Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

Managing External Constituencies 207
bureaucracy, that of relevant interest groups. This relationship is important,
both in its own right and for the way in which external groups can be used to
win internal bureaucratic battles. Agencies actively compete with each other in
a contest for resources and for turf; interest group demands are very helpful
resources for this kind of competition. There is a two-way relationship between
groups and the system as a whole, as ‘to survive as effective political institutions
they must offer services needed by their host political system, receiving
in return specific benefits for themselves and their members’ (Pross, 1986,
p. 88). Private enterprises, interest groups and other governments are all
involved in the game of politics, in which bureaucratic politics is no less a form
of the high art than is party politics. A good manager needs to be a good player
in this real-life game.
Thirdly, public managers have to deal personally with the press and the public.
These relations should now be seen as vital parts of the management function.
As Allison notes, managers must deal with the press and public ‘whose
action or approval or acquiescence is required’ (1982, p. 17). This is a key point.
Under the traditional model, the press and public were peripheral to the main
function of the agency, which was merely administrative, so that the only outside
person for them to talk to was the person who had given the instructions.
This was unrealistic. Agencies need the press and good managers realize this.
Of course, they try to manage relations by putting a favourable slant on everything
by having press offices and publicity machines, and even commissioning
opinion polls and the like. The important point is that public officials have realized
the importance of being in this kind of game. This was not the case under
the traditional model.
Public service anonymity and neutrality have certainly declined along with
acceptance of the manager’s role in those functions once formally the preserve
of the politician. The reality is that many public servants are well known for
their views, are associated with the activities of their agencies in their own right
and not simply as instruments of the politicians, and are sometimes even
known for their personal or party political views. Public servants are now much
more free to speak out in public, to appear at professional forums, to write articles
for journals and generally to be visible and public figures.
Perhaps the extra focus of public managers on external constituencies should
be regarded unfavourably because of its subversion of the political process
which removed the notion of an apolitical career service. Against this, public
servants do exercise power and have political roles, even if these points were
played down in the traditional model of administration. By recognizing these
facts the managerial model brings a healthy dose of realism to the relationship
between the overall political system and the wider citizenry.
Another part of the changed relationship with the outside is the extra effort
put into relations with an organization’s clients. This is an external constituency
of a particular kind and, while mainly important for present purposes
in its implications for accountability (Chapter 13), it also has consequences for