Public Administration: Balancing Power and Accountability

This is a complete and up-to-date revision of the classic text for public administration, implementing the rule of law as a fundamental issue in American democracy in pursuit of the common interest. It presents public administration as a tension between the necessary exercise of power and the search for responsiveness to achieve maximum accountability from public servants. The authors have initiated a new approach to the study of public administration by focusing on middle- and lower-level managers. These are positions that most public servants will occupy for the bulk of their professional careers. The book recognizes that most of the administration is in field offices, in state and local government, and in cooperation with the private and nonprofit sectors. It then focuses on power and its potential for influencing the behavior of the bureaucracy to perform its goal-oriented and balancing functions in a pluralistic open system. This leads to the relationship between theories about administration and the actual practice and how best results (imperative of accountability) are achieved in the increasingly globalized environment.

JEROME B. McKINNEY is Professor of Public Management and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. He has held government positions at state and local levels, and acted as a consultant to all levels of government, both domestic and international. He is the author of Effective Financial Management in Public and Nonprofit Agencies, Second Edition (Quorum, 1995)and Risking a Nation (1995).

LAWRENCE C. HOWARD is currently Distinguished Professor at Chatham College. He is a former Dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He has consulted widely with nonprofit agencies at all levels of government in the U.S. and developing countries.