Peters’ Participatory Government: A Commitment in Improving Public Service Performance

Peters’ Participatory Government:

A Commitment in Improving Public Service Performance

Achieving ‘Good Governance’ is indeed not just a piece of cake vis-à-vis political dominance and too bulky bureaucratic system. While it is true that measuring local government performance is always a constructive means of promoting good governance the world over (Konrad – Adenauer-Stiftung, 2004),how should it be done remains a gigantic challenge among scholars and funding agencies.

A variety of techniques or approaches has been employed in attempting to address the problems in achieving good governance.  According to Peters, there are four broad, sometimes overlapping, approaches to reform:  the market model, the participatory state, deregulated government, and flexible government.  One of his strong arguments for the Market Model is that in contemporary times, it is the most obvious alternative to bureaucracies as it encourages the concept of the New Public Management (NPM) in which greater emphasis is given to the role of managers.  To Hood (1995), the first dimension of NPM is ‘active control of public organizations by visible top managers wielding discretionary power’.  Greatly, however, NPM’s most famous slogan “Let the managers manage!” is apparently too good to be true if elected politicians will keep on exercising political dominance in hiring to ensure their political career for the next election where the image of the clear division of labor exalts the authority of the politicians who dominate the administrators.

Under ‘Deregulated Government’ that describes a behavior of less control or decreasing interferer by the tyranny of rules, public sector removes selected regulations on its operations in order to (in theory) encourage efficiency in its noble intentions to produce and deliver public goods and services.  While it sounds utterly convincing, such an approach is apparently not plausible in a society where bureaucratic system is immensely huge.

Another model that Peters is introducing is focused on the importance for the public sector to respond on time or more quickly in order to adjust to the geography of problems. He refers to it as the ‘Flexible Government’ that attempts to extend the jurisdictions of the government according to the needs of its functions.  At first glance, I agree with Peters when he explains that people comprising public sectors be likely to direct more solely on keeping the well-being of the organization and permanence on individual careers more than the mission of the agency itself.  In fact, government agencies have tended to sight themselves as everlasting bodies. But one of its possible major setbacks would be hiring personnel not on the basis of KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities) but on patronage.  This is where and when the issues on oligarchy in hiring and promotions will possibly emerge and destroy not only the missions of the public agencies but of the entire credibility of the institutions as service providers.  Appointed individuals more often than not come to hold positions on the foundation of such aspects as a political or personal connection to the chief executive.  This scheme is alarming in a bureaucracy with very high political dominance that would eventually lead to political corruptions.

My recent examination of the literature says that there is a convincing constellation of arguments why public sectors are taking an increasing interest in the participatory model.  From the perspective of a bureaucrat, I believe the first and foremost reason has to do more with the attempts by government bureaucracies to ensure our continuing survival than it does with any meaningful embrace of good governance, democracy or empowerment. 

Second, since participatory model encourages more regular citizen participation, the international aid neighborhood has been active in stimulating governments in the developing countries.  With mounting rate, patrons or benefactors are inserting certain requirements on assistances and loans to governments that oblige them to buoy up participatory development programs and projects (Thompson, 1995). Obviously, the patron’s main goal is more than just to inform the public of the government’s decision but more on to unlock the processes of decision-making to more examination. In doing so, patrons or funding agencies profess to be linking participatory approach straightforwardly to government’s accountability and transparency leading towards the attainment of appropriate public development thrusts. As such, this places greater pressure on public agencies to produce outputs that are indeed the appropriate needs of the community.

My own professional experience dealing with the leaders of some significant People’s Organizations in my locality has been the living testimony why most, if not all, public development programs become utterly successful. Thompson (1995) argues that outside perspectives are sometimes more critical than the LGU’s personnel in illuminating internal problems and in identifying a range of possible solutions. In some cases, these outside resource persons are University researchers, private sector professionals, or non-government development practitioners (Thompson, 1995). By doing so, it is possible for the public sector agencies to develop, implement and institutionalize more people-centered projects towards the attainment of quality living.

