Recovering the Craft of Public Administration

Recovering the Craft of Public Administration

Roderick A. W. Rhodes

First published: 08 December 2015

https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1111/puar.12504

Citations: 77

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Abstract

Public sector reform has rarely dropped off the political agenda of Western governments, yet the old craft skills of remain of paramount importance. The pendulum has swung too far toward the new and the fashionable reforms associated with New Public Management and the New Public Governance. It needs to swing back toward bureaucracy and the traditional skills of bureaucrats as part of the repertoire of governing. This article discusses the skills of counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. Although these skills are of wide relevance, the article focuses on their relevance in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand. It concludes that the next bout of reforms needs to recover the traditional craft skills. It is not a question of traditional skills versus the new skills of New Public Management or New Public Governance; it is a question of what works, of what skills fit in a particular context.

Practitioner Points

We need to abandon the syndrome in which , with no time for the intended changes to take place, no evaluation, and no clear evidence of either success or failure, and take stock of where we have come from before embarking on another round of reform.

The traditional craft skills of public administration remain relevant today because of the primacy of politics in the work of top political-administrators.

The craft skills include counseling, stewardship, prudence, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous.

It is not a question of traditional skills versus the skills of the New Public Management or the skills needed to manage networks but of the right mix of skills for a specific context.

For the past 40 years, many governments have had an obsessive concern with reforming the public service. We have seen a shift from the New Public Management (NPM) to the New Public Governance (NPG). Reform has succeeded reform, with no time for the intended changes to take effect, no evaluation, and no clear evidence of either success or failure. Rather, we are left with the dilemmas created by the overlapping residues of past reforms. So, we need to take stock of where we have come from. We need to look back to look forward. We need to ask, what is the role of the public servant in the era of NPM and NPG?

Westminster governments were enthusiastic reformers of their public services. Indeed, they are all categorized as core NPM states by Pollitt and Bouckaert ( 2011 , 124). An important result of the reforms was to push to one side the traditional craft skills of senior public servants. These skills, however, continue to have much utility. We need to recognize that the old craft skills of traditional public administration remain important. The first section of this article provides a baseline for this discussion by describing the main characteristics of traditional public administration and the reforms associated with NPM and NPG. The next section defines the craft. The following section discusses the craft skills of counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. Finally, the article discusses ways of systematically recovering craft skills and comments on the wider relevance of the notion of craft.

It is not a central aim of this article to criticize either NPM or NPG. It is not a question of traditional skills versus the skills of New Public Management or network governance. Rather, we need to strike a better balance between the old and the new. It is a question of what works, of which skills fit in a particular context. The pendulum has swung too far for too long toward the new and the fashionable. It needs to swing back toward bureaucracy and the traditional skills of bureaucrats as part of the repertoire of governing.

This article focuses on public service reform in Westminster governments, although its relevance is not limited to them. However, it is not possible to cover all Western governments. This group of nations bear a strong family resemblance (Rhodes, Wanna, and Weller 2009 , 9), and they were at the heart of the reforms. They are comparable. The phrase civil or public servant refers to of national government departments. The phrase Westminster refers to Britain and the old dominion countries of the British Commonwealth such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Westminster