Public administration and public management : the principal-agent perspective / Jan-Erik Lane.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lane, Jan-Erik.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public administration.

Agency (Law).

Physical Description:

xii, 292 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2005.

Summary:

Government in any society delivers a large number of services and goods to its population. To get the job done, government needs public management in order to steer its resources--employees, money and laws--into policy outputs and outcomes. In a well-ordered society the teams who work for the state deliver under a rule of law framework--public administration. "Public Administration and Public Management" provides a new perspective on the public sector by offering a concise and comprehensive analysis of what it is and how it operates. This book includes such issues as: - The Principal-Agent Framework and the Public Sector - Public Principals and their Agents - The Economic Reasons of Government - Public Organization, Incentives and Rationality in Government - The Essence of Public Administration: Legality and the Rule of Law - Public Policy Criteria: The Cambridge and Chicago Positions

Contents:

Introduction: the public and the private sectors 1

Need for public administration or public management 4

New Public Management: the general framework 5

Public management: merit and accountability 13

Public administration and public policy: a contracting perspective 14

Citizen's charters 16

Osborne's trilogy: a critique of the management philosophy of David Osborne 18

1 The principal-agent framework and the public sector 29

Why is the principal-agent framework popular? 30

Principals and agents: contracting as the essence of interaction 31

Incentives: how is egoism and social value recognised? 33

Principal-agent games 34

The principal-agent approach and the public sector 38

Management, public organisation and the principal-agent model 41

Public management and the politics/administration separation 44

2 Public principals and their agents 48

From public finance to public management 49

The public principal 51

Social priorities as incentives 53

The fundamental agency problem in the public sector 57

Public sector agency: hidden action 58

Public sector agency: hidden knowledge 60

The two main solutions to the agency problems 61

Budgeting: the principal-agent perspective 63

3 The economic reasons for government 77

Imperium and patrimonium 78

Crown jewels are not merely regalia 80

Eminent domain 81

Public goods and merit goods 82

Public necessity 84

Government as employees, money and law 85

Transaction costs and coordination 86

The enforcement mechanism and groups 87

Contractarian schools 89

Contracting in the public sector 93

The two kinds of transaction costs 93

The state and transaction costs 95

Transaction costs and fairness 98

4 Public organisation, incentives and rationality in government 100

Rational public administration 100

Rationality in policy-making: will transitivity prevail? 102

Whose rationality in policy implementation? 104

Micro rationality versus macro rationality 106

Cooperation and coordination failures 107

The state: arena and organisation 113

Politics as the arena of policy-making 114

Public organisation as the implementation of policy 114

Political organisation: three basic types 115

The basic logic of public organisation 118

Macro and micro rationality and the non-profit organisations 122

5 The essence of public administration: legality and rule of law 125

A thin legal concept of legal-rational authority 126

What is legitimacy? 127

Legality 128

Rights 130

Separation of powers 131

Publicity and redress 132

Legal review 133

The Hayek argument about law and rule of law 135

Democracy and rule of law 139

Growing demand for rule of law: judicialisation 141

Public administration and reregulation: a principal-agent perspective 142

6 Public policy criteria: the Cambridge and Chicago positions 148

The Chicago revolution: the ends or means of policy? 149

The world according to the Chicago gospel: the key hypotheses 150

Law and markets: what is the role of the state? 154

Chicago School implications 159

The world according to the Cambridge gospel: the relevance of social policy 163

Appendix Social spending in OECD countries 167

7 Public teams are different from private teams 171

Macro view of public organisation 172

Country-specific models of public organisation 174

Public teams: people and rules 176

Micro perspective on public organisation 177

Limits of new managerialism 184

Public organisation and public teams 186

8 Public firms 190

The contradictions inherent in the public enterprise 191

Public enterprises and the economy 192

Behavioural consequences of the new system 198

Overall assessment of 'like to like' 206

9 Public insurance 212

The elements of pension systems 213

The organisation of public insurance 214

Challenges: adequacy, coverage and sustainability 217

The economic dependency ratio 220

The future: avoiding deficits or reneging? 223

From welfare to workfare: the moral hazard perspective 223

Social security and social policy 225

10 What is public management policy? 228

NPM: country-specific models or experiments 229

Guiding principles of public management policy 233

Towards a post-modern public organisation 235

Public management reform: what is the drive? 235

The public management function 239

Core public management functions 243

Does public management matter? 245

Conclusion: contracting in the public sector 250

The state and transaction costs 251

Reasonable and unreasonable reform attempts 256.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [263]-280) and index.

ISBN:

0415370167

0415370159

OCLC:

57465520

Publisher Number:

9780415370165 (pbk.)

9780415370158 (hbk.)