Public administration deals with how to run government efficiently. It is an act of management of public affairs. Woodrow Wilson defines it as an action part of government, the most visible side of government.

Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a Prussian political economist and journalist. He is best known for “The Communist Manifesto” and “Das Kapital.” He is often called the Father of Communism and his ideas led to significant revolutions and the establishment of political systems governing over 20 per cent of the world’s population. “The Columbia History of the World” mentioned that his writings as “one of the most remarkable and original syntheses in the history of human intellect.”

Karl Marx contributed to bureaucracy before Max Weber. Although he did not systematically write on bureaucracy. While analyzing development in society and the process of administration, he also analyzed the emergence of modern bureaucracy. He considers factors like the Industrial Revolution, Religion, the emergence of big democracy and capitalism as the basis for the emergence of modern bureaucracy. However, his thoughts were negatively related to the bureaucracy that-

1. He considers it as an instrument of the state
2. An elite institution
3. It represents the interest of the state.
4. An instrument of exploitation

Bureaucracy protects capitalist ideas and exploits the working class. It was established so that to protect the interest of the state and bureaucracy itself, being an elite class, can never think of the welfare of people. Marx compared bureaucracy with the ‘parasite of institution’ to exploit the poor section. Hence, he considers it as an instrument of the dominant class

Although his views were very extreme and have been criticized. Even Lenin did not have only a negative view of bureaucracy. He considers that bureaucracy also has a positive role in a society like the administration of state, defense and security of the state. Which is an important condition for the smooth functioning of the state.

However, the views of Marx can’t be completely rejected when the role of bureaucracy has been analyzed from different parts of the world. It does have class orientation and elite orientation. Even in India, it has been criticized for working for the state when police, investigating agencies, etc, act for the state, and there have been numerous politically motivated decisions by the administration, including electoral malpractices. However, bureaucracy has transformed itself and it does protect the rule of law and liberty of people.

1. Ansari is the best teacher for Public Administration Optional in India and is widely recognized for his expertise & knowledge in the subject. His teaching methodology focuses on making complex concepts easy understandable. 

J.M. Pfiffiner (1946) define “Public administration consists of getting the work of government done by co-ordination the efforts of people so that they can work together to accomplish their set tasks”. Public Administration deals with running the affairs of the state efficiently. Public Administration is a discipline, activity and subject. As a subject, it is concerned with the finding of best theories, tools and techniques. So that they can be applied by public administration as an institution for performing its activities efficiently. It is significant because of the following factors:

1. The administrative state has become more challenging and complex.
2. The state should ensure development, welfare and efficient government.
3. The state has to maintain stability, order, peace and security.
4. The state has to regulate and facilitate.

Since it is public administration which deals with the operational side of the state and tries to achieve the objective of the 3Es, social justice and responsive government. The state is also facing governance challenges like:

• Climate change and global warming
• Terrorism and security threats
• Competition due to globalization
• Disaster management
• Threats posed by the 4^th industrial revolution

So, the essence is, if the state fails, it is due to the failure of administration. As correctly said, “If civilization fails, it will be mainly because of the breakdown of administration” W.B.Donham. Therefore, public administration is significant simply because the state can’t function efficiently without an efficient role of administration. Public administration deals with affairs of the state to run the state efficiently based on merit principles. State undergoes establishing institutions on the basis of merit, and hence, a good administration is set up, which means there is a system of administration which is capable of delivering goods and services efficiently.

In any country, people have aspirations which they want to realize. It depends on the quality of administration and how better they would be able to realize their aspirations. If they fail to realize due to the inefficiency of the administration, they will have a high level of dissatisfaction, which may result in the state facing challenges like social conflict, unrest, protests, etc.

India also has faced challenges like protests for reservations, protests against corruption, etc. It is one type of challenge faced by the state. There are other challenges, too. Therefore, administration should be organized, structured and institutionalized in such a way to tackle these challenges efficiently. Public administration as a discipline also helps in tackling such challenges. For India, the role of administration is more important because it has huge diversity and population, and the society is in transition society with problems like communalism and regionalism along with emerging problems in terms of threats posed due to ICT reforms.

