Book Reviews
| Published date | 01 March 1974 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1974.tb00171.x |
| Date | 01 March 1974 |
Book
Reviews
Systemic Aspects
of
Public
Administration
Poul Meyer. Copenhagen: G.E.C.Gad,
1973.
Pp.
182.
D.kr.35.
Poul
Meyer was the author of an
earlier book,
Adminisfratiue
Organiza-
lion
(Stevens,
1g57),
which at the time
had considerable impact
on
scholars of
public administration fortunate enough
to get a copy:
it
was soon out of print.
This new book, short as it is, deserves
equal attention from specialist teachers
and serious students already familiar
with existing approaches to a theory
of public administration; beginners will
not cope.
It
is an essay in conceptual-
ization, not
a
textbook or a monograph.
The title may be explicated thus: just
as the understanding of bureaucracy,
for instance, can be sought by several
different ‘approaches’,
so
can
it
be seen
from several different ‘aspects’
-
the
psychological aspect, the physiological
aspect, etc.
So
it
could be seen
as
a
number of relationships between organ-
izational dements, themselves not
individual persons but corporate enti-
ties deemed to behave as units; each
distinguishable network of such re-
lationships constituting a separate
‘system’
-
the structures
of
legal
authority or ‘organizational system’,
the structures of control or ‘steering
system’, and the structures of values
and facts or ‘decision-making system’.
Hence ‘systemic aspects’ of public
administration, and the framework
of
the book.
Boldly, as in his earlier work,
Professor Meyer sets out to establish
a
middle-range theory applicable to all
countries of the Western world, more
or less: his basic ‘political system’ has
as its main elements a legislature,
a
Cabinet, individual Ministers with
statutory and political responsibilities,
political parties, interest organizations
courts of law, and ‘public administra-
tion’ -the departments
(a
narrow
definition, by which only the top
segment of a British Ministry would be
a
‘departmcnt’), directorates, public
corporations, local authorities, and
so
on. Surprisingly, perhaps, it works very
well; only occasionally would a British
reader fail to recognize the phenomenon
being dealt with.
The other nettle that Meyer simply
grasps firmly
is
the normative ap-
proach. His administrator
is
‘a super-
human being’, able to cope with all
eventualities, the ‘legitimate brother
of “economic man”, the characteristics
of whom are efficient and rational
decisions’ (p.
178)
-
which ‘have no
real existence in practical administra-
tion’
(p.17g),
but which can provide the
standard by which to measure the
degree of rationality actually achieved.
So,
while fully aware of Simon’s
theories on ‘bounded rationality’ and
so
on, Meyer throughout talks
of
what
‘rational organization’ would require,
impossible though it may be. His model
of
a
rational decision in public admin-
istration
is
clearer than that
of
a
rational organization: there are three
main factors, a time factor and a cost
factor (speedy decisions are cheap but
tend to be nasty, hit-and-miss), but
also
a
‘law factor’
(in
the
Danish,
refssikkevhed,
literally ‘legal security’)
-
that which ensures due process and the
protection
of
the citizen against the
public power (pp.
170ff.).
Incidentally,
one
is
made subtly aware of the lack
of
a
true administrative law tradition
in British and American organization
113
PUB
L
I
C
AD
Sf 1
N
I
ST
R
AT1
0
N
theory:
‘Public administration depends on
legal studies to make
out
the formal
structure
of
any administrative
organization, and it is the task of the
lawyer to characterize the nature of
subordination in
a
given admin-
istrative situation’ (p.
11).
Similarly, the terms ‘centralization’,
‘decentralization’, ‘delegation’ and
so
on are thought of
as
legal terms. IIow
Continental, but how useful.
Much of the book is
a
disturbing
blend of the normatively absolute (the
‘one best way’ of scientific management,
as
in the treatment of ‘functionaliza-
tion’) and the sociologically relative (as
in the insight that the way in which
total government functions are actually
allocated among the different elements
of
public administration, and the way
in which total budget
is
actually
divided among the spenders, is at any
time
‘a
mirror reflecting the political
and social goals in society’ (pp.
99,
I
10)).
As
soon
as
one thinks one has Professor
Meyer typed, placed in his school, he
turns up even before the end of the
paragraph dressed in the uniform
of
another.
The nature
of
a
rational organization
is hinted
at:
its division of work will be
perfectly appropriate to its goals,
so
there will bc
no
need
or
room for co-
ordinating machinery
(p.
99).
and
no
deviations
to
correct
(p.
122);
but
it
will have central ‘overhead’ organiza-
tions and counterpart units in depart-
ments (p.
119).
and it
is
unlikely to
have
a
traditional hierarchical arrange-
ment
-
there is
a
good ‘sociological’
section
on
factors making for the
‘dissolution’ of the traditional hier-
archy. Nevertheless
it
is
a
Platonic
vision we are offered, not
a
blueprint.
This is undoubtedly wise; and on every
fifth or
so
page there is
a
reminder that
we
are talking abstract theory, not
describing the actual behaviour of civil
servants, or whatever. But it perforce
reduces criticism to tests of consistency
and fruitfulness, and
at
that level one
would
want to make
a
number
of
points if there were space.
I
‘4
There is
at
the heart of Professor
Meyer’s conceptualization
a
fundamen-
tal policy/administration dichotomy,
which is neither bridged by his careful
recognition that causal and value
premises of decisions are distinguish-
able only analytically (p.
136)
(which
he tends to forget himself when talking
later about experts and generalists
(p.
r51),
nor justified by his definition
that the establishing of goals is outside
the scope of administrative science
(p.
177).
This reduces the fruitfulness
of the ideal-type
as
a
standard for
assessing reality. NOT
has
Professor
Meyer dealt satisfactorily with the
difficulties of integrating cybernetic
norm-maintaining language with tele-
ological goal-seeking language: the
sub-sections of his chapter on Steering
Systems are ‘Goal Steering’, ’Program
Steering’ and ‘Control Steering’, and in
at
least the first of these the logic
of
such
a
mixing
of
basic concepts depends
upon special definition and suppressed
assumptions. Luckily, the cybernetic
apparatus
is
but skin deep, as it were,
at
the level of metaphor rather than
analogy,
so
that this does not greatly
matter.
Nor, once you get used to it, does the
insecurity
of
the English, betrayed by
an intrusive definite article in almost
every sentence (‘it has been stated that
the true place of the specialist is “on
the tap, not on the top”’
(p.
159)).
and by such mistakes as ‘advantage’
for advance
(p.
96).
‘salesman’ for
seller (p.
100).
‘deduct’ for deduce
(p.
1o8),
and
so
on.
There are many
ordinary misprints, and two of them
reverse the sense (an ‘either’ instead of
neither
(p.
148),
and ‘independent’
instead of dependent variable
(p.
144)).
I3ut for administrative theorists who
still have to look back to March and
Simon
(1958)
for their theory
of
the
administrative process, or who are
trying their hand
at
adapting cyber-
netic ideas, this book will be stimu-
lating reading, even though it rather
points
the
way than draws the map.
A.DUNSIRE
University
of
Ywk
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