities based on perception of curriculum areas.

PROSCAL, and algorithm for multidimensional scaling was used.

Business and public administration faculties have different identities based on their perceptions of curriculum areas.

Relied on a maximum likelihood probability approach. The study should be replicated using other psychometric techniques, or be extended to other disciplines.

Public administration is empirically validated as distinct from business administration and political science. Care must be taken when borrowing ideas from either field, though results indicate that communicating with business administration would be easier due to the shared space.

It is one of the few (if not the only) papers using PROSCAL. It is one of the first to mathematically determine if groups were understanding and processing stimuli similarly enough to be compared.

Many relationships between politicians and bureaucrats are based on an energy‐equilibrium model where the politicians provide energy and the bureaucrats, equilibrium. According to this model, conflicts occur when one partner does not adequately fulfill his or her expected role. This model may be fruitfully used to study the relationship between the politician, the career bureaucrat, and the political appointee. The division of roles among this “ménage à trois” is particularly difficult and often generates tension. The situation is most prone to conflict when the government is in a period of change. At such times, the newly elected politicians have a tendency to mistrust the established bureaucracy and to depend almost exclusively on their political appointees. The dysfunctions induced by this phenomenon, in regard to the capacity of the bureaucracy to adequately fulfill its equilibrium role, are very clearly illustrated by the Canadian political transition of 1984, when the federal government was handed over to the Progressive Conservative Party. A series of interviews with ministers, senior civil servants, and senior policy advisors, all of whom had ringside seats to this transition, shows how the extensive power granted to ministerial offices aggravated the difficulties usually associated with a period of transition. This particular transition illustrates how important it is for the newly elected to ensure that their partisan policy advisors play their roles without getting in the way of the indispensable cooperation which must be established between ministers and senior civil servants.

This paper addresses the current “big questions” debate in public administration and proposes an appropriate placement for organization theory in the discourse of the discipline. Major scholars in organization theory are analyzed in terms of their relationship to the big questions. Public administration is discussed as a confused discipline, but a discipline nonetheless, and organization theory finds its place as the foundation for discussion and examination of public administration’s “big questions.”