Multiple Models Of Governance
Waves of reforms have swept through the public sector over the past several decades under societal pressures and demands-both national and international. “Globalisation’ is the latest shift in emphasis connoting vital linkages among states in the international arena. These changes have been piecemeal and fragmented without being integrated into clear visions regarding planned change in Government. The market model of Governance has been holding centre stage since the eighties; but there have been other models alongside it which have been equally powerful and deserve careful consideration. For instance, the participatory model that concentrates on the participation of lower echelons of workers and even the clients and the citizenry has been a direct rebuttal of the traditional hierarchic, bureaucratic model in Public Administration. There has been the other type of flexible Government idea that goes against the conventional model of permanent employment. Public organisations with much less full-time permanent employees, and increasing level of part time and temporary workers have steadily come into existence at many places depending on the nature of the labour market. Still another model has been the “deregulating Government” idea which one can immediately trace to ‘reinventing Government’ a la Osborne Gaebler.
Check out Governance in Indian Context
As it has been put:
The politicians of the 1980’s appeared to have a special dislike and distrust of the public bureaucracy and they sought to curtail its power over policy. The assumption of deregulating Government is that if some of the constraints on action were eliminated, Government could perform its current functions more efficiently and it might be able to undertake new and creative activities to improve the collective welfare of the society”. The deregulating model rests on the belief that public interest would be better served by a more active and interventionist public sector, and in this perspective, collective action is part of the solution and not part of the problem for contemporary societies (as was being alleged by public choice theorists).
What emerges at the end of the debate is a more flexible and open-ended vision of Governance. “As long as democracy is valued”, as it has been so ably put. “the big questions of Pube Administration must go beyond the big questions of the Public Management”. Public Administration diminishes its role in society if understood primarily in terms of managing public agencies.
What is relevant in the context of the Third World is that Public Administration is being crippled in the name of ‘structural adjustment’, invoking more and a more the market model of governance in utter disregard of the crucial social developmental role of the state in the developing nations. The ‘interests of Public Administration are no longer people-related; these are instead capital-related. And here lies the perils of externally induced administrative “reform’ through which most third world countries are passing to-day.
In terms of administrative theory-building, the current emphasis on public management’ via the market model of Governance needs to be viewed in proper historical perspective. Historically, two contrasting visions have guided the pursuit of administration analysis analysis: the managerial vision and the democratic vision. Both public bureaucracy (and managerialism ) and democratic polity are needed in a liberal-democratic society. But, administration analysts since the days of Wilson and the authors of POSDCORB have often been tempted to overemphasise ‘managerialism with its predilection for efficiency, economy and effectiveness. The other more central pursuits of Public Administration like achieving a democratic polity, improving the instruments of collective action and creating conditions for good citizenship and increasing societal learning are of no concern for the public management’ advocates. A major flaw in the managerial perspective is its inordinate interests in organi-zational concerns and measures of organsiational performance. The interests of a democratic polity and maintenance of a legal order are substituted by the concern for organizational survival. There is in this move a misplaced emphasis on “instrument” at the cost of “purpose”. Public Administration as ‘management’ misses altogether the overarching perspective of a democratic polity. Sustained capacity of the political system for collective action, effective citizenship and developing and nurturing the civic infrastructure for protecting citizen’s rights and promoting collective life are of vital significance for any public administrative system in a democracy. The new ‘management’ cult is particularly ominous for the Third World Public Administration, as it tends to strengthen bureaucracy’ further, impeding the development of alternative people’s institutions so necessary for both generating social capacity to govern and crating more democratic spaces outside of central bureaucratic administration.