Political Administrators

Political Administrators
Author: Aminullah Chaudry
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780199061716

In the sixty-three years since Pakistan's independence, military dictators have ruled for thirty-three. For the remaining thirty, Pakistan had politicians ranging from the autocratic to the corrupt and inept to the clueless. These fluctuations between dictatorship and democracy could have been absorbed by a country with a functional and reasonably neutral civil service. Pakistan inherited a well-oiled machine in the form of a bureaucracy that had at its core the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Within no time at all, its successor the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) first forged an alliance with the Army and actively undermined the democratic process. After the annihilation of the former in what was then East Pakistan in 1971, the bureaucracy aligned itself with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and after the coup of 1977 put all its weight behind Gen. Ziaul Haq. This flip-flop continued through the so-called democratic regimes of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and the dictatorship of Gen Pervez Musharraf. The institutional rot occasioned by these shenanigans did incalculable and perhaps irreversible harm to the civil service in Pakistan. The ability of this institution to deliver was seriously undermined. In sharp contrast, neighbor India which inherited the same structure, successfully adapted it to meet the demands of a democratic order. In Pakistan the crumbling structure of the civil service has been highlighted by political analysts and academicians, but rarely by an individual from within. As and when civil servants have written, they have made an unsuccessful attempt to emphasize their neutrality, quoting instances of how they resisted political pressure. It is time that the truth is recorded.

Administrative Burden

Administrative Burden
Author: Pamela Herd
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2019-01-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 087154444X

Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award Presented by the Public and Nonprofit Section of the National Academy of Management Winner of the 2019 Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration Bureaucracy, confusing paperwork, and complex regulations—or what public policy scholars Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan call administrative burdens—often introduce delay and frustration into our experiences with government agencies. Administrative burdens diminish the effectiveness of public programs and can even block individuals from fundamental rights like voting. In AdministrativeBurden, Herd and Moynihan document that the administrative burdens citizens regularly encounter in their interactions with the state are not simply unintended byproducts of governance, but the result of deliberate policy choices. Because burdens affect people’s perceptions of government and often perpetuate long-standing inequalities, understanding why administrative burdens exist and how they can be reduced is essential for maintaining a healthy public sector. Through in-depth case studies of federal programs and controversial legislation, the authors show that administrative burdens are the nuts-and-bolts of policy design. Regarding controversial issues such as voter enfranchisement or abortion rights, lawmakers often use administrative burdens to limit access to rights or services they oppose. For instance, legislators have implemented administrative burdens such as complicated registration requirements and strict voter-identification laws to suppress turnout of African American voters. Similarly, the right to an abortion is legally protected, but many states require women seeking abortions to comply with burdens such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds, and scripted counseling. As Herd and Moynihan demonstrate, administrative burdens often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged who lack the resources to deal with the financial and psychological costs of navigating these obstacles. However, policymakers have sometimes reduced administrative burdens or shifted them away from citizens and onto the government. One example is Social Security, which early administrators of the program implemented in the 1930s with the goal of minimizing burdens for beneficiaries. As a result, the take-up rate is about 100 percent because the Social Security Administration keeps track of peoples’ earnings for them, automatically calculates benefits and eligibility, and simply requires an easy online enrollment or visiting one of 1,200 field offices. Making more programs and public services operate this efficiently, the authors argue, requires adoption of a nonpartisan, evidence-based metric for determining when and how to institute administrative burdens, with a bias toward reducing them. By ensuring that the public’s interaction with government is no more onerous than it need be, policymakers and administrators can reduce inequality, boost civic engagement, and build an efficient state that works for all citizens.

Administrative Law in the Political System

Administrative Law in the Political System
Author: Kenneth Warren
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429757328

Emphasizing that administrative law must be understood within the context of the political system, this core text combines a descriptive systems approach with a social science focus. Author Kenneth F. Warren explains the role of administrative law in shaping, guiding, and restricting the actions of administrative agencies. Providing comprehensive coverage, he examines the field not only from state and federal angles, but also from the varying perspectives of legislators, administrators, and the public. Substantially revised, the sixth edition emphasizes current trends in administrative law, recent court decisions, and the impact the Trump administration has had on public administration and administrative law. Special attention is devoted to how the neo-conservative revival, strengthened by Trump appointments to the federal judiciary, have influenced the direction of administrative law and impacted the administrative state. Administrative Law in the Political System: Law, Politics, and Regulatory Policy, Sixth Edition is a comprehensive administrative law textbook written by a social scientist for social science students, especially upper division undergraduate and graduate students in political science, public administration, public management, and public policy and administration programs.

