Public Administration

 Public policies are government's choices of actions that are intended to serve the public purposes.

 It is whatever government decides in response to a political, economic, or social issue.

 A public program consists of all activities designed to implement the public policy.

 Public policymaking in republican government is constrained by the very nature of republican institutions.

* How much strength or power should an executive ideally have?, Three alternative views:

1. The Restricted view

* The executive can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power.

2. The prerogative theory

* The executive can exercise extraordinary power to achieve the common good and protect the nation.

* It is applicable only in times of national emergency like wars and disasters.

3. The stewardship theory

* The executive-president- should be free to take any actions in the public interest that are not forbidden by the constitution or law.

 The three approaches on executive power are equally applicable to any political executives in any constitutional system.

* Public policy making process go through five successive stages called public policy cycle:

1) Agenda setting

* Represent the ideas or issues derived from the various political channels to wind up for consideration by a political institution.

* There are two major sources of agenda items; the executive and the legislators.

* Agenda are often set by public policy entrepreneurs, political actors who take a political issue and run with it.

2) Decision making

* Two decision making approaches can be identified: the rational decision making approach, and the incremental approach, that rejects the idea that most decisions are made by rational process. Instead, they tend to be made in response to short-term political conditions.

* Both models are useful in explaining the dynamics of public policy decision making.

3) Implementation

* The power of putting a government program into action.

* It is the total process of translating a legal mandate, into appropriate program that provide services or create goods.

4) Evaluation

* The systematic examination of activities under taken by government to make a determination about their effects, both for the short and long term

* Program evaluation differs from management evaluation, as the latter is limited to a program's internal administrative procedures.

* The concepts of efficiency and effectiveness are the standard criteria used for evaluating public programs.

5) Feedback

* Evaluation information creates new agenda items for subsequent decisions. This means that the new information feeds back into its original source.

 Note that the whole process takes place in a political environment, and thus impacted by politics.

 Power is the ability to prevail in social as well as political conflicts, to secure one's goals in the face of opposition.

 Power is a central theme in policy making and administration, because it determines