The concept of Separation of Powers in Public Administration and Difference between Public & Private Administration
- 1. Difference between Public and Private Administration Lecture 2
- 2. Public administration differs from private administration in significant ways. 1. The separation of powers places public administration under different “masters.” Legislatures possess as much or more constitutional power over administrative operations. Legislature enacted administrative law to regulate administrative procedures, including rule making, open meetings, public participation, and the gathering and release of information. The courts also often exercise considerable power and control over public administration. They help define the legal rights and obligations of agencies and those of the individuals and groups on which public administrators act. They define the constitutional rights of public employees and the nature of their liabilities for breaches of law or the Constitution. Difference Between Public Administration & Private Administration
- 3. Separation of Power creates a fragmentation of authority that is generally not seen in the private sector. Legal restrictions and requirements affect private management, but they do not fragment authority over it in the same way or to the same extent, nor do they provide so many parties with a legal right to observe and participate in private firms’ policy decisions and other affairs. Further, in most of the public sector, there is no genuine equivalent to the profit motive so central to private enterprise. 2. The Public Interest The governmental obligation to promote the public interest distinguishes public administration from private management. The Concept of Public Administration
- 4. A central issue is assuring that public administrators represent and respond to the interests of the citizenry. By contrast, private firms are thought to best serve the general interest by vigorously pursuing their own economic interests. 3.The Market A closely related distinction between public and private administration concerns the market. Public agencies traditionally have not faced free, competitive markets in which their services or products are sold. The market is less constraining in the public sector than in the private sector. The Concept of Public Administration
- 5. Private firms typically face markets more directly. Under free-market conditions, if they fail to produce products or services at competitive prices, consumers take their business elsewhere, and a company’s income declines. Eventually the noncompetitive private firm will go out of business. In between the typical public agency and the private firm is a gray area in which not-for profit organizations and highly regulated industries, such as many utilities, operate. Not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) fill an important niche in the economy, providing services that may not be sustained through market pricing, either because their clients lack the funds to pay for them, or because the goods provided have merit but cannot feasibly be provided either by the market (because they are public or quasi-public goods) or through government (because the services are provided on the basis of social or religious criteria that governments must steer clear of). The Concept of Public Administration
- 6. 4. Sovereignty Sovereignty is the concept that government is the ultimate repository of supreme political power and authority. It involves a monopoly over the legitimate use of force in the society. The constitution of Pakistan recognizes that sovereignty over the entire Universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone, and the authority to be exercised by the people of Pakistan within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust. Public administrators are engaged in the formulation and implementation of policies that allocate resources, values, and status in a fashion that is binding on the society as a whole. The Concept of Public Administration
- 7. Private firms also make policies and are engaged in activities that affect the lives of individuals in the society as a whole, but unless specifically empowered to use physical force (as in the case of privately managed prisons), their policies cannot be enforced through legitimate coercive physical power. Rather, the private sector must turn to the public sector’s courts and police power for the enforcement of contracts. In sum, any definition of public administration must lay heavy stress on the public. Public administration is concerned with administration of the public interest, it is constrained by constitutions and relatively unconstrained by market forces, and it is considered a public trust exercised on behalf of the sovereign. The Concept of Public Administration
- 8. Private administration, in contrast, generally has a narrower concept of the public interest; profit-making firms are heavily constrained by market forces, not by constitutions. Moreover, private administration is not connected to the issue of sovereignty and is rarely considered to be a public trust of any kind. The lines between public and private administration may become blurred when government contracts out public functions to not-for-profit organizations or other third parties. The same is sometimes true when public agencies are run like corporations. But the private sector is not dominated or characterized by not-for-profit organizations or firms exclusively on government contracts, nor is the public sector largely organized in corporate form. Substantial differences between the public and private sectors remain, and, importantly, they promote reliance on different values and processes. The Concept of Public Administration