FOREWORD

It is a great pleasure to be able to contribute a foreword to this book by two eminent scholars in the field of public administration. The pleasure arises not just from cooperating with these two colleagues, but also from recognizing and emphasizing several important points being made in this volume. These are issues which are not entirely new but which require further discussion and elaboration. That need for additional elaboration is all the more true as governance changes in response to changing demands, changing sources of legitimacy, and a changing resource base. This volume is therefore an important statement about contemporary governance and the role of public administrators in those processes.

The first important point made through this volume is the importance of public administration in governance. The conventional description of public administration emphasizes the formal structures of bureaucracy and the implementation of public policies. But it is crucial to understand the more central role that the bureaucracy plays, especially in the contemporary state. As well as “mere administration,” the public bureaucracy is also a major source of policy advice for ministers and the legislature. And by making secondary legislation, bureaucracies are themselves major sources of rules for the society.

But that “mere implementation” is also crucial for governance, providing the linkage between state and society. Citizens do not interact on a regular basis with their elected officials, even in well-functioning democracies, but they interact on an almost daily basis with public bureaucrats such as postal personnel, the police, social workers, public health officials, and the like. The interactions between state and society are important not only because the lower echelons of the bureaucracy make decisions about clients. These interactions also provide citizens with a picture of the nature of that state, including its probity. Thus, the bureaucracy is central to the legitimation of the contemporary state.

A second important dimension of this volume is that it emphasizes the importance of comparison. Much of our understanding of public administration is restricted to the institutions of our own country, or perhaps a few other countries that are relatively similar. Although a thorough analysis of our own system is desirable and essential for understanding additional administrative systems, it is not sufficient for developing theory, or for more nuanced understandings of how governance and administration actually function. That said, comparison is not easy, but this volume provides the reader with an appreciation of the possibilities of effective comparison.

As well as examining administration comparatively, this volume extends the discussion of the role of multiple governance systems to consider the increasing global dimension of governance and administration. While we need to understand differences among individual governance systems, it is increasingly difficult to discuss these systems in isolation. One obvious impact of globalization of governance is the diffusion of ideas, but the effects are more pervasive. On the one hand the close connections within the international system limit the capacities of governments. On the other hand, however, there is a much larger field for governments and public administrators to play on, with the capacity to move policy problems among venues, especially in more institutionalized transnational entities such as the European Union.

As well as discussing the contemporary nature of governance and public administration, this volume also supplies a rich historical background for understanding that contemporary reality. The authors, and especially Professor Raadschelders, have made numerous contributions to the study of administrative history, and those intellectual roots are demonstrated very clearly in this volume. The historical backgrounds of individual governance systems produce traditions and some path dependence that are crucial for understanding contemporary actions.

Finally, this volume points to issues in the governance of the welfare state, as well as demonstrating the importance of the warfare state. Both of these emphases on the activities of the state produced distinctive patterns of governance and distinctive challenges for administration. While the warfare state may demand the development of efficient administrative systems for defense, the welfare state requires that plus the capacity to deliver services to large numbers of people in a humane manner. Further, the effective functioning of the welfare state is crucial for the legitimation of the contemporary state.

In summary, this is an important book that should be read by the expert and the novice alike. It presents an extensive, and at the same time nuanced, analysis of public administration. Perhaps more than anything it demonstrates how central public administration is to governing, and that improving and strengthening administration is crucial for an effective state.

B. Guy Peters
University of Pittsburgh