A Study Of H.George Frederickson’s Public Administration Thoughts

"Social equity" is a familiar word to people, which was put forward by ancient ideologists, then enriched by the modern thinkers and theorist, and finally became important value of human civilization and embodied every aspect of social political lives. It also became very popular in people’s daily lives. We have a lot of theories clarifying and interpreting on "social equity", but theorists and thinkers seldom thought about the practice and operation of "social equity". Although the United States was regarded as the example of modern democracy after the Second World War, social equity has a great gap from that in system design and theoretical assumptions in reality. Breaking through previous studies confined to theory and systems, H.George Frederickson studied social equity through the process of public administration, aiming to realize social equity and promote people’s welfare.This thesis main focuses on H.George Frederickson’s social equity thoughts, and tries to learn system arrangement and implementation of the overall feature of his social equity thoughts through studying the source, basic components, and influence on whole American public administrative theory and practice of social equity thoughts in American public administration. Meantime, this thesis will display the essence of the development of American public administration, and make readers can have genuine understanding about the basic logic and the fact of public administration in the United States. He revealed that American public administration may just be specious, and couldn’t reflected public interests and promote social equity.H.George Frederickson the famous American contemporary public administration expert, whose public administration thoughts are in basis of the special background and personal interest, learning and work experience. Three Minnowbrook Conferences, new public management movement, the era of globalization, and the impact of the United States political parties on public administration provide a space for Gorge Frederickson to think about social equity issues.From the1940s, American traditional public administration set value-neutral and technology-orientated philosophy as a guide, and set efficiency and economy as the value of the pursuit, which couldn’t respond to the growing social conflicts effectively and caused the turbulence of American society and government crisis of legitimacy in the1960s and1970s. In Minnowbrook Conferences of1968, H.George Frederickson pointed out that traditional public administration aimed at improving administrative efficiency, advocated political and administrative dichotomy, and emphasized to promote economy and efficiency values, resulting in that research and practice focused on some areas which was easy to measure, such as governmental organizations, personnel management and urban development. Because of this, the lives and development issues of vulnerable groups in society were avoided or bypassed, public administration couldn’t promote social equity, and what were realized were the interests of the minority. In the basis of this, he put forward the idea of "social equity", and pointed that "social equity","economy", and "efficiency" should be seen as a whole and all were core values of public administration. He also emphasized that "social equity" was more important than the others. Frederickson also defined the term of "social equity", and pointed out that the key of question is that the absence of the public nature of public administration would lead to social inequity. In later studies, he also proposed composite equity, intergenerational equity and other theories, and enlarged the social equity theory.To ensure the realization of social equity, Frederickson designed participants and public policy of social equity in the process of public administration. Participants of public policy included elected officials, administrative organization, public administration staff (senior leadership and the middle-low classes executives), non-governmental organizations and citizens, etc. Being in different social and political positions and having different interests, they had different influence on the realization of social equity.The premise of realizing social equity is public policy. Frederickson studied formulation, selection, implementation, evaluation and other aspects of public policy. Firstly, the political process of American was controlled by an elite few, and all the public policy reflected were their interests. Frederickson argued that when formulating policy, government should consider whose interests the policy would develop. And he also analyzed some major national public policy and proposed some advices. Secondly, that which policy would be performed was depended on the government’s policy selection. Through studying public policy options of several presidents, he found that Democratic Party who was on behalf of the lower people’s interests would choose public policies which inclined to social equity, while Republican Party who was on behalf of the interests of the middle and upper would choose public policy which was opposite. Frederickson pointed out that although different presidents were on behalf of different interests, if he could found the balance for realizing social equity when formulating public policies, social equity could be realized and promoted. Thirdly, the key of the realization of social equity was the implementation of public policy. Frederickson thought that administrative discretion and charity was the path beneficial to achieve social equity.In the1980s, because of the vigorous new public management reform movement in Western world and the U.S. Republican administration,"social equity" was overwhelmed by the new public management reform movement called "reinventing government". Instead of abandoning his pursuit of social equity and public interests, George Frederickson criticized the new public management movement from the theory, history and reality of public administration in the basis of public interests and social equity of public policies, and pointed out that the streamlining which was advocated by the new public management movement didn’t save administrative costs and reduce corruption, but increased administrative costs and decreased public affairs service quality. He further noted that the customer-orientated government reinvention couldn’t no be fully shipped into the public domain, and the final result of the government enterprise would be the achieving of the interests an elite minority and the harm of the interests of the general public. But, he also saw the irreversible trend of government reinvention, and proposed some targeted improve program, such as: when performing outsourcing contract, government should give instructions about the common responsibility to the contractor to ensure the public nature of outsourcing of public affairs, and to reduce or prevent damage to the public interests.In the new public management movement, there were many business management and evaluation methods which were applied to government reforms, such as benchmarking and performance evaluation. Frederickson analyzed the benchmarking and pointed out that the essence of benchmarking was an imitation to an organization with better management to get rid of the dilemma but not the organizational change and innovation. While benchmarking was endorsed or promoted by the government, different areas would begin to make rankings. Ranking would not promote innovation, but made the organizations or individuals that were imitated became authority in all areas. Being authority also meant the formation of privileged organizations or individuals. These would suppress innovations of other organizations or individuals, and ultimately made a lot of products or services to provide public organizations have no chance to participate in public service, leading many public needs not being met and inequitable distribution of public resources.Based on the interpretation and analysis of the public administration thoughts of H.George Frederickson, this thesis considered that his thoughts had the philosophical attributes-using critical methods and humanism to study public administration policies and results, criticizing, repairing and developing public administration theory and designing the realization of social equity in system and policy implementation process on the precondition of the public nature of public administration. However, some of his thoughts were too idealized to achieve in the United States unique political, economic background. Nevertheless, the stress of the regression of the public nature of public administration, and the attention to the idea of public interest and civil rights became t foundation and core content of the New Public Service Theory.Although H.George Frederickson’s public administration thoughts formatted in the context of its unique cultural, the reconciliation of efficiency and social equity and the thoughts of public administrative innovation provided a revelation to contemporary Chinese public administration reform, letting people be capable of deep thinking and rational reference of new public management movement in the reality, and making people use achieving social equity as a value orientation of Chinese administrative reform.