• What is public administration?
• Functions of the public administration
• Examples of public administration
• Public and private administration
• Public administration and political science

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

The public administration manages the contact between the citizenry and the public power.

What is public administration?

By public administration is understood the discipline and also the scope of action regarding the management of the resources of the Condition, public companies and institutions that make up the public heritage.

The public administration is in charge of managing the contact between the citizenship and the public Power, not only in the bureaucratic institutions of the State, but also in the Business state, in the entities of Health, in the armed forces, in the police, the fire department, the postal service and the 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 public bodies that have received from political power the powers to meet specific needs of citizens 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 private organizations.

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

Functions of the public administration

The public administration meets the needs of the citizenry.

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

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

Examples of public administration

Some examples of public administration can be:

• The measures to cut and shrink the State carried out by neoliberal governments, especially during the 1990s in Latin America: layoffs of public workers, merger of ministries, etc.
• The enlargement of the State carried out by the governments socialists, as they expropriate private companies and properties that become heritage of the state, under a management model of the public administration.

Public and private administration

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

• Target. While the public administration provides a service to the community, the private sector pursues clear profit purposes.
• 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 with law of faculties, while the private one is watched and supervised by the principles of the established in the law, and the public organisms take care, among other things, to guarantee 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.

Public administration and political science

A government is nothing more than a specific way of employing the state.

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