EDITOR’S NOTE: We continue our publication of the ASPA Founders’ Forum Fellow (FFF) papers with this piece, number 3 of 14. The papers will appear in alphabetical order, with two papers posted each week until all 14 are online. Previously posted papers may be viewed by going to the Related Articles box below.

Rachel Krefetz Fyall

Since the Friedrich-Finer debate of the 1940s, accountability has been prominent issue within public administration scholarship and practice. Even still, accountability concerns have become more urgent in response to recent structural changes in public service delivery. Within a traditional bureaucratic model, accountability refers to the expectation that those in government should be held responsible for their actions. While many varied forms of accountability exist (see Rainey’s discussion of responsiveness values, 2009, pp. 106-7), traditional discussions of accountability within the public administration literature limit the subject of accountability to “the government” (both elected officials and government employees) (Romzek and Dubnick 1987). As the boundaries distinguishing the public sector have increasingly blurred, however, the simple question of “Who is accountable?” has become more difficult to answer.

EDITOR'S NOTE: We continue our publication of the ASPA Founders' Forum Fellow (FFF) papers with this piece, number 2 of 14. As stated previously, the papers will appear in alphabetical order, with two papers posted each week until all 14 are online. To receive notices when the articles are posted, sign-up as a Registered Reader at PA TIMES Online.


Erica Copeland

“Americans suspect their government is both ineffective and inefficient.” Numerous scholars of public administration have evaluated and supported this same assumption: the government is failing to meet public expectations. The pessimistic proposition suggests the need for the government to overhaul and to rebuild its relationship with its citizenry to inspire mutual trust. However, improving how Americans see government requires solutions that avoid contrasting ‘the public’ with ‘the bureaucracy’ as if either group is monolithic or entirely distinct from the other. In fact, citizens of diverse backgrounds and beliefs shape the public interest just as public agencies with unique and, at times, conflicting priorities constitute the whole of government. Environmentalists set different priorities than do industrialists similar to how the Environmental Protection Agency may advocate policies that contrast with those promoted by the Small Business Administration.

Washington, DC–ASPA’s student members are the heart of the organization. Their development is a key priority, at ASPA, since they will be the ones to lead us into the future. Our charge now, is to support their development. To this end, ASPA continued its tradition of offering the Founders Forum Fellowship Program. In addition to the benefits the students receive from the program, ASPA has linked the fellows with Senior ASPA Members (both practitioners and academics) who are leaders in an area of interest to the fellow and it has revised the way in which the fellows engage ASPA and experience their membership.

One of the changes to the program, was requiring the students to tackle a contemporary issue within the field by addressing it in a paper to be presented at the 2012 ASPA Annual Conference at a special discussion circle session, “The 2012 Founders’ Forum Fellows Critical Issues in Public Administration Exchange: A Series of Discussion Circles.” The students were required to write an essay (fitting one of the topics below) that demonstrates analytical rigor and critical thinking by specifically framing the issues, citing actual cases and using empirical data to cultivate positive discussion about how we, as a field, can address the issues identified.

Due to its length, this article has been split into three pieces. Parts one and two of this article may be read by clicking the link in the Related Articles box below. If you would like to post a comment to this article, click on the Post A Comment link below.

Herbert H. Werlin

As explained in my 2003 Public Administration Reveiw (PAR) article, the justification for Political Elasticity (PE) theory is simply that it is more enlightening than other theories in regard to the most interesting questions in the literature having to do with the poverty and wealth of nations:

Due to its length, this article has been split into three pieces. Watch for the third piece, which discusses the author's Political Elasticity Theory in more detail, to be posted next Monday, April 16, 2012. Part one of this article may be read by clicking the link in the Related Articles box below.

Herbert H. Werlin

A THEORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Francis Fukuyama, in his 2004 book, State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century, recognizes the impact of inadequate public administration in weak or failed states. For example, in regard to helping HIV/AIDS victims, the “public health infrastructure may be nonexistent, incompetent, or highly corrupt; medicines will be stolen, records will not be kept, and donor funds will end up in the hands of bureaucrats rather than going to the patients that they are meant to serve.” The weaker the state, the less likely it is to be able to “monitor tax compliance and enforce tax laws.”

Due to its length, this article has been split into three pieces. Watch for the second piece, which discusses the author's own struggle to link public administration to political science, economic development and comparative politics resulting in his subsequent Political Elasticity Theory, to be posted this Thursday, April 12, 2012.

Herbert H. Werlin

In The Washington Post (March 18, 2011), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported to have pledged to the new government of Egypt tens of millions of dollars of financial aid and business incentives in addition to the more than $1 billion already available to Egypt by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to fund small and medium size businesses and stimulate job growth. The trouble with this is that, unless there is fundamental administrative reform, not much good can be expected of this financial aid. This is a point generally overlooked by scholars and journalists.

This article is part of a series on "Social Media and Civic Engagement," to be published on PA TIMES Online during the month of February, and is Part 2 of McLennan's article. To read part one, click on it in the Related Articles box below this piece.

We are still accepting articles for this topic and all others on the 2012 PA TIMES Online Editorial Calendar. For more information or to see the calendar, click the link at the end of this piece in the Related Articles box.

Lauren E. McLennan

When Action Backfires
Neither paper provides totally balanced information and both have played a role in politics publically; and both newspapers today are being used by our legislators to deliberate about what the “American people” want. These polls are the opinions of a small group of citizens who have unwittingly managed to utilize some of the most powerful primary media groups in America. Realistically, together these two newspapers (loosely) represent only 1 percent of the United States’ population.

This article is the first of a series to be published on PA TIMES Online during the month of February under the topic of "Social Media and Civic Engagement." We are still accepting articles for this topic and all others on the 2012 PA TIMES Online Editorial Calendar. For more information or to see the calendar, click the link at the end of this piece in the Related Articles box.

This is Part 1 of McLennan's article. Watch for Part 2 this Thursday, February 9th.


Lauren E. McLennan

When we discuss civic engagement as a way to interact with government without getting involved in politics directly, we fall short of recognizing a weakness within civic information sharing. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, authors of Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations explain that “primary associations [with civic groups] play an important role in the development of a citizen’s sense of political competence” yet the “availability of his primary groups…gives him intermittent political resource[s]”, creating a “weak link” between the person and polity. This article is a warning to consumers of news media outlets—our “primary” source of civic association—and those who trust in the public debate process taking place on the United States’ House and Senate floors.

Civics in Action
With a brief history on two of America’s most trusted media outlets, The New York Times and The Washington Post, a clear illustration is drawn of the partiality of some of the most influential civic groups in America.

This is part two of a two part series. To read part one, click the link in the Related Articles box below.

Christopher Atkinson

According to the Small Organizations Natural Hazards Project, few small businesses fully understand the threat from disasters and how they might recover if presented with a disaster, such as a hurricane. Small businesses have a tendency to encounter more difficulties than larger, more well-established businesses in dealing with a recovery process, and a lack of continuity planning only exacerbates the dilemmas they face after a hazard event. Poor planning for recovery can result in a firm overextending its resources; the great personal cost to reopen may not be reflected in the recovery achieved.