Definitions and Important characteristics of Public Administration

Definitions and Important characteristics of Public Administration. What is public administration...? Public administration is the implementation of government policy and also an academic discipline that studies this implementation and prepares civil servants for working in the public service.

Definitions Of Public Administration

According to Prof. Woodrow Wilson, the pioneer of the social science of Public Adminstration says in his book ‘The study of Public Adminstration’, published in 1887 “Public Adminstration is a detailed and systematic application of law.” 

According to L. D. White “Public Adminstration consists of all those operations having for their purpose the fulfilment of public policy as declared by authority.” Both above definitions are done from traditional viewpoint and related only to the functions and actions of Adminstration. 

According to Gullick “Public Adminstration is that part of the science of administration which has to do with government and thus, concerns itself primarily with the executive branch where the work of the government is done.”

According to Paul H (1947). Appleby defined public administration as "public leadership of public affairs directly responsible for executive action". In a democracy, it has to do with such leadership and executive action in terms that respect and contribute to the dignity, the worth, and the potentials of the citizen. One year later, Gordon Clapp, then Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority defined public administration "as a public instrument whereby democratic society may be more completely realized." This implies that it must "relate itself to concepts of justice, liberty, and fuller economic opportunity for human beings" and is thus "concerned with "people, with ideas, and with things".

According to Willough “Public Adminstration in broadest sense denotes the work involved in the actual conduct of governmental affairs, and in narrowest senses denotes the operations of the administrative branch only.”

Important characteristics of Public Adminstration

1. It is part of executive branch of government. 
2. It is related with the activities of the state. 
3. It carries out the public policies. 
4. It realise the aspirations of the people as formulated and expressed in the laws. 
5. Waldo and other thinkers insist on the commitment and dedication to the well being of the people. Otherwise Public Adminstration behaves in a mechanical, impersonal and inhuman way. 
6. Public Adminstration is politically neutral.