Public Administration through the Years

Public Administration through the Years
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Public Administration through the Years
Perhaps it is the right time to reflect back and question where the evolution of intergovernmental relations is leading the country to and assess the effectiveness of the processes of intergovernmental cooperation. Intergovernmental relations brought some complexities in and many problems which lie at the heart of federal government of USA (Milakovich, & Gordon, 2012). The crisis cannot be defined as one of the social or economic systems but that of the political institutions which are the relations between the governments and division of power between them and how they relate. The roots of the problem of federalism are based on the differing concepts of community in linguistic differences and regional tensions which are mobilized and expressed through the federal and state governments. A solution to this crisis requires a redefinition of the responsibilities and powers of the governments and a consensus on political structures.
Intergovernmental relations stretch beyond the governmental administrative procedures. These problems cannot be separated from the general question that is troubling many which is the future of federalism and the Constitution for discussion. Nor could they be separated from the economic and social problems facing the USA since they are dependent on the federal-state relations (Wright, 1988). This paper will discuss some of the issues that the U.S system is facing with the help of the overlapping authority model. The model reviews the influence it has on policy development, administrative practices and program relationships with the federal government. It provides the framework that can be used to harmonize the three levels of the government and to include third parties who are not in the government. The model also explains the roles of the government and those of the emergent forms of organizations that are being contracted out by the government.
However, the evolution of intergovernmental relations unfolded in four phases during the 19th Century. Perhaps this feature and the individual features brought the underlying complexity and growth of IGR (Agranoff, 2012). The first phase was that of law and politics which was when the nation-state governments were created and the distinctions of governments defined. The dominant feature between the phases was the dual federalism doctrine that held that the national government and the states each were sovereign in their respective spheres and that between them existed areas of activity into which neither could enter.
The welfare state development and expansion in the early 20th century ushered in the second phase where the government became more professional and included a growing interdependency that linked the state governments (Skowronek, 1982). In the third phase, the government started to acknowledgment the involvement of third parties such as NGOs. Despite that they have been around for some decades, the government decided to expand and bring them aboard. They became included through various forms by being contracted by the government (Smith and Lipsky, 1993). The welfare state and NGO partnership with the government int...