Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

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Accountability 245 carrying out the policy instructions emanating from the political leadership. Behn argues (2001, p. 42): The public administration paradigm is internally consistent; the distinction between politics and administration permits the construction of a simple, appealing, hierarchical model of political accountability. Thus, despite its flaws, the old paradigm has one, big, advantage: political legitimacy. The accountability relationships are clear. The traditional public administration paradigm meshes well with our traditional paradigm of democratic accountability. But there are some obvious problems. First, it is really only the politician who is accountable in this system as the administrator is neutral and anonymous and not associated with particular policies. In a real sense the administration is not accountable at all as its leaders can say they carried out the policy diligently; if something went wrong it was the political leaders’ fault. A bureaucrat can hide behind anonymity and thereby avoid accountability. Secondly, there must be some point in the line of accountability where the political part of government meets the administrative part. The interface between the two is likely to be a source of problems, as each has a different culture, type of rationality and form of accountability. In a parliamentary system the key relationship is that between the minister and the departmental head. It is here that there are quite different conceptions of the nature of the game each is playing, a discontinuity in the process of administering policy. Any dealing within the bureaucracy occurs according to Weberian principles in which every public servant at a particular part of the hierarchy has a specific position and role and is accountable to a superior. Procedures, formal rules and systems are developed rationally and proceed up the hierarchy. At the top of this structure there is one person – the departmental head – who deals with the political leader of the department. At this point the bureaucratic, rational part of government suddenly confronts the political part. Formal rationality faces political rationality in the form of the minister. This link was always problematic, as the precise role of each was never clear. It could be argued that genuine accountability was not possible in the traditional model, because it broke down at the interface of the political and the bureaucratic. No matter how plausible this seemed in theory, in practice it was a failure. Thirdly, despite problems, there is some accountability in the traditional model, but it is accountability of a particularly narrow kind. While it is clear who is finally accountable in this system, it is an accountability for errors rather than achievements. It aims at avoiding mistakes, so encourages risk-averse behaviour. The convention of ministerial responsibility in Westminster systems – even if rarely followed in fact – was that ministers were ultimately responsible to parliament for the actions of their departments and had to resign for major departmental errors whether or not they had prior knowledge of those actions. Although the precise status of ministerial responsibility is now unclear, with sanctions being uncertain or even arbitrary, the minister does take political
246 Public Management and Administration responsibility for the actions of the department. But this provides no real managerial accountability for the achievement of results. Political leaders often have inadequate knowledge of lower level functions to allow managerial oversight, and accountability was never easy to ensure when inadequate knowledge was reinforced by poor measures of performance. This is a negative system of accountability. Avoiding errors is not the same as achieving something. Finally, even if the traditional model of accountability was well understood and politically legitimate, there are very real questions about basing a theory concerning something as important as accountability, on a myth. In reality, as the public administration literature has attested for many years, there can be no separation between politics and administration, between the political leadership and the administrators. It seems odd to find in this myth the supposed foundation for accountability. Traditional public administration requires a clear separation between those who give instructions and those who carry them out, and the latter have no responsibility for results. This is, and was, a nonsense. Basing accountability on the politics/administration dichotomy is a weak position from which to start. It is a most convenient fiction ‘for once we confess to the unpleasant reality that, for civil servants to do their job, they must make policy decisions, we have to discard the public administration paradigm’ (Behn, 2001, p. 64). A managerial model of accountability One of the reasons for the adoption of managerialism is the perceived failure of the system of accountability under the traditional model of administration. Avoiding embarrassing mistakes is not the same as providing any positive incentive to improve efficiency. A managerial model of political control is more realistic. There are a number of changes involved in what could be called a managerial model of accountability. The old form of accountability relied upon the formal links provided through the hierarchical structure. Accountability in a managerial model is more fluid, more political. This is perhaps more easily seen in the United States system, where agencies have always had informal and indirect links beyond the formal ones within the executive branch and have operated in quite different ways from the model set out earlier. In the formal model, agencies are firmly under the control of the President. In the real world, their funding and even future are dependent on Congress and their range of action is circumscribed by the courts. Accountability in this model cannot be of the rigid kind set out by an organization chart. Although less easy to see, the same thing is becoming true in parliamentary systems. The relative openness of the bureaucracy, and the easier access to information, mean that there is a different kind of accountability at work. Accountability exists in the bureaucracy’s relationship to clients, to its own managers, to its political leadership, and finally, although perhaps more contentiously, to the voters.
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Public Management and Administratio
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Also by Owen E. Hughes AUSTRALIAN P
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© Owen E. Hughes 1994, 1998, 2003
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Preface Over the past 20 years the
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viii Preface the Colorado link such
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3 Public Management Introduction Th
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5 Public Enterprise Introduction Pu
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7 Strategic Management Introduction
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10 E-government Introduction In the
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Page 293 and 294: 284 References Borins, Sandford (19
Page 295 and 296: 286 References Glor, Eleanor D. (20
Page 297 and 298: 288 References Jordan, Grant (1997)
Page 299 and 300: 290 References Monroe, Kristen Renw
Page 301 and 302: 292 References Putt, Allen C. and S
Page 303 and 304: 294 References Wilson, Graham K. (1
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296 Index bureaucracy 1-5, 9, 15-43
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298 Index information and communica
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300 Index ‘one best way’ thinki
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302 Index Ritter, G. 85, 86 role of
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Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

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