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 SYLLABUS

Political Science 419 (Introduction to Public Administration, Fall 2008)

Instructor:  Craig Curtis (Bradley Hall 486, 677-2492, e-mail: rcc@bradley.edu)  Home page: http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~rcc/

Texts: Shafritz, Jay W. , E.W. Russell, and Christopher Borick, 2009.  Introducing Public Administration (6th ed.).  Pearson Longman  (Please note that there is an e-book option).

Dresang, Dennis L. and Mark W. Huddleston, 2009.  The Public Administration Workbook, 6th ed.  Pearson Longman.

Class Meeting Information: M, W, F 11:00 to 11:50 am, Br 270
Instructor's Office Hours:  Wed. 9:00 to 11:00 am, 2:00 to 3:00 pm

Description: This course is designed to introduce you to the basic principles and topics in Public Administration.  Here, as in many, but not all, universities, PA is part of the political science department.  Therefore, we will consider PA as a subdiscipline of political science.  This is not a practically oriented course of study.  Our purpose is not to explicitly prepare you to work in the public sector.  Rather, our purpose is to learn about the bureaucracy as a way of understanding government and society.  After taking this course, you should be better able to assimilate new information about government agencies and about the administrative problems that face the nation and its constituent governments.

Grading: The final Grade will be based on the following:
 1) 1 take home exam given during the course of the semester, worth 25% of the final grade.

 2)  Homework assignments from the workbook, worth 20% of the grade.
 3) A research paper, worth 25% of the final grade.
 4) A comprehensive take home final exam, due on Friday, December 14, in my office, at or before 2:00 pm, worth 30% of the final grade.

The final letter grade will be assigned according to the following scale:
 

 A  90-100%

 D  60-69%

 B  80-89%

 F  below 60%

 C  70-79%

 

Note that high quality class participation is likely to have a positive impact on one's final grade.

Class policies

  1. All students are assumed to have read this syllabus
  2. All students are required to use Sakai, and to regularly check their e-mail for the address listed in Sakai.  Lecture notes will be regularly deposited there as well in the form of PowerPoint files.  Announcements and notice of the posting of take home assignments will be sent to the e-mail address you list on Sakai.
  3. All students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the reading material assigned for that day.  There is no bad time to ask a question, and there are no stupid questions.  If you have any questions about the reading material, or something you read about or heard about in the news, I would appreciate it if you would ask at the beginning of class.  Very frequently, this is a good way to begin to cover the material at hand.
  4. During the course of this class, I will certainly introduce concepts and use words with which you are not familiar.  I will try to anticipate these occasions and provide explanations; however, it is virtually inevitable that I will assume that you know something that you do not.  Stop me when I do this and ask for any explanation!  Others are likely in the same situation, and you will help them as well as yourself.
  5. Most Fridays we will be using the Workbook Exercises.  We will work on those assignments in class.  You will be expected to have read the assignments before Friday, to participate in the group work on Friday, and to turn in the required answers to the questions that I assign on Friday on the following Monday.  Look at the course outline to see which assignments will be required for which weeks.  Although all students must turn in all 12 assignments, only the top 10 will be counted in computing the final average.
  6. The test dates and the due dates for your paper that are listed in this syllabus are firm unless the needs of the class so indicate; any changes will be made by the instructor in consultation with the class. The final exam must be handed in on time; no exceptions can be made pursuant to university rules that do not permit individual variation in final examination times.

Course Outline

Week I  (W 8-27) Introduction and Housekeeping Chores, What is PA?  Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 1

Week II  (M 9-1) The Political Context of PA, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 2.  Workbook Exercise 5 for Friday.

Week III (M 9-8) The Structure of the Bureaucracy, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 3.  Workbook Exercise 8 for Friday (Note that you will also need to read exercise 1 to do exercise 8).

Week IV (M 9-15) Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 4.  Workbook exercise 10 for Friday.

Week V (M 9-22) Ethics.  Shafritz, Russell and Borick , Ch. 5.  Workbook Exercise 4 for Friday.
Practice Exam due at the beginning of class on 9-22.