In the Philippines, the passage of the Local Government Code (RA 7160) in 1991 has devolved to local government units many functions and responsibilities, and yet, nearly two decades after its passage, no serious effort has been made to institute a performance measurement system designed to evaluate the extent to which local governments have been performing these functions and responsibilities.  One set of strategy that has to be reckoned with would be strengthening governance by increasing transparency and accountability coupled with a more effective and efficient production and delivery of public goods and services (Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 2004).  Unfortunately, currently available analytical frameworks and guidelines on administrative decentralization are not very helpful in assisting local government units to design strategies and reforms aimed at promoting these and other needs (Cohen & Peterson, 1996.  Therefore, much remains to be desired in the construction and adoption of the instruments or tools to be used for this undertaking.  It has become imperative and urgent that such a framework to advance public service performance for local government units be formulated and established. Applying the underlying concept of participatory approach, among these is what should and must be done to professionalize public services in local government units. Some big questions to forecast would be what job skill sets a particular lgu will need?  What necessary and appropriate interventions must be done to professionalize its workforce? What changes must be made now to bring the future workforce into balance with anticipated needs?  What will recruitment and training priorities be to motivate employees to achieve superior performance?  All these important questions can be well addressed depending on how deep we understand the participatory model.

I believe the question that should rather be asked now is not actually on why public agencies should adopt this approach, but more on how to go about it.  As a bureaucrat, I can say that such an approach is vital in a democratic society.  But how it should be done remains to be a hard nut to crack.  Say, for many, perhaps the first policy pronouncement is to sort out one or a series of training workshops to expose the personnel to the new community-based approaches.  But sometimes or more often than not, we only give little thoughts to the long-term management and organizational approaches (Thompson, 1995). What do I mean with this? With out these long-term management and organizational approaches, as a turn out, public agencies soon bump into the spiky setback of how to put up or develop internal capacity without essentially changing the bulky bureaucratic systems.

In this case, we look at the personnel as just another input in the production of goods and services. What perhaps changed this way of thinking about employees was research referred to us by some scholars such as Perry and Hondeghem. Their study found employees tend to be the most significant resource. According to the former CS secretary Sto. Tomas, the personnel are the important resources in any governmental functions in public administration and thus, the needs and motivation of public employees should become the primary focus of any government institution.  Yet, despite this growing evidence, I am still convinced that we still have little understanding of what that means for management practices vis-à-vis what indeed are the important ingredients of the participatory model.  I believe the next challenge for the public sector in applying participatory model is how to bridge the gap between the theoretical understanding of how to ‘manage’ employees to effect superior performance.  Say for example on training the personnel, the term “training” should rather refer to the creation of interactive learning environments and continuous learning opportunities rather than simple classroom-based teaching and instruction  (Thompson, 1995).   Meaning, professional development opportunities should be given to ensure employees’ technical and managerial skills remain up-to-date and in line with the needs of the people.

To sum it up, I can confirm that indeed transforming a bureaucracy thru the application and understanding of the participatory model for governance demands changes to an organization’s working rules in order to permit its personnel to do experimentations in order to counter more resourcefully and productively to altering circumstances and innovative occasions. However, again this is not easy to espouse.  While it is true that any type of public sector can establish its own service standards on personnel management, yet the turnouts are basically dependent based on what a pubic sector can afford and for which it is comfortable with, considering available skills and technology and attitudes and behavior of the manager. This calls for the revitalization of commitment to public service.  This is exactly what I have been referring to as the next major challenge of how to go about applying participatory model in effecting superior performance.  It takes to have a deeper commitment to do what is ought to be done and how to go about applying Peters’ Participatory Government.  With it, it is a sure fire that a public sector as a service-oriented entity will be able to construct a well-built foundation of development characterized by timely and more improved quality delivery of public goods and services.

References:

Hood, Christopher

1995 The New Public Management in the 1980s. Variations on a Theme: Accounting, Organizations and Society.

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

2004 “East and Southeast Asia Network for Better Local Governments.” Local Political and Administrative Reforms. Manila: LOGODEF

Local Government Code 1991 of the Republic of the Philippines (1991): A.V.B. Publisher

Pratt, Dick

2006 New Public Management, Globalization, and Public Administration Reform.  University of Hawai’i Press.

Svara, James H.

2001 The Myth of the Dichotomy: Complementarity of Politics and Administration in the Past and Future of Public Administration

Thompson, John

1995 Participatory Approaches in Government Bureaucracies: Facilitating the Process of Institutional Change. Great Britain: Elsevier Science Ltd

OVERALL -  Good analysis.  I agree with the argument that the how-to is the big question.  Various scholars from diverse fields have argued for participation for many, many years. 

I hope you will continue to explore the paths that are or can be taken to create the strongest basis for increasing participation.

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't find where you identify the core features of the participatory model and why you prefer it to the others , perhaps including the traditional.

Some sources are very dated with respect to how they are used.

In places the meaning is not clear to me.