The Evolving Physiology of Government
Canadian Public Administration in Transition
Publication Year: 2009
Published by: University of Ottawa Press
Table of Contents
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pp. v-viii
Foreword
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pp. ix-xiii
Professor J. E. Hodgetts is the unwitting motivator and fairy godmother of the conference that brought together the papers in this volume. The latter is not exactly a Festschrift, for such a collection in his honour appeared in 1982 (Dwivedi, 1982). And how many such encomia can a modest man endure? So no one breathed the “F-word” when the ...
Preface: From There to Here
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pp. xiv-xxii
Colleagues, associates, and friends: Let me begin by offering both commiserations and congratulations to the University of Guelph and to its Department of Political Science for their inability to resist the blandishments of that force of nature otherwise known as Professor O. P. Dwivedi. As usual, he has succeeded in organizing others to his ...
Acknowledgments
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pp. xxiii-xxv
This book would not have been possible without the help of our colleagues who joined in this enterprise so willingly when the idea of a conference on the evolution of Canadian public administration was first proposed. They all gave selflessly of their time to present their work at a conference held at the University of Guelph in September 2007 and ...
Canadian Public Administration in Transition: An Introduction
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pp. xxvi-xlvi
How things have changed over the past sixty years! While it may have been a lonely enterprise to study Canadian public administration in the early post-war period, by the 1980s, when Hodgetts made this observation—and certainly in the two decades that have followed— there has been a small but robust community of scholars ...
Part I: Theoretical Perspectives
Chapter One: Evolution of Disciplinary Approaches and Paradigms in the Study of Public Administration in Canada
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pp. 2-39
In his article “The Intellectual Odyssey of Canadian Public Administration,” J. E. Hodgetts (1997) recalls that at the outset of his career in the mid-1940s, the then grand old man of Canadian public administration, MacGregor Dawson, told him that the discipline was poised for an intellectual takeoff. ...
Chapter Two: Public Administration Research and Organization Theory: Recovering Alternative Perspectives on Public Service Institutions
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pp. 40-72
Ted Hodgetts’s The Canadian Public Service: A Physiology of Government 1867–1970 (1972) is rightly regarded as a classic study in the field of Canadian public administration. It provided an assessment of an important national institution; explored its historical evolution and the mandates and interests of line and central agencies; and coined the term ...
Part II: Contemporary Issues and Challenges
Chapter Three: The Origins of Merit in Canada
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pp. 74-96
Merit has been central to human resource practices in Western democracies for over one hundred years. While many of the public service commissions that traditionally guarded merit have been weakened or dismantled over the past two decades, all governments still retain various forms of merit protection in the form of independent boards that hear appeals ...
Chapter Four: The Politics-Administration Dichotomy: Democracy versus Bureaucracy?
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pp. 97-117
Despite its legions of critics, the politics-administration dichotomy has stood the test of time. To this day, it haunts both students of public administration and practitioners operating at all levels of the public sector, from international organizations down to the smallest municipality. The dichotomy provides an enduring image to elected ...
Chapter Five: The Unfortunate Experience of the Duelling Protocols: A Chapter in the Continuing Quest for Responsible Government in Canada
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pp. 118-150
This chapter examines a normally neglected aspect of responsible parliamentary government in Canada: the role of Parliament in the accountability of the public service. In particular, it looks at the accountability of Canada’s most senior public servants, the deputy ministers and heads of agencies. These deputy heads are now, under government’s flagship legislation, the Federal Accountability Act, ...
Chapter Six: Law and Innovation: The Incremental Development of Canadian Lobby Regulation
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pp. 151-188
Lobbying attempts to persuade government to adopt courses of action preferred by specific interests. It is the representation of interest to power. In all governments it permeates the institutionalized relationships of accommodation and has done so through time immemorial. What makes lobbying an object of political concern today is the fact that the complexities of modern government have rendered this form of ...
Chapter Seven: From Administration to Management: Forty Years of Public Sector Education in Quebec
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pp. 189-214
In 1961 Ren� L�vesque, a minister of the Government of Quebec, asked Roland Parenteau, professor at the �cole des hautes �tudes commerciales de Montr�al (H�C), to help develop a program to train the administrators of the provincial public service. Th e departments of political science in the province, ...
Chapter Eight: Trust, Leadership, and Accountability in Canada’s Public Sector
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pp. 215-248
Is Canada’s public sector facing a crisis of trust? On all levels within the public sector, trust seems to be in short supply. Declining and low public trust in politicians and political institutions like parties and legislatures is well known, having been documented in opinion surveys going back several decades. ...
Chapter Nine: Putting Citizens First: Service Delivery and Integrated Public Governance
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pp. 249-270
J. E. Hodgetts, in a 1955 review of antibureaucracy writings, referred to the traditional stereotype of the lazy civil servant who, “as was once said, is like the fountains of Trafalgar Square because he plays from ten until four” (179). At that date, it was difficult to imagine that fifty years later public servants would be providing many government services twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. ...
Part III: The State of the Discipline: Future Challenges in Administration and Governance
Chapter Ten: American Perspectives on Canadian Public Administration
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pp. 272-291
Canadian public administration scholars have long been aware of the relevance of the American discipline and profession of public administration. Hodgetts studied in the United States—under L. D. White—and alludes to American influences on Canadian practice in his writings. ...
Chapter Eleven: A Comparative Perspective on Canadian Public Administration within an Anglophone Tradition
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pp. 292-311
This chapter examines Canadian public administration within a comparative perspective grounded in the anglophone tradition. Canadian public administration presents a set of features to the external observer that is familiar as well as elusive in some respects. Several themes explore the Canadian variant ...
Chapter Twelve: Comparative and Development Administration in Canada: A Preliminary Assessment and Call to Action
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pp. 312-357
While public administration is a relative “newcomer” to academic circles, given the proliferation of bureaucracies throughout the world over the past forty years it has nonetheless gained academic prominence. However, while the scholarly importance of public administration may not be in dispute, there is no consensus as to whether it should be conceived of ...
Chapter Thirteen: Administrative Law and Public Governance: An Overlooked Dimension of Governance
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pp. 358-379
The study of public administration in Canada has generally not addressed the significance of administrative law. Standard texts in the area pay scant attention to the subject (Kernaghan and Siegel, 1999; Inwood, 2004). Undoubtedly, there has been a growing interest in public law, particularly ...
About the Contributors
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pp. 380-381
Index
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pp. 382-401
E-ISBN-13: 9780776617794
E-ISBN-10: 0776617796
Print-ISBN-13: 9780776607061
Print-ISBN-10: 0776607065
Page Count: 450
Publication Year: 2009
Series Title: Governance Series
