Public Administration

Course type

Obvezni

Study programme and level

Graduates, Law

Language

slovenščina

Lectures	Seminar	Tutorial	Druge oblike študija	Individual Work	ECTS
20		20		50	4

Prerequisites

• Knowledge of the basic legal concepts (within the curricula of secondary schools)
• General perception and the ability to understand basic social concepts

Content (Syllabus outline)

GENERAL

Definition of “public administration”. Management and administration. Business Administration and Public Administration. Public administration – political, executive and administrative or the operational function of public administration. Public interest. Public affair. Public sector. Basic elements of the concept of organization (organizational goals, people in an organization, assets, networking and organizational structure, organization and environment). The concept of an organization and an authority (public administration). Administration as a government and administration as a public service.

• Pre-state and state forms of governance: prehistory and human society, the gradual accumulation of material goods and exceeding subsistence level income, gradual territorialisation and the transition to state governance. States of Antiquity: the development of the idea of the state, magistrates, monarchy, a brief overview of the administrations of the ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. The administration of Early and High point of Feudalism: feudal particularism on the decline of the Roman Empire, integration through the ownership of land and feudal relationships, patrimonialism. The gradual centralization of the state. Absolutist monarchy. Classes and the development of the idea of universal interest representation (parliamentarism). The emergence of schooled bureaucracy and the professionalization of administration. Historical examples: France and Great Britain.
• The modern state. The period of the liberal state – the state as the guardian of the law or the “laissez faire”. Cameralistics. The gradual regulation and expansion of the public sphere. Transferring administration principles from the private sector to the field of public administration. Taylor, Fayol, Gulick, Urwick. The development of bureaucratic structure. Max Weber and a rational bureaucratic organization. The rule of law (“Rechtstaat”). The democratic rule of law. Further expansion of the public sphere and the intervention of the state in the classical scope of the private sphere. The formation and development of public services. The social state. The state of prosperity. Contemporary ways of studying administrative systems: general system theory, cybernetics-information theory, project management and network structures. The phenomenon of federalism and other forms of so-called “Composed states”. Capitalist state and socialist state. The division of power and the unity of power. The parliamentary system, semi-presidential system, presidential system, the parliamentary system of a state power organization. The post-industrial state. International networking. Nationalization and denationalization. Information society. New Public Management. Globalization. Problems of modern public administration.
• The most important trends in the development of public administration: increase, differentiation and integration (centralization, deconcentration, decentralization), professionalization, reducing the role of coercion, permanent reform or modernization. Integral elements of the public administration system.

PARLIAMENT AND OTHER STATE AUTHORITIES WITH “SUI GENERIS” STATUS

• Parliament (origin, development, functions, unicameral, bicameral, apparent bicameralism, other issues). President. Judicial system. Constitutional Court. Ombudsman – Ombudsman for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Court of Audit. Information Commissioner. The link between the institutional (political), executive and operational levels of the state administrative system.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE STATE ADMINISTRATION

• Administrative systems, their types and mutual relationships. Territorial, functional and associative administrative systems. Executive, curative and service function of territorial administrative systems. System structure and elements of territorial administrative systems (example: ministry, administrative unit).
• Government. The constitutional basis for the formation. Relation to the representative body. System functions of the government. Government as a body of the state executive authority. Government as the top of the state administration system. Regulatory activity of the government.
• The concept of state administration. The relationship between the concepts of the state and state administration. State administration and public administration. A developmental and comparative view of the state administration. State administration as a territorial administrative system. Formation criteria and principles of organizing public administration. The system function of state administration – ministries and other administrative bodies. Regulatory activity of the administration. Operational activity (decision making, administrative measures). Repressive activity. Service activity. Accelerating activity. Developmental-analytical activity. The work areas of administrative bodies. Powers. The management of administrative bodies (line, stuff-line, functional organization and network structures). Types of administrative bodies (central, regional and local). Individual (monetary) and collegiate bodies. Independent bodies and bodies in composition. Hierarchy. Centralism and deconcentration. The macro-organization and micro-organization (internal organization) of the administration.
• Control mechanisms over the functioning of the public administration. Types of control. External and internal control. General and special control. Means of political control over the administration. Means of protecting the rights of individuals in relation to the administration. Court of Audit. Public Finance Inspection. Ombudsman for human rights. Information Commissioner. Supervision of the organs of the European Union.
• Types of funds in the state administration. Sources and method of obtaining funds in the state administration. Methods of managing and disposing of state administration funds.
• A brief overview of the objectives of the transformation of the public administration system. Changes in the relations between the government and the National Assembly, organizations of central and decentralized state administration, and in the field of the civil servants’ system. Modernization of the public administration system.