Week VI (M 9-29) Internal Workings of Bureaucracy: An Introduction to Organization theory, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 6.  (Founder’s Day, Friday, October 3, no class.)

Week VII (M 10-6) More on Organization Theory, Workbook Exercise 6 for Friday.

Fall Break -- no class on Monday the 13th

Week VIII (W 10-15) Organization Behavior and Personnel Administration, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 7. The exam will be posted on Friday, 10-17.  Workbook Exercise 12 for Friday (Note that we will be using the Budget Analyst I Job Description from exercise 11, p. 191, to complete Exercise 12).

Week IX (M 10-20) Collective Bargaining.  Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 11 Workbook Exercise 15 for Friday -- I will need to know who will be absent ahead of time since I will assign bargaining teams on Wednesday.  Bring a calculator of some type of form on Friday – e.g., a laptop, cell phone, etc. -- to class.

First take home exam due at the beginning of class on 10-24

Week X (M 10-27) The Budgeting Process, Workbook Exercise 16 for Friday.

Proposed bibliography, with brief annotations, due on 10-31. 

Week XI (M 11-3)  Performance Management, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 8.  Workbook Exercise 1 for Friday.

Week XII (M 11-10) Policy Analysis and Implementation, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 9.  Workbook Exercise 2 for Friday.

Week XIII (M 11-17) The Regulatory State. Workbook Exercise 9 for Monday and Wednesday.  

Rough Drafts of Reflection Essays due on 11-17

 

Week XIV (M 11-24) Leadership, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch. 10. 

Thanksgiving Break

Week XV (M 12-1)  Social Equity, Shafritz, Russell and Borick, Ch 11. Workbook Exercise 14 for Friday (I will provide a job analysis and job description for use in this exercise).

The final exam will be posted on or before 2:00 pm Thursday, 12-4.

W eek XVI (M 12-8) Catch-up, Wrap-up, and Review for Final. 
Reflection essays due 

The Final Exam is due in my office at or before Thursday, December 11, 2008, at 2:00 pm.

Summary of Due Dates

Practice Exam due on 9-22

First Take Home due on 10-24

Proposed Bibliography, with Annotations, due 10-31

Proposed Drafts of Research Paper due on 11-17

Final Drafts of Research Paper due on 12-8

Final Take Home Project due on Friday. 12-11, at 2:00 pm, in my office.  No late essays will be accepted!

The Friday Workbook Exercises

On twelve Fridays during the course of the semester (and one week where we will work on the workbook exercise on Wednesday as well) we will use the Public Administration Workbook in class.  The course outline lists what assignments are to be done on which weeks.  Your job for this part of the class is to read the exercise before we work on it in class, to work in groups in the class session, as assigned, and to complete the written homework assignment, as given out in class on Friday (Yes, this means you need to be there to know what the assignment is.  I’m tired of empty rooms on Fridays.).  The homework assignments must be turned in by the following Monday.  Unless prior arrangements are made, late work will count as one of your dropped grades.  Each written assignment will vary in length, but most can be done in an essay of a page or less.  Try to be concise in completing these assignments.  The two worst grades will be dropped in calculating the final average.  This means that each assignment is worth 2% of your final average.

Guidelines for the Reflection Essays

Every student in the class is expected to write a research paper on the following topic: 

 

Background:  One of the central topics in Public Administration is the relationship between politics and administration.  From Woodrow Wilson to this very day, scholars are concerned with how to strike an efficient and effective balance between a politically neutral and competent bureaucracy and a politically responsive bureaucracy.  All recent presidents have been concerned with how to increase the responsiveness of the federal bureaucracy without compromising the basic structure of a merit based personnel system.  George Bush has been especially cognizant of this issue as he has struggled to implement a major reorganization of the federal bureaucracy concerned with Homeland Security.

 

Topic:  Your task is to conduct research on the topic of Politics and Administration and write a research paper in which you take a position on the appropriate balance between responsiveness and political neutrality of the federal bureaucracy. 