The Political Economy of Public Administration

The Political Economy of Public Administration
Author: Murray J. Horn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1995-11-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521484367

This book applies the basic ideas and models of economics to develop a single transactions framework to explain the key institutional arrangements across the whole range of public sector organization: the regulatory commission, the executive tax-financed bureau, and the state-owned enterprise. This book also explores the link between agency form and administrative function, agency independence from the legislature, the rights extended to private interests to influence administrative decision making, the role of civil service arrangements that are so often seen as simply frustrating efficiency and responsiveness, and the boundary between public and private sectors. This book should be of value to those with a practical interest in public administration as well as students of political science, public administration, economics, and public policy.

Presidents and the Politics of Agency Design

Presidents and the Politics of Agency Design
Author: David E. Lewis
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2004-09-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804766916

The administrative state is the nexus of American policy making in the postwar period. The vague and sometimes conflicting policy mandates of Congress, the president, and courts are translated into real public policy in the bureaucracy. As the role of the national government has expanded, the national legislature and executive have increasingly delegated authority to administrative agencies to make fundamental policy decisions. How this administrative state is designed, its coherence, its responsiveness, and its efficacy determine, in Robert Dahl’s phrase, “who gets what, when, and how.” This study of agency design, thus, has implications for the study of politics in many areas. The structure of bureaucracies can determine the degree to which political actors can change the direction of agency policy. Politicians frequently attempt to lock their policy preferences into place through insulating structures that are mandated by statute or executive decree. This insulation of public bureaucracies such as the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Election Commission, and the National Nuclear Security Administration, is essential to understanding both administrative policy outputs and executive-legislative politics in the United States. This book explains why, when, and how political actors create administrative agencies in such a way as to insulate them from political control, particularly presidential control.

Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism

Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism
Author: Frank J. Thompson
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-09-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 081573820X

How Trump has used the federal government to promote conservative policies The presidency of Donald Trump has been unique in many respects—most obviously his flamboyant personal style and disregard for conventional niceties and factual information. But one area hasn't received as much attention as it deserves: Trump's use of the “administrative presidency,” including executive orders and regulatory changes, to reverse the policies of his predecessor and advance positions that lack widespread support in Congress. This book analyzes the dynamics and unique qualities of Trump's administrative presidency in the important policy areas of health care, education, and climate change. In each of these spheres, the arrival of the Trump administration represented a hostile takeover in which White House policy goals departed sharply from the more “liberal” ideologies and objectives of key agencies, which had been embraced by the Obama administration. Three expert authors show how Trump has continued, and even expanded, the rise of executive branch power since the Reagan years. The authors intertwine this focus with an in-depth examination of how the Trump administration's hostile takeover has drastically changed key federal policies—and reshaped who gets what from government—in the areas of health care, education, and climate change. Readers interested in the institutions of American democracy and the nation's progress (or lack thereof) in dealing with pressing policy problems will find deep insights in this book. Of particular interest is the book's examination of how the Trump administration's actions have long-term implications for American democracy.

Administration and the Other

Administration and the Other
Author: Kyle Farmbry
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2009
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0739119117

Administration and the Other examines the social construction of groups of people and resultant policy impacts in the discourse of the American Republic from before its founding to the present. The book suggests that from pre-revolutionary interactions between early colonialists and Native Americans to recent immigration debates, discourse on The Other has resulted in the development of policies that have led to further marginalization, community division, and harm to scores of innocents within the public sphere. Ultimately, Administration and the Other examines the construction of The Other from a sociological and historical framework to engage students and scholars of political and administrative processes in using the often unspoken history of the field, as part of a larger historical framework, to explore how policy has been shaped in relation to marginalized communities. By presenting elements of history that are frequently not entered into the administrative and political discourse, the book aims to frame a conversation that might lead to the integration of thoughts about the often marginalized Other into discussions of policy-making and policy-implementation processes.

Political Management

Political Management
Author: Jennifer Lees-Marshment
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000075605

Political Management lays out the core tools to manage government, campaigns and parties. The first book to combine management concepts with politics and government, it provides core theories for what Political Planning, Political HR, Political Organising, Political Leadership and Political Reviewing involve, illustrated with high level political practitioner interviews, examples and political documents. The text presents the 4 Ds of Political Management - Deliberating, Designing, Doing and Dancing - to convey that Political Management is more of a dance than a march. Even presidents and prime ministers do not have enough formal authority to control the myriad of practitioners, players, processes and policies involved in 21st century governance. In this book, the author demonstrates why political practitioners in campaign teams, parties, government departments and political offices need political management tools to utilise the resources they have available and overcome multiple obstacles that practical politics presents. By offering a clear sense of what political management involves and providing the theoretical frameworks to be used in empirical research, this book will stimulate significant future study. It will be invaluable to practitioners, scholars and students in politics, government, policy, leadership, management, public administration, and political management.

The Politics Industry

The Politics Industry
Author: Katherine M. Gehl
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2020-06-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1633699242

Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.