Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2013

 

Clarifying the Concepts of Public Administration in the Academic History: An Analysis of the Classical Uses of Three Basic Concepts

(Abstract)

 

Zhang Kangzhi and Zhang Qianyou·80·

 

Three concepts have emerged in the earlier development of public administration: public administration, administrative management and public management.  Nevertheless, academic discussions have chiefly focused on the concept of public administration, and have yielded various definitions about it from different viewpoints. However, in the municipal research movement, the term of public administration had largely referred to “municipal administration,” which began to acquire an exact definition and was used as a reference term for governmental or government-related administration, when its object of study was extended to general government formation and its administrative process. As a specific outcome of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” administrative management was a strategic term used by the Roosevelt administration to achieve administrative centralization through administrative restructuring, and was seldom used in academic research. As a result, administrative management has not been established as an academic concept. During the period of municipal research, public management also came into being. However, its use and spreading was closely associated with the Public Management magazine of the International City Manager Association. A study of the origins of these three basic concepts (from different contexts and with different uses) helps us understand the different connotations of these concepts and delineate the history of public administration as an academic discipline.