 

In order to respond to this assignment, you will need to access the scholarly literature.  Our online, full text library resources will be more than sufficient for this assignment.  In order to get you started, I hereby provide you with a few relevant citations.  These articles are not meant to be the sole source of your research.  They are there to get you started.  The bibliographies of relevant articles are usually the best sources for additional sources.

 

Frederickson, H. George.  1996.  “Comparing the Reinventing Government Movement with the New Public Administration.”  Public Administration Review 56 (May/June):  263-270.

 

Freedman, Anne.  1988.  “Doing Battle with the Patronage Army:  Politics, Courts, and Personnel Administration in Chicago.”  Public Administration Review 48 (September/October): 847-859.

 

Riccucci, Norma M. and Frank J. Thompson.  2008.  “The New Public Management, Homeland Security, and the Politics of Civil Service Reform.”  Public Administration Review 68 (September/October): 877-890.

 

Rosenbloom, David H.  2007.  “Reinventing Administrative Prescriptions:  The Case for Democratic-Constitutional Impact Statements and Scorecards.”  Public Administration Review 67 (January/February): 28-39.

 

 

Make sure that you fully document your sources, using the American Political Science Association citation format.  The political science reference room (BR 490) has a copy of the most recently revised American Political Science Association Style Manual.  The citations listed above follow the format specified by the APSA.  Failure to faithfully follow the appropriate citation format will result in a one letter grade deduction.

 

Your essays should be a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 10 printed pages, assuming standard fonts and margins.  Your research should include at least 15 total sources, at least 10 of which must be from scholarly journals or books.  These are not hard limits, but should serve as a guide to what is expected.

I would hope that the student grapevine about me is that my papers are hard to do and that consultation is very helpful in earning a good grade.  To that end, I would like very much to offer some assistance to you.  I will gladly consult with you during the course of the semester.  I would suggest that you submit a proposed bibliography, with brief annotations, on or before October 31.  I will review these and make suggestions for you within a week.    I will gladly review proposed final drafts (I do not like the term "rough" draft) if they are given to me in a timely fashion (on or before the class session on 11-17) and if they are complete enough for me to provide feedback.  This means no handwritten papers and no partial papers ("I just want to see if I am on the right track" won't convince me to accept it).  It also means that I will not read any rough draft that does not contain a full list of references.  I will make detailed written comments to assist you, returning your papers to you on the following Monday.  The final draft is due at the beginning of the last day of class.

I am not an English professor; however, obvious errors of grammar or usage will result in a deduction from your grade  Obvious errors include, among others, misspelled words, subject-verb disagreement, sentence fragments or run-on sentences, misuse of homophones, failure to use the apostrophe to signify the possessive, ending of sentences with a preposition, failure to use proper punctuation (e.g., failure to place a question mark at the end of an interrogatory sentence, or failure to properly use quotation marks), and use of the four letters "A," "L," "O," and "M" taken together as a word.  Because anyone may overlook a typographical error or two, the first three errors do not count.  I do this because, in the real world, such errors do reduce the value of your work.  Please take the time to edit your work and use a spell check.
 

Testing Policies

The midterm and the final exams will be take home exams. The final exam will be cumulative.  You will have choices of questions.  For example, on the first exam you will likely be given a list of 4 or more questions from which you will choose two.  The final exam will follow a similar format.  The course documents section of this Blackboard site contains old tests for your information.  Because these questions will require you to solve real world problems, you will need to do a bit of background research to respond to most of the items.  Please make sure that you appropriately cite all sources used in the essays.  Never directly quote language without full citation.

Each assignment will require you to write two essays, each of two to four pages in length.  The essays must be printed on a word processor.  Because the type of skills required to succeed in this type of assignment must be honed by practice, it is my intention to offer a practice exam. One is already posted on Sakai.  If you choose to avail yourself of this opportunity, you must write an essay of approximately 500 words and turn it in to me in class on Monday, September 22. I will grade it, and make detailed comments with an eye towards helping you improve your work. Of course, I will be glad to meet with to discuss your essay while you are preparing it, or after you have received my feedback. You are strongly urged to take advantage of this opportunity.