Hence, a state which can’t tackle such challenges may face survival threats; that’s why, in contemporary times, PA has become more important than that visualized by Wilson when he gave the idea of establishing a separate discipline of PA.

Public Administration is one of the most popular Optional subjects for UPSC, with a significant overlap with General Studies Papers. The subject has a practical relevance to governance and quality study material and expert guidance by S. Ansari contribute to its high success ratio.

1. Ansari Sir has taken this optional to a new level wherein this subject has become more interesting and marks-fetching. The records of the highest marks since 2013 (the UPSC new pattern) in this optional remains with Lukmaan IAS by Abhilash Mishra-AIR 05 in 2016 (334 MARKS).

1. The Public Administration Optional Course at Lukmaan IAS is provided in both offline and online modes. 

Lukmaan IAS provides the best offline/online test series for Public Administration, under the expert guidance of S. Ansari. The Year-Long Test Series consists of 36 Tests divided into three phases — 

• Phase I (Classical Level): 22 Tests
• Phase II (The Follet Bridge): 4 Tests
• Phase III (UPSC Level): 10 Tests

Lukmaan IAS, led by S. Ansari, is a well-known IAS coaching institute for Public Administration Optional. The institute has the distinction of producing the most number of toppers from Public Administration Optional with top ranks like 03, 05, 11, 14, 17 and many more.

J.M Pfiffiner (1946) stated that “Public administration consists of getting the work of government done by co-ordination the efforts of people so that they can work together to accomplish their set tasks”. Public Administration can be anything either state or government or people because the state came into existence to serve people through a social contract and to serve people. The state needs government and in effect, this government needs administration to serve people.

An analysis of the above definition includes that the term public administration has been used in two senses:

1. Wider view
2. Narrow view

According to the wider view, public administration includes the activities of all three branches of the government. This view has been taken by Woodrow Wilson, L.D White, F.A Nigro, Pfiffner, etc. Since the implementation of policies, i.e. running the constitution has become more challenging than framing a constitution. Therefore, a separate discipline was founded to overcome these challenges. There was too much focus on what the government should do but too little focus on how the government should do it. The discipline of public administration is considered an applied subject that deals primarily with the implementation side of the government. Against that backdrop, Wilson gave his seminal work in the form of an essay, ‘The Study of Administration’.

Woodrow Wilson is considered as founding father of the discipline of public administration due to his essay ‘The Study of Administration’, which was published in 1887, in which he forcefully argued why there should be a separate discipline and what the discipline should do. He was the first thinker who clearly articulated the need for a separate discipline. So, the affairs of the state should run efficiently by focusing on building the best principles and theories that could help overcome the challenges of policy implementation. As he remarked, ‘it is getting harder to run a constitution than to frame it’. His main underlying concern for a separate discipline was to bring administrative reform. So that administration is established on the principle of merit and efficiency. Since this need is still relevant, his essay is considered ‘the most seminal and impactful’ for influencing the discipline and practice of public administration.

Necessary for government:

Politics deals with decision-making. Political science teaches more about the system of government, whereas decision implementation is part of administration. Hence, public administration is an action part of government. Dwight Waldo stated that “Public administration is the art and science of management as applied to the affairs of state”.  Public administration deals with operationalizing the state, i.e., how a state should be run. Hence, we can say that the main focus of public administration is on the implementation side of the government or administration.  Also per the World Bank, Governance refers to all manners of exercising control and authority in the allocation of resources and The International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences defines Governance as “the act of governing”. In simple terms, governance is a collaborative way of solving problems, which means it is also action-oriented. However, governance is a process that involves three important sectors i.e. public, private and civil society organisations. This process aims to solve the administrative problems efficiently.

However, by 2000 onwards, the meaning of governance started changing. It has become more people-oriented and less market-oriented due to the bringing back of the state. People’s satisfaction and their role became more important in the process of governance. As per OECD, governance is all about people, and it is about trust building. Governance is not merely about growth and development. Rather, it is more about values and whether people are valued in the process of decision-making.