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

• The concept of the local community and local self-government. Definition of the concept of local community and local self-government. The parallel development of the state administration system and the system of local self-government. Constitutional guarantees of local self-government. Sources of local communities and local self-government. Regionalism.
• Definition of the relations between local self-government and state administration. State and local self-government. Decentralization. Regionalization. The correlation between the organization of state administration and local self-government. The correlation between the functions of state administration and local self-government. Original and transferred powers of local self-government. One-tier and two-tier systems of public governance at the local level. Supervision of local self-government. Limits or scope of control.
• The structure, functions and organization of local self-government. Core and wider local self-governing communities. Local community authorities and their formation. The placement of local self-government into administrative systems. Territorial and functional administrative systems at the local level and their involvement in the territorial and functional administrative systems of the state. Local public services.
• Local self-government funding.
• Constitutional and supra-national aspects of the functioning of the local self-government system. European Charter of Local Self-Government. Subsidiarity principle. The supervisory function of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe.
• A brief overview of the development of administration and local self-government in Slovenia: the administration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Slovenian province and local self-government. The establishment of the Yugoslav state and its administration (territorial organization, administrative bodies, administrative judiciary). Socialism in Slovenia (the suspension of local self-government – “municipality as commune”). The establishment of the Slovenian state and the problems of forming its administration and local self-government.
• Local self-government regulation in Slovenia. Constitutional definition. Local elections. Municipalities. Tasks of municipalities. Organs of the municipality. Municipal public services. Property and financing of municipalities. General and individual acts of municipalities. De lege ferenda region.

 PUBLIC SERVICES

• General
• The concept of public service: the emergence and development of public services. Definition of public services – formal and material. Public service as the opposite of free market activity. Limits and conditions of competition in the performance of a public service. Public interest. Public benefit. Special legal regime. Public services in French and Slovenian law. Types of public services in Slovenia: economic and non-economic (social) public services. Material criteria for determining public service: non-market and natural monopolies, necessity, the collective nature of goods, compulsion.
• The basis of the legal regime of public services: public goods, obligation. The price of public goods. Contracting duty of the public service contractor. Things that are absolutely necessary for the provision of public services (infrastructure). Monopoly and special and exclusive rights. Public authorization. Quasi-government holders of public authority (public agencies, chambers, etc.). The rights of users of public goods or services. Public service funding.
• The liberalization of public services – concepts: liberalization, commercialization, privatization. Public services and competition. European law and competition in the field of public services.
• Services of general economic interest in Slovenian law
• The concept of services of general economic interest and administration: the definition and type of services of general economic interest. The manner of administration: directorate, public holding, independent regulators. The financing of services of general economic interest. The position of users.
• Forms of the performance of services of general economic interest: public utility unit, economic public institute, public company, concession, public-private partnership.
• Non-commercial public services in Slovenian law. So-called non-commercial public services. Public institutions, concession in the field of non-commercial public services.

PEOPLE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The civil servants system. The concept of a civil servant. Officials and civil servants. The specific legal arrangement of the civil servants system. The specific system of employment. Special rights and obligations. The specific wage system of civil servants. Relation to general labour law. Other distinctive features.

Objectives and competences

The subject deals with the general issues regarding the development and operation of the public administration system. The most important integral parts of the public administration system will be presented in detail: representative bodies and other state bodies with the constitutional status “sui generis”, government and state administration, local self-government, public services, civil servants system, as well as the relationship between the public administration systems of the EU and Slovenia as a full EU Member State. The goal is to enable students to understand the basic concepts of public administration in theory, and partly in practice (for example, the ability to distinguish between the organization, operation and competences of various public and legal organizational structures such as government, ministries, bodies within ministries, administrative units, municipalities, quasi-government organizational structures, public services, holders of public authorizations, etc. This also establishes a connection between the content of this subject and some of the other most important areas in the curriculum of this faculty (in particular: administrative substantive and administrative procedural law and administrative judicial protection).

Intended learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding:

• Comprehensive, critical thinking, the ability to analyse, synthesize and anticipate solutions in the field of public administration and other social sciences (interdisciplinarity);
• The ability to creatively use knowledge in the legal and business environments;
• Knowledge and understanding of the history of public administration development;
• The ability to solve concrete work problems using scientific methods and procedures in the field of public administration;
• The ability to place new information and interpretations into the context of the public administration system and administrative law.

Students will develop subject-specific knowledge and understanding:

• Understand the public administration system and its integral parts;
• The ability to solve simple professional problems in the field of public administration;Understand the Slovenian public administration system, as well as the latest development processes of this system in Slovenia and elsewhere.

Learning and teaching methods

• Frontal form of teaching;
• Explanation;
• Talk / discussion / debate;
• Work with text;
• Other types of student performances;
• Use of the PowerPoint projector.

Assessment

Final assessment (written / oral exam) 90%;

Short written papers and student performances 10%.

Lecturer’s references

Defined in the habilitation documentation.

Selected bibliografical units: