The craft of public administration in Eurasia

Published date01 October 2020
DOI10.1177/0952076719852416
AuthorPaul Carmichael,Karl O’Connor
Date01 October 2020
Subject MatterArticles
Article
The craft of public
administration in Eurasia
Karl O’Connor
Ulster University, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland, UK
Paul Carmichael
Ulster University, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland, UK
Abstract
In an innovative approach, applied to a region of the world on which research remains in
its infancy, this article identifies the dominant administrative reform traditions
embedded within the administrative elites responsible for administrative reform in
Eurasia. Our contribution is twofold. Firstly, we establish a mechanism for measuring
bureaucrat perceptions of administrative reform that may be replicated in other
regions, by identifying the extent to which the three dominant Western traditions of
public service (traditional public administration, new public management and new public
governance) have been embedded in Eurasian societies. The article thereby demon-
strates the effectiveness of these turns in public administration to be ‘learned’
and become embedded within the psyche of elite-level bureaucrats in these
Eurasian post-Soviet regimes. The article posits that, while members of these
elites hold several common governance perceptions, understanding of administrative
reform differs markedly between bureaucrats and is broadly aligned with various
aspects of the three dominant turns in public administration. Therefore, it is recom-
mended that some rebalancing needs to take place between international/regional
public policy interventions and public administration interventions. While public
policy interventions are of course required, the administrative foundations upon
which they are built (or learned), require greater attention to the needs, skills and
attitudes of practitioners.
Keywords
Administrative reform, Central Asia, Eurasia, governance, new public management,
traditional public administration
Public Policy and Administration
2020, Vol. 35(4) 465–484
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0952076719852416
journals.sagepub.com/home/ppa
Corresponding author:
Karl O’Connor, Ulster University, Jordanstown, Coleraine BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland, UK.
Email: k.oconnor@ulster.ac.uk
Introduction
Broadly, the past 50 years have seen three public administration models cum
reform traditions advocated by Western scholars, each advocating a dif‌ferent
role for the government of‌f‌icial or bureaucrat. The result is that of‌f‌icials have
received mixed messages as to how they should f‌it into the metaphorical machine
of government. In this article, we investigate how the bureaucratic elite interpret
the term administrative reform, and identify the key motivations supporting their
behaviours. ‘Popular stereotypes and scholarly depictions do not provide a clear
understanding of how administrators perceive their roles and responsibilities or
how they use their considerable discretionary powers’ (de Graaf, 2011: 285; Selden
et al., 1999: 172). We therefore probe the conceptual foundations upon which
bureaucrats build their role conceptions. The research addresses the practical ques-
tions of administrative reform that inform the policy adoption and implementation
process in Eurasia, a region experiencing pronounced change following the collapse
of the Soviet Union, but which remains relatively under-investigated.
Why does a conception of administrative reform matter?
Responding directly to the concerns of those interested in why policy transfer or
‘translation’ may fail (Dunlop, 2017; Stone, 2017), our research focuses not on the
learning process, but on the basics of what knowledge is being updated, through
which we shed light on Dunlop’s original concern of why learners may fail to learn
or indeed, learn dif‌ferently. Put dif‌ferently, while a bureaucrat’s beliefs may be
updated through learning, how they internalise learning is predicated upon their
normative beliefs about what their role should be. The nature of policy learning
depends on one’s conception of public administration: lessons, similarly taught, are
internalised dif‌ferently, based on one’s conceptions of administrative reform. To
what extent do Western conceptions of administrative exist among elite-level
bureaucrats?
Our research draws upon the three main traditions of public administration and
service: New Public Management (NPM), New Public Governance (NPG) and
Traditional Public Administration (TPA), as revived by Rhodes’ (2016) recent
scholarship. Within Eurasia, the research is situated within an emerging trans-
national network of elite-level bureaucrats tasked with reforming the public admin-
istrations of their respective countries: the Regional Hub of Civil Service in Astana,
a regional United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) initiative that aims
to increase the ef‌fectiveness of civil service systems in Central Asia. Through part-
nerships and networking, it uses soft power to build administrative capacity
through peer-to-peer learning.
The article does not appraise the qualities of NPM, NPG or Rhodes’ ‘Craft
skills’ (based on the traditional model). Rather, it accepts that these ideal-types are
theoretically existent within the public sector. These attributes have been developed
over a number of years, with training supported by numerous interventions from
national, regional and international agencies. The article explores how the values of
466 Public Policy and Administration 35(4)

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