You Need to Public Administration

You Need to Public Administration

We explain what is public administration and the various functions of this discipline. In addition, examples and what is private administration.

1. What is public administration?

By  public administration  is understood the discipline and also the scope of action in matters of management of State resources , public companies and institutions that make up public property.

The public administration  is responsible for managing contact between citizens and public authorities , not only in the bureaucratic institutions of the State, but also in state enterprises, health entities, the armed forces, the police, firefighters , the postal service and national parks, among others. On the other hand, it does not cover the judicial and legislative sectors.

This concept can be understood from two points of view:

• Formally, it refers to the public bodies that have received from the political power the competences to attend specific needs of the citizenship in matters of general interest, such as health, bureaucracy, etc.
• Materially, it refers to the administrative activity of the State, that is, to the management of itself, to reinforce compliance with the laws and the satisfaction of public needs, as well as its relationship with particular organizations.

The public administration  has the privilege of contentious-administrative , that is, administrative procedural law , capable of managing management acts (the State acts as a legal entity) or acts of authority (executed by the State by decree).

See also: Public Service .

2. Functions of public administration

Public administration meets the needs of citizens.

The main purpose of public administration is the management of state efforts or of the various companies and institutions that make up the State, in order to ensure effective compliance with:

• The satisfaction of the minimum needs of the citizens.
• The safeguard of the internal order of the nation.
• Guarantee bureaucratic, hierarchical and informative relations that maintain a social, political and citizen operating system.

3. Examples of public administration

Some examples of public administration can be:

• The measures of cutting and shrinking of the State carried out by the neoliberal governments, especially during the 1990s in Latin America: dismissals of public workers, mergers of ministries, etc.
• The enlargement of the State carried out by the socialist governments, as they expropriate private companies and properties that become the state's patrimony, under a management model of the public administration .

4. Public and private administration

Although many of its processes may be similar, public administration and private administration are distinguished in the following:

• Objective . While the public administration provides a service to the community, the private sector pursues clear profit objectives.
• Financing . The public administration depends financially on the State, although depending on its nature it may provide certain services to third parties; while the private one is entirely due to private capital and donations.
• Legality . Both are legal, of course, but the public is endowed by law with powers, while the private one is supervised and supervised by the principles established in the law, and public bodies are concerned, among other things, to ensure that this is the case. .
• Dependence . While the public administration obeys the guidelines of the government (as long as they do not contradict the laws of the State), the private administration retains a greater margin of independence.

5. Public administration and political science

A government is nothing more than a specific way of using the State.

The formal study of political science tends to go hand in hand with that of public administration , for one simple reason: the different models of government or political management that man has devised throughout history have been felt more than anything in the way of disposing of public goods and services, given that a government , from a certain point of view, is nothing more than a specific way of using the State: its laws, its institutions and its social, civic and economic commitments .