How to bridge East and West

Today, the field of public administration has two problems that can be fixed with one solution. The first problem is fixation on a limited set of “middle-level” topics in public administration. The second problem is a bias towards scholarship generated within a very small number of Western democracies. As I argue in a recent book (Roberts, 2019), Strategies for Governing, we can fix both problems by adopting an approach to scholarship that focuses on the macro-level of public administration – that is, on questions of grand strategy and state-building.

When I refer to middle-level topics in public administration, I mean subjects that relate mainly to the effective operation of agencies, programmes and networks. This has been the main concern of the “public management approach” that has dominated the field of public administration in the West for the last 40 years. The public management approach has also been more focused on aspects of domestic policy, and less on security functions in government.

The institutional apparatus that has built up to support the public management approach is expansive. There are books and journals dedicated to public management; associations and conferences; degrees and professorships. The assumptions and vocabulary of the public management approach are now so deeply embedded that we find it hard to imagine how the field of public administration could be oriented in any other way.

But the field was once oriented in another way. Two or three generations ago, academics often framed their work differently. They talked about the role of the state and about the need for administrative systems to assure that essential state functions were performed properly. They talked about the need to adapt administrative systems in response to changing societal conditions. And they talked about the critical role of top-level executives in superintending and renovating administrative systems.

Of course, these scholars were also concerned with the efficient management of agencies and programmes. But this middle-level focus was complemented by an interest in the overall architecture and performance of government. We could borrow some language from the twenty-first century and say that these early scholars were concerned with state fragility, state-building, and systemic resilience. They also understood that the architecture of government in any country was heavily influenced by history and circumstances in that country.

For several reasons, this “macro-level” view of public administration faded away after the 1960s and 1970s. One important reason is that conditions in many Western countries had changed substantially over the decades. In the early twentieth century, many of these countries still seemed like weak and fragile states. They had limited capabilities and were wracked with unrest. Much of this unrest arose out of public frustration about the inability of government to perform basic tasks. Statebuilding was a way of restoring stability and legitimacy.

The problem facing Western leaders in the 1970s was quite different. The popular perception now was that government had become big and bloated – that it spent too much money, employed too many people, and failed to deliver value for money. In the United States and the United Kingdom, there were popular movements against high taxes and big government. This led to the election of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and President Ronald Reagan in 1980. For the next quarter-century, politics in these countries was preoccupied with making government smaller and more efficient.

This was the context in with the public management approach flourished. It was linked to a larger project of state renovation, although this link was not always recognised by academics working within the public management camp. The focus was on improving efficiency and performance within agencies and programmes because this is where the main threat to state legitimacy seemed to lie. If agencies and programmes could not be made to “work better and cost less”, then they were more likely to be eliminated entirely.

The public management approach gained influence around the world because of the way that the scholarly enterprise is organised. Especially after the 1990s, scholars began to recognise a clear hierarchy in academic journals. Top-ranked journals were dominated by scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, and a very small number of other countries. Key associations and conferences were dominated in the same way. These journals, associations and conferences were soon absorbed with problems of public management. Scholars from other countries who wanted to succeed within this system quickly learned that they had to adopt the public management approach as well.

Scholars from other countries did this even though the public management approach was often ill-suited to conditions in their homeland. Most states in the world are fragile states, where the main concern is still with establishing peace and order, building administrative systems, and performing basic services. Aspects of public administration that are now neglected in the West – executive leadership and legislative capacity, policing and defence, the administration of justice – are very important elsewhere. The main threat to legitimacy in many non-Western countries often arises because the government is too small and weak, not because it is too big and bloated.

To put it another way, there is a disconnect between the public management approach and the larger concerns that face national leaders in these other countries. In the West, there was a clear if unarticulated relationship between the scholarly preoccupation with public management and a larger project of state restructuring. Elsewhere, however, the relationship was not so clear. Certainly, “public management problems” could always be found that would satisfy the expectations of Western-dominated journals and conferences. But this does not mean that public management problems were the most important problems facing leaders in other countries.

It should be said that the connection between the public management approach and the larger agenda of national leaders is no longer so clear in the West either. A succession of crises – the terrorist wave of the early 2000s, natural disasters, the 2007–2009 financial crisis, the 2020 pandemic, protests over racial injustice – are causing a recalibration of national priorities in the United States and elsewhere. The result is the construction of new state capabilities and the renovation of existing capabilities. There are parallels to the kind of work that had to be done in the West in the early twentieth century. Many Western scholars are recognising that the public management approach is not well suited to the analysis of these new “grand challenges” in governance.

In my book Strategies for Governing, I argue that it is time for a reinvention of public administration scholarship in the West. Just as the public management approach was invented to meet the needs of a particular moment in history, we need a new approach that is tailored to the needs of the twenty-first century. This new approach should recover some “macro-level” ideas that were familiar to early scholars in Western public administration. It can also draw on contemporary scholarship in other fields, such as comparative political science, international relations, and state-building.

I argue that this new approach should build on the concept of governing strategy. Every state has a leadership group that is concerned with a bounded set of goals – security, prosperity, some conception of justice, and survival in power. The relative importance of these goals varies over time. Leaders must also develop broad policies that seem likely to advance these goals, given the circumstances they face at the moment of decision. Strategy is constituted by these priorities and key policies.

Strategy is executed by building and renovating institutions – that is, by renovating the state apparatus. Specialists in public administration play a key role in translating strategies into programmes of state reform. They also play a key role in strategy formulation, because they understand the limits of what is possible in state reform. Experts in public administration also give advice about the design of systems for top-level decision-making – that is, those institutions that support strategy-making itself.

By adopting this broader approach to public administration, we will achieve two purposes. Western scholars will do a better job of addressing recent challenges in governance in the West. At the same time, there will be space for scholars outside the West to address subjects that are most important in their own countries: to explore how national priorities are identified, how choices about broad policy are shaped by history and circumstances, and how strategy is converted into programmes of state reform.

In the late twentieth century, many people drew a division between countries of the West, which were considered to be “stable” and “consolidated”, and countries outside the West, which were “fragile” and “developing” or “emerging”. This dichotomy is breaking down in the twenty-first century. All states face the common reality of turbulence and change. They must continually adjust strategy and state capacities in response to shocks and strains. How this process of adjustment happens, and how it ought to happen, should be central questions in the field of public administration. By reframing our conversation in this way, we will enable an important and truly global conversation about governance.

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Alasdair Roberts

Alasdair Roberts is Director of the School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also a Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration.