Thinking about the state, talking bureaucracy, teaching public administration
| Author | Peter Barberis |
| DOI | 10.1177/0144739412462232 |
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
| Published date | 01 September 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Teaching Public Administration
Thinking about the
30(2) 76–91
ª The Author(s) 2012
state, talking
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DOI: 10.1177/0144739412462232
bureaucracy, teaching
tpa.sagepub.com
public administration
Peter Barberis
Abstract
By examining issues concerning the role and nature of the state together with the
character of public bureaucracy, this article shows that, as a practical activity, public
administration retains a distinct identity. Notwithstanding the many changes that have
taken place in the public sector during recent years, programmes of study in the subject
still have much to offer. Such programmes should reassert their place within the social
sciences. Their virtues should be proclaimed with confidence, while resisting misplaced
calls for more narrowly focused vocationalism.
Keywords
The state, bureaucracy, education, public administration
Introduction
There are few subjects taught in British universities today the nature and identity of
which are more uncertain than public administration. The uncertainties are neither recent
nor are they confined to the UK (Ostrom, 1974). Yet it is in the UK that these
uncertainties are perhaps most sharply felt. No undergraduate programme in Britain now
bears the name, though most elements continue to be taught, masquerading under
programmes of varying nomenclature. There are postgraduate degree courses in public
administration. The Public Administration Committee of the Joint University Council
works to promote the subject, supporting this journal along with its companion Public
Policy and Administration. There remains the long-standing journal Public Administra-
tion, though its progenitor, the Royal Institute of Public Administration, folded in the
early 1990s after 70 active years (Shelley, 1993). And the House of Commons’ Public
Corresponding author:
Peter Barberis, Manchester Metropolitan University Rosamond Street West Manchester, M15 6LL United
Kingdom. e-mail: peter.barberis@btinternet.com
Barberis
77
Administration Committee, set up in 1999, has maintained a high profile, serving to fly
the flag. But it is difficult to avoid the impression of retreat.
As a subject, public administration has always drawn upon established disciplines to
which it was often the unsung orphan – principally politics, with lashings of law,
economics, history, psychology and sociology. In more recent years its identity has been
further obfuscated by association with such subjects as management, business studies
and marketing. As a practical activity, public administration has over the last couple of
decades become almost the craft that dare not speak its name. It has been caught in a
political crossfire – not simply the ephemera of popular banter but the deeper grained
cleavages of competing ideologies. These wider cleavages, as they bear upon public
administration, have found expression in various forums but most significantly in two
closely related areas of dispute – the role and character of the state; and the nature of
bureaucracy.
For these reasons, this article begins with a discussion about some of the wider
issues concerning the role of the state, with particular reference to public admin-
istration. There follows an examination of the character of bureaucracy, the nature
of administration and the idea of the public servant. Upon these foundations there
will be developed a discussion about the teaching of public administration. First
principles will be invoked, engaging with some of the debates about public
administration as a university subject. This discussion will be nourished by elements
drawn from the earlier accounts of the state and of public bureaucracy. It will be
argued that, while there is a vocational dimension, public administration must, if it
is to enjoy any integrity as a university subject, retain or re-establish its roots in the
social sciences.
Thinking about the state
For present purposes, it will be sufficient to focus upon those aspects of the state that will
help to highlight patterns of change or characteristics of continuing significance as they
pertain to public administration. The discussion will proceed in four parts. First, it will be
appropriate briefly to outline what is meant by the state – the characteristics that make it
unique. Second, consideration will be given as to what the state does – its changing role.
From this will emerge, third, the shifting indeed permeable boundaries within the orbit of
the state and between the state and non-state institutions. Finally, there will be discussion
about some of the principles underpinning the relationship between state and citizen,
with special reference to ‘reasons of state’ and the rule of law.
What is the state?
Max Weber famously defined the state as ‘a human community that (successfully)
claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’
(Gerth and Mills, 1948: 79 – parentheses and italics in original). This definition serves,
first, as a reminder that the state is a deliberate construct of human endeavour. Second,
there is an implicit capacity for change. The process of change may be varied in
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Teaching Public Administration 30(2)
character, manifold in its sources. But it will not be arbitrary. For, third, Weber reminds us
that the authority of the state is underpinned by legitimacy. In the liberal democratic state
the source of legitimacy rests ultimately with the people, or public, working through the
institutions of representative government, perhaps incorporating some measure of
participatory citizenship. Whatever the case, citizens accept an obligation to obey the state.
Such obligation may be conditional and will usually obviate the need for compulsion. But,
fourth, the state retains a long-stop physical power or facility for enforcement. Crucially it
has a monopoly of such power, giving it a unique character; the state is not simply any old
institution. Servants of the state exercise a power like no other, be it the judge handing
down sentence for a serious crime or the local authority official imposing a fine upon the
citizen who has overfilled his or her wheelie bin.
Implicit in the legitimate exercise of force is the existence of a set of prevailing values
that find expression in the state, at least tacitly. The notion of any prevailing set of values
may be tempered by the existence of different and competing value systems. In any
event, values are susceptible to change over time. Moreover in a liberal democracy the
state, while enjoying a monopoly of coercive power, will make no claim to a monopoly
of morality, for which values are the springboard (Benn and Peters, 1959: 277). This
invokes vexed questions about the extent to which the state merely reflects or,
alternatively, induces changing values – that is to say, questions about the role of the
state.
What the state does – its changing role
There are few questions in politics as contentious as the role of the state. Here we can
only sketch some of the possibilities, with an eye on the past as well as the present. The
so-called night watchman state of the early to mid-19th century was founded in part upon
assumptions about orderly laissez-faire capitalism, a necessary condition for which
included the maintenance of national security, law and order and a modicum of health
and education. There was an inherent tension between the minimalist and more active
roles for the state in securing health, happiness, peace and prosperity. The state took
on more and more functions. As it did so its role changed in two vital respects. First,
it no longer simply held the ring, merely reflecting wider social concerns; rather it began
from the late 19th century to set the pace. In Bosanquet’s famous phrase it became more
the ‘flywheel of society’. Second, as the 20th century unfolded, the state became a pro-
vider, no longer simply supervising those who did the providing.
By the second half of the 20th century the term ‘positive state’ was part of the
accepted coinage (Fry, 1969: 13–33). The much vaunted Keynesian consensus embraced
the welfare state, an assumed responsibility to care for the citizen from ‘cradle to grave’.
It implied, among other things, principles of universalism in the provision of public
services and state benefits (Fraser, 1973: 192–222). What is more, not only did the state
manage the economy, it would now step in as a producer. There may never have been a
clear consensus about the positive state – or at any rate a highly imperfect one. And, even
at its apogee, it fostered principles of public administration that germinated and
coalesced with other ideas that would again bring into question the role of the state. For
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in the NHS and in the use of public corporations to run the nationalised industries,
principles of arm’s length administration were employed (Morrison, 1964: 258–61). At
the same time local authorities, often the authors of ‘experiments’ in public services, felt
the need more vigorously to assert their autonomy, feeling that they had been sucked
closer to the vortex of central government. Such fears had their political foundations; and
there were administrative factors, too.
The final quarter of the 20th century ushered in what may be seen as the reformation
of the positive state. Where others had championed its utility in helping to solve
economic and social problems, the so called New Right saw the state as the source of
many problems. Supporters of the state were forced on to the...
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