The government of India’s philosophy of governance “ sabka saath sabka vikas’ underwent modification and it added “ sabka viswas and sabka prayas”. The trust deficit impacts the implementation of policies and programmes and dilutes the participation of people. The people’s trust in the market has eroded, and their trust in states also diluted due to their experience during the initial decades of governance. It means mere emphasis on development is not governance, but it takes the trust of the people in the decision-making and implementation. The trust and participation of people is intertwined in governance that without trust of people, the objectives of governance and the govt will not be realised.

Analysis of statement:

Traditionally, public administration was action-oriented because all the authority was concentrated in the hands of the administration, and bureaucracy was the main institution of administration. But since the 1990s public administration has changed its approach and instead of becoming action-oriented itself, it is trying to govern through all the three stakeholders so that the state can have an effective way of solving problems of the society. Hence, the power shifts towards different stakeholders, and the government is trying to influence the process of governance so that there are more effective solutions to the problems faced by society. Therefore, public administration can be considered as governance in action.

At the same time, public administration is not only about the action part of the government but is also a discipline in itself and as a subject, it tries to build its principles, tools and techniques. Therefore, public administration from a broader perspective includes action orientation, policy formulation orientation and discipline orientation but its main function is focused on action orientation.

CONCLUSION: Although public administration can be considered a discipline and deals with policy-making, its focus remains on the government’s action because, as a discipline, it is primarily concerned with implementing government policies.

Dwight Waldo (1967) said that  “Public administration is the art and sentence of management as applied to the affairs of state”. Public administration as an activity consists of actions that are the purpose or aspiration of a government. Public administration works through the system of organisation and management. Therefore, it is both an activity and a discipline for systematic study. Public administration, since its inception, has been primarily concerned with problems of how to validate law qualitatively, honestly and efficiently. However, in the current scenario, public administration has become more concerned with the processes by which it participates in formulating and interpreting the law to make it more correct with reference to the public interest. As a practice, public administration has always helped governments carry out actions on the basis of validated laws.

Factors public administration focuses:  The objectives of public administration in a simple society are limited, but in a large and complex society, institutions and their processes become more specialised and differentiated, leading to the creation of new organizations, departments, councils, commissions, agencies and so on, especially for administrative tasks. Therefore, as a structure of government or element of the political system. Hence, public administration has been an established institution since ancient times.

Even the earliest framers of the U.S. Constitution inscribed its developmental path. However, the major turning point in the history of public administration came with an essay written by Woodrow Wilson (1887), which became figurative in the evolution of public administration. The definition of public administration initially took a narrow approach, concerned with bringing efficiency to implementing the policy. Thinkers like Simon explained this view, defining PA as ‘the activities of the executive branches of all national, state, and local government’. Other thinkers who supported this view are Gulick, Taylor, Fayol, etc. But in a broader sense, public administration is concerned not only with implementation but also plays a significant role in policy formation. This view is taken by F.A Nigro, L.D White, Marshall Dimock, Pfiffner, etc. According to Nigro public administration has an important role in the formation of public policy, and it is thus part of the political process.

Public Administration as a Wheel of Administration:  

Public Administration has a multidimensional approach where it can work as:

1. Interdisciplinary—Public administration, as an interdisciplinary approach, is founded by blending the insights of various social science disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, political science, economics, etc.
2. Discipline—As a discipline, PA is concerned about developing theories that can increase efficiency, effectiveness, and economy, such as classical and behavioural theories.
3. Practice – As a practice, it tries to implement the theories.
4. Different from Private Administration—The Goal of public administration is the welfare of society unlike the private sector, it doesn’t focus on earning profit.
5. Main objective of public administration is public interest.

All these approaches of public administration have a single objective of efficient implementation of the policy.

CONCLUSION: However, public administration is an applied discipline related to the operational aspect of the state, which is policy implementation. Even if it plays a major role in other dimensions, like institution, policy formation, etc., it is always inclined towards running the affairs of the state more effectively.

