This course of the module basically deals with public administration and public law. To this end, it is made to have four carefully selected chapters. This course is principally designed to enable learners to be equipped with fundamentals of public administration and public law aiming at historical, institutional approach to study public administration and public law with due focuses on Ethiopia in a historical, institutional, empirical and analytical perspectives. Moreover, we need to deal with partly the historical approach to the study of public administration and public law if we want to understand how we came to be what we are now in light of the topic at hand. This course enables learners to remarkably look at the themes in light of the dynamic interplay and mutuality of state-society-citizens nature of Civics and Ethics program with due context and framework of public administration and public law, particularly in the post-1991 Ethiopia for there has been a great deal of radical and diametrically opposite changes socio-political, economic and institutional structuring of the contemporary Ethiopian state and societies in terms organizing and fundamental philosophy in the overall aspects of the country than continuities with the subject matter at hand.
Due to this milestone, learners of Civics and Ethics undergraduate program at university level unequivocally and undoubtedly need to be equipped with public administration and public law with its change and continuities both from the historical and institutional approaches.With this in mind, the course is structured to comprise four basic chapters keeping the central theme of this thematically clustered course of the module of Development and Public Administration. The first chapter deals with certain definitions and conceptualizations of key concepts such as administration, the universality of administration, the private versus public administration divide, the nature-art and the science nature of public administration, scope and environment of public administration; as well as basic functions of public administration: planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling. The second chapter deals an overview of public law including with the concept of law, its nature and definitions, and its major classifications of law; the nature and scope of public law and its major areas of classifications such as among others administrative law (sources and purposes of administrative law, administrative law and administrative agencies, and formation and organization of administrative agencies), and criminal law (its nature, scope, objectives and basic principles of criminal law . Chapter three basically deals with an integrated overview of major areas of public administration and public law such as public resources. First, it examines public personnel, which includes topics such as public personnel administration defined, technical areas of public personnel administration (job analysis, job description/ specification, recruitment/ selection, job evaluation and compensation), civil service, civil service administration and the notion of merit principle.
The third chapter will also examine and discuss key dimensions of organizing and managing public organizations such as organizational goals and effectiveness; formulating and achieving purpose: power, strategy, and decision making; organizational structure, and design as well as understanding people in public organizations in light of values and motives as well as theories of work motivation and work-related attitudes, and organizational culture. Second, it tries to focus on public finance that includes topics such as public finance defined, sources and purposes of public finance; and it goes on to examine public finance policies such as taxation policies-principles/criteria of optimal taxation: equity versus s benefit principles, and cost of taxation: tax shifting and welfare cost, and expenditure policies which includes the recurrent versus capital expenditure balance, spending principles : efficiency, equity and effectiveness, and public expenditure rise and the issue of public debt burden. This chapter also discusses essentials of public policy including the meaning and nature of public policy, why study public policy, an overview of public policy making process, types [typologies] of public policy, models and theories in public policy formulation and implementation, and factors influencing public policy successes or failures, as well as constraints on policy change and countering strategies.
. This last chapter analytically examines an integrated overview of public resources administration in Ethiopia by way of dealing with public laws/ policies and institutions of public personnel administration in Ethiopia including a brief historical review of civil service laws/policies during the Imperial and Dergue regimes, and post-1991 civil service laws/polices such as natures, major reforms and challenging problems the Ethiopian Ministry of Civil service and its functions.
It also dwells on public laws/ policies and institutions of public finance administration in pre-1991 and with particular focus on post -1991 public finance laws/policies, their natures, major reforms and challenging problems by way looking at fiscal decentralization- the expenditure versus revenue assignment rationales, and the roles and functions of financial and non-financial institutions, as well as challenges of fiscal decentralization. Moreover, chapter four also examines an overview of selected administrative and criminal laws in post-1991 Ethiopia such as administrative agencies law of Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian Criminal Code of 2005 by way of focusing fundamental principles of the Criminal Law of the Code, on conditions of criminal liability, on degrees in the commission of crime, and on participation in the commission of crime.
- Teacher: Astatike Alemu