The Spirit of Public Administration (Jossey-Bass Public Administration Series)
by H. George Frederickson

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Book Reviews of The Spirit of Public Administration (Jossey-Bass Public Administration Series)

Book Review: The Doom of Public Under High-Pressure Business Rhetoric
Summary: 5 Stars

This book is an investigation on the spirit of public administration. Professor Frederickson tries to persuade readers about why public administration should be thought of and approached to differently. The relationship of public administration with democratic principles is told in the book. In classic public administration theory, much emphasis was given to efficiency, economy and effectiveness and these performance guides were accepted as surrogates to evaluate how much public organizations are successful. Given this, public administrators were assigned the role to implement policy decisions, imposed by elected officials, with the maximum efficiency and economy. Author tells that these are important, but not sufficient, and another third surrogate -EQUALITY- must be added. Not only equality between people of today generation, but also between future and today generation is considered important.

Recent years witnessed an increasing accentuation in literature on governmental ethics partly due to ethical breaches increment in last years. Author explains these ethical transgressions with the increasing privatization, contracting out (outsourcing), third-party government. To prove this, author presents research findings and literature sources. According to the author, increasing privatization substitutes "idealism" with "careerism". Resulting from this radical shift, private benefits and values dwarf ideals of public administration based mostly "patriotism of benevolence".

Author strongly advocates that public organization is efficient and effective at least as is business organization. Bureaucrat-bashing reformist rhetoric created some prejudices about public organizations in the minds of citizens and caused people think that public organizations are unnecessary burdens on whole society although people are glad from their close relationships with public organizations in their neighborhood. This is explained in the book with the term "distance of paradox". People do not make a distinction between public officials and elected officials and both are gathered in one category, which is "public". Failure of political officials is connected to whole public sector, elected or appointed. It is not seen as surprise that officials who are involved in corruption are generally officials appointed by elected officials (politicians), according to the author. Second, bureaucrat-bashing propaganda of politicians and attitude of media shape the approach of citizens about public organizations and officials remote from their neighborhoods.

Author discusses the meaning of "neutrality" of public officials in the context of democratic society. According to the author, neutrality does not mean that public officials must follow government policy with eyes shut. Neutrality means non-partisan policy implementation by placing democratic values to the center of public service as essential guide and inalienable factor for efficiency or economy....

I would like to contribute to what author thinks about corruption in government. In the book, it is accepted that increasing corruption in public sector is related to erosion in values. But I think that ominous economic status of public officials should be taken into consideration to logically comment on corruption in public sector, especially in third-world countries.

That I reviewed above included only most important considerations that I needed to relate. You will find much more such as governance, high citizenship, intergenerational equality, the role of courts in democratic government and so on in the book. I believe that this book is an invaluable study and instigates readers to think on "PUBLIC" more deeply. Highly recommended.

Summary of The Spirit of Public Administration (Jossey-Bass Public Administration Series)

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