When the government carries out any act of administration, it is called “public administration”. The English word “administration” has been derived from two Latin words “ad” & “ministiare” meaning “to serve” or “to manage”. Thus, in simple parlance, administration means the “management of affairs” or looking after people. Herbert Simon (1957) said, “By public administration is meant in common usage, the activities of the executive branch of the national, state and local government”.

An analysis of the definition includes that the term public administration has been used in two senses:

Main administrative activities in public administration:

In general, administration means when two or more people come together to coordinate to achieve a common objective, it is an act of administration. Therefore, the term public administration, in general, is defined as the ‘management of affairs’ in which two or more people cooperate and coordinate to achieve a common purpose. To explain the scope as an activity there are 2 schools of thoughts

1. Narrow & Broader view – The narrow view states that it should deal only with executive activities and the Broader view states that it should deal with activities of legislature, executive and Judiciary.
2. Managerial & Integral view – The managerial view talks about only managerial activities (POSDCoRB) activities and the integral view talks about all the activities of an organisation – managerial, technical, clerical and manual.

As far as the scope as subject matter is concerned there are only two views.

1. POSDCoRB view – It considers managerial activity important for the organisation and hence it should be the subject matter of enquiry.
2. Subject matter view – It rejects the POSDCoRB view. It argues that the subject matter of an organisation differs from each other in many senses, not all organisation deals with POSDCoRB activities like research are more concerned about innovation rather than managerial function. Hence public administration should focus on the subject matter of the organisation rather than POSDCoRB activities. However, both are considered as two sides of the same coin means both are important.

To explain scope as an activity, there are two schools of thought as mentioned above, therefore from a broader perspective. It can be said that Public Administration deals with all the activities of the state like all three organs of government.

As far as the scope of subject matter is concerned there are two views. However, the subject matter view rejects the POSDCoRB view. It argues that the subject matter of the organization is different, not all organizations deal with POSDCoRB activities like researching is more concerned about innovation rather than managerial functions. Hence, public administration should focus on the subject matter of the organisation rather than POSDCoRB activities, but both are considered as two sides of the same coin.

The scope of public administration from a traditional view was largely influenced by the classical approach when public administration evolved as a separate discipline. Since then, it has experienced six overlapping paradigms. Therefore, there is a view that it is difficult to define the scope of PA because of its dynamic nature.

The scope of public administration has gone through tremendous changes and during the welfare era, its scope became as big as a state characterized as an ‘administrative state/leviathan state’. Thereafter, during the 1980s-90s, due to LPG reforms, once again, the state experienced tremendous changes in terms of the emergence of a multi-disciplinary perspective on the one hand and, on the other hand, changes in the activities of the state from actor, doer, producer to regulator or facilitator, i.e. state becomes a competitive state. Again, by the 2000s and the beginning of the 21st century, the state had started experiencing changes. In a nutshell, the activities of public administration have not shrunk. Rather, they have increased, and it has assumed the role of performing new activities like regulation, protection of the environment, protection of human rights, etc.

As far as public administration as a discipline is concerned, it has experienced an extreme level of diversity in terms of models, approaches, and theories after competing with each other, so much so that even there is a view that public administration is undergoing a ‘state of quandary,’ i.e. seems it is boundary-less. However, from a more realistic perspective, it can stated that even if its scope has increased and up to some extent it is difficult to define still, its core can be defined in terms of organizational theories, personnel theory, financial theory, public policy, etc.

Conclusion: The present state of uncertainty is due to peripheral aspects which is difficult to define and where it seems there is too much focus due to globalization. There are also new developments so that Public Administration should less Anglo-American and more global (ethnocentric). The state of quandary is due to empirical perspective and the diversity has dominated PA in recent times which can be much more as transition. Even in this stage of a quandary, there is a clear perspective led by the Minoowbrook III conference that the future scope of PA would be guided by Traditional Public Administration, NPM and NPS.