York University
Department of Political Science
POLS 6155.03
DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION HOME PAGE
Fall-Winter, 2005-06
The study of democratic administration is premised on a commitment to
the progressive extension of people's capacities to govern themselves
collectively. However, many of the principles of public administration
were developed prior to the democratization of the state, and one
result has been public administration and public policy-making
procedures that are unnecessarily hierarchical, inflexible, and
inefficient. During the 1990s, citizen political apathy, cynicism
and alienation from the state was met with a neo-liberal response that
has drastically altered the state public service through downsizing,
out-sourcing, privatization, and "new public management" approaches
that apply business administration tools to public
administration. Currently, however, there is increased citizen
demand for participation in the policy-making process, a higher
standard of public service ethics and accountability, and there have
been some innovative responses from the state to address important
public policy issues. If the challenges created by the dynamics
of the past two decades are to be met successfully, it will be
necessary to transcend the real factors that produce apathy and
alienation from the state. This seminar addresses these issues through:
•an investigation of the bureaucratic
impediments to increased democracy
•an examination of the promise and limits of
recent attempts by governments to overcome such impediments
•an historical and comparative focus to better
understand the possibilities of citizen empowerment and the way in
which social and political contexts shape those possibilities.
The seminar will include readings on both the theory and practice of
democratic administration.
Course
Outline
Class Presentations
Richard Phidd's
notes
(sorry for the formatting difficulties, which represent Ian Greene's
difficulties
with html.)
Andrew
Stark. "What is the new public management?"
Daniel Drache and Marc Froese, The
WTO: A Report Card on Trade and The Diversity Deficit in
Development
Ian Greene and
David
Shugarman, Honest Politics (Toronto: Lorimer, 1997), penultimate
version of Chapters 1 & 2
Ian Greene,
Lessons
Learned from Two Decades of Program Evaluation in Canada
United Nations
Human Development Report, 2002
Lorne Sossin,
Human
Development, Law & Democratic Administration. Here is
another
interesting link.
Institute of Public Administration
of Canada
"Ethics and SARS:
Learning
Lessons from the Toronto Experience", A report by a working group
of
The University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics
The
Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) (December 2001)
Bellamy
Executive Summary (look at 48-50)
Bellamy Facts and
Findings (look at 269-278)
Bellamy Good
Government (look at 8-28)
Gomery
Executive Summary Major Findings (look at 5-7)
Gomery Executive
Summary Assigning Responsibility (look at 73-39)
Gomery Fact
Finding III (look at 29-57)
Gomery Fact Finding
VI (look at 158-170)
Greene, Courts, Ch. 6