OUTLINE ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Please select one of the topics outlined below. 4250 WORDS Consider your text and lectures to be a starting point. Essays must fully utilize at least an additional six academic sources. When researching look at the bibliographies of your initial sources, they can provide other useful references. Academic sources include books, articles from professional and academic journals, and other peer-reviewed publications. The following are NOT considered to be academic sources: news magazines such as Time and MacLean’s, newspapers, videos, personal interviews, and many websites. The essay will be graded more stringently than the case study. Style, the quality of the arguments, and the degree of originality will all count towards the grade of your paper. Make sure to examine issues and questions thoroughly—flesh out concepts and arguments—present more than one side while supporting one. Make sure that you firmly ground your paper on theory. Give yourself time to re-think the paper—in other words try to finish it earlier so that you can go over it after a few days. This is difficult, but try. I have no preference as to reference style; the important thing is that you give credit to your sources. You ARE NOT required to submit your paper to “Turnitin.” ESSAY TOPICS 1. New public management can be considered to be both a panacea and a plague to public administration. Consider both arguments by comparing education policy to one other policy area of your choice. 2. How does the Public Service Modernization Act (PSMA) address concepts of Merit, Patronage and Employment Equity? Discuss critically.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
OBJECTIVES
The course will introduce students to the study of public administration as a sub-field of political science. The course has three broad goals. The first, is to effectively survey the basic principles and problems of public administration in the contemporary state with particular reference to Canadian federalism. The second, is to provide students with an understanding of the major concepts and theories of public administration. The third, is to investigate the practical problems of administration through the analysis of case studies and the writing of a research essay.
After completing the course students should be able to:
Discuss the basic theories and concepts of public administration in a modern state
Examine the concept of power using policy community/network frameworks
Apply theory
Locate, analyse and interpret information found through the world wide web
Produce well researched work which reflect their university degrees
IMPORTANT TERMS
Max Weber Woodrow Wilson Marx and Engels on Bureaucratic Power New Public Management Street Level Bureaucrats Modernization Regulatory Agencies/Privatization Representative Bureaucracy Policy Cycle Policy Communities and Policy Networks Structural Analysis/Neo-Institutional Model POSDCORB Hawthorne Experiments Politics/Administration Dichotomy Ministerial Responsibility Accountability and Public Servants: Five Overlapping Contexts Administrative Responsibility Traditional Bureaucratic Organizations/The New Public Sector Organization Political Culture/Administrative Culture Incremental Model/Mixed Scanning Model Garbage Can Model Rational-Comprehensive Theory/Public Choice (Rational Choice) Model Public Sector Values Discretion/Conflict of Interest
