Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

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The Traditional Model of
Public Administration
Introduction
What is here called the traditional model of public administration was once
a major reform movement. Where previously amateurs bound by personal
loyalties to leaders carried out public administration, the task became a professional
occupation which was carried out by a distinct merit-based public
service. Serving the public at that time was a high calling, one that required the
best people available to form a distinct administrative elite and to act always
according to the law and established precedents. Politicians might come and go
but, while the apparatus of government was in the hands of permanent officials,
the transition between regimes could be handled smoothly. Public administration
as both theory and practice began in the late nineteenth century, became
formalized somewhere between 1900 and 1920, and lasted in most Western
countries largely unchanged until the last quarter of the twentieth century. This
is a long period for any social theory, even if, since the early 1980s, governments
have moved away from many of its precepts.
The traditional model can be characterized as: an administration under the
formal control of the political leadership, based on a strictly hierarchical model
of bureaucracy, staffed by permanent, neutral and anonymous officials, motivated
only by the public interest, serving any governing party equally, and not
contributing to policy but merely administering those policies decided by the
politicians. Its theoretical foundations mainly derive from Woodrow Wilson
and Frederick Taylor in the United States, Max Weber in Germany, and the
Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854 in the United Kingdom.
The traditional model of public administration remains the longest standing
and most successful theory of management in the public sector, but is now
being replaced. It has not disappeared overnight and elements of it still exist,
but its theories and practices are now considered old-fashioned and no longer
relevant to the needs of a rapidly changing society.
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