It is my firm belief that anyone of average intelligence can memorize details.  What separates the good students from the ordinary ones, and those who are successful in later life from those who merely survive, is the ability to manipulate knowledge of concepts in creative ways to solve complex problems.  Thus, merely listing concepts learned in a section of the course in response to an essay question may get you a few points, but will not earn a passing grade.  In order to earn a passing grade, you must use the concepts to solve the problem set out in the test item.  You are required to apply concepts to meet the goals of political science, which is to describe, explain and predict human behavior in the political arena.

Your opinion and analysis are not equivalent.  Political science is based on rational, dispassionate analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, informed by theory.  I want your opinions to be informed by rational political science analysis, but experience has taught me that they are not always so informed.  Your opinion is what you feel.  It is informed by emotion as well as by rational analysis.  Your opinion is important to me as a citizen.  It is irrelevant to me when I grade your work.  What matters is the quality of your analysis.

As a glance at my old tests will reveal, my test items are a bit unusual at times.  Please pay careful attention to the call of the question.  I may ask you to play a role or respond to a hypothetical situation in a test item.  It is your task to play the role as realistically as you can.  If dialogue is required, write it.  If a letter or memo is required, write it.  If a particular ideological point of view is required, you must assume that point of view for the purposes of answering the question.  Believe it or not, the best students rather enjoy the opportunity to be creative, and find the test itself to be a learning experience.

All take home exam essays must be printed on a word processor.  Length of the essays is largely irrelevant beyond a certain minimum, and the correlation between length and grades is not very strong.  In fact, the total length of each essay should not exceed 1000 words, and 500 words is a more reasonable length.  Please note that the exams are due at the beginning of class.  I will collect exam papers before starting that day's substantive lesson.  Once I have finished collecting papers from those who are in the room, those who come in late will be penalized for turning in a late paper.  Because these exams are to be take home exams, I expect a polished document.  Typographical errors and errors of usage and grammar will result in deductions from the grade.  I do this because, in the real world, such errors do reduce the value of your work.  Edit your essays carefully.

 If you have a documented learning disability that requires alternative testing arrangements, please let me know well before the first exam
 

Academic Dishonesty Policy

Any instance of academic dishonesty, e.g., cheating on exams or plagiarism of term papers, will be dealt with as severely as university rules allow.

Any attempt to secure the exclusive use of library resources, i.e., hiding or removing from the library any books or journals, or intentional destruction of library materials, i.e., cutting out articles, will be punished severely.  You will receive zero credit for the assignment, and the matter will be reported to the library and to the Executive Director of Housing, Residential Life and Student Judicial System.  You will be held liable for repair or replacement of the materials.

You are expected to do your own work on all assignments.  Plagiarism will be punished as severely as university rules allow, i.e., a zero for the paper will be awarded and the matter will be reported to the Chair of Political Science and the Executive Director of Housing, Residential Life and Student Judicial System. 

Plagiarism, according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged edition), means "appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas and thoughts of another author, and representation of them as one's own work."  Any of the following examples of academic dishonesty constitutes plagiarism:

1. Directly copying a phrase, sentence, passage or paragraph from another author and presenting it as one's own (i.e., without proper quotation marks and full citation -- you are assumed to know how to properly use quotation marks and citations) is plagiarism.  Copying text from the book in an open book exam without proper use of quotations and appropriate citation is plagiarism.

2. Paraphrasing a sentence, passage or paragraph from another author without so indicating by proper citation to authority.  When in doubt, cite!

3. Knowingly presenting, as one's own, a thought, idea, analytical framework, or theory advanced by another author.  Turning in a term paper you did not write, e.g., one you bought, copied, or downloaded off of the internet, is plagiarism.

Note:  Turning in the same paper to more than one professor (using the same paper to fulfill more than one assignment), without preclearance from both professors, is considered to be an instance of academic dishonesty.  Note also that Bradley is now a subscriber to “Turnitin.com” a service that allows for the rapid checking of student work against virtually the entire body of web content.  Cutting and pasting obscure web content into an essay will be detected by this service.  When in doubt about what is academically honest, come to see me.  If that is not practical, then quote nothing and cite everything.