Public Administration: Balancing Governance and Efficiency

The Function of Public Administration

Definition and Purpose:

Public administration is a component of the state responsible for implementing laws and providing public services. It operates at various levels—local, regional, and national—and encompasses institutions, agencies, and offices that perform tasks in the public interest. These tasks include managing educational institutions, healthcare, security (police, fire services), infrastructure (road construction, public transportation), and much more.

Legitimacy:

The legitimacy of public administration stems from the democratic system of government. It is the mechanism through which the will of the people—expressed through laws and political decisions—is executed. Without a functioning administration, legal mandates could not be put into practice, rendering the state incapable of action.

Necessity:

Whether public administration is necessary cannot be answered universally, but in a complex, modern society, it is essential. It ensures that basic services are provided to all citizens, regardless of their economic status. This is particularly important in areas where the market may fail, such as basic utilities, education, or healthcare.

Public Administration vs. Private Sector

Differences:

Objectives: While public administration is primarily committed to the public good, private sector companies primarily aim to maximize profit. This can lead to different priorities and approaches.
Efficiency: Private sector companies are often more efficient due to higher competitive pressure and the need to use resources more sparingly. In public administration, this pressure is often absent, potentially leading to inefficient resource use.
Accessibility: Public administrations must ensure that their services are accessible to all citizens, whereas private companies can focus their services on paying customers.

Challenges and Risks:

Bureaucracy: A common criticism of public administration is bureaucracy. Long decision-making processes and complex regulations can impair efficiency and lead to citizen frustration.
Corruption: Without adequate oversight and transparency, there is a risk of corruption. This can undermine public trust in state institutions.
Lack of Innovation: Public administrations may be less innovative due to being bound by rigid structures and processes and having fewer incentives to change.

Potential:

Equality and Justice: Public administration can ensure that all citizens have access to essential services, regardless of income or social status.
Stability and Security: By providing security services and upholding the rule of law, public administration plays a crucial role in societal stability.
Long-term Perspective: Public administration can undertake projects that are in the long-term public interest, even if they are not immediately profitable (e.g., environmental and climate protection measures).

Areas of Public Administration

Public administration is divided into many sectors, including:

Education: Administration and oversight of schools, universities, and other educational institutions.
Health: Organization of public health services, hospitals, preventive care.
Security: Police, fire services, disaster management.
Social Services: Social welfare, pensions, unemployment benefits.
Infrastructure: Planning and maintenance of roads, public transportation, energy supply.
Environment: Conservation, waste management, water management.

Public Administration in a Lean State vs. Socialist State

Lean State:

A lean state aims to minimize public administration to what is strictly necessary. Private companies take on as many tasks as possible, and the administration focuses on core functions like security, justice, and basic services. Here, efficiency is maximized, and the state budget is relieved.

Socialist State:

In a socialist state, public administration plays a much more comprehensive role. The state controls and manages large portions of the economy and social life to ensure social justice and equality. This can lead to greater control over resource distribution but also to inefficiencies and less innovation.

Additional Considerations

Governance and Oversight: A good governance system is crucial for a functioning public administration. This includes transparency, accountability, and citizen participation.
Digitalization: The digitalization of public administration offers great potential to speed up processes, reduce costs, and increase citizen engagement. However, it also poses risks regarding data protection and digital inequality.
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs): These can be a solution to combine the strengths of public administration and the private sector. Through partnerships, large infrastructure projects, for example, can be implemented more efficiently.

Public administration is a central element of modern states, significantly contributing to the stability and prosperity of society. However, it also faces challenges, particularly concerning efficiency and adaptability to modern demands.

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SMALL SWITZERLAND: GAPS IN THE MEDIA COVERAGE

In most of its scandals,

Switzerland proves to be too small,
and its elite too tightly interconnected (due to Switzerland’s small size, everyone is practically on top of each other),

for its media to report independently and objectively. At best, one receives politically tinted reports and reports that blatantly reveal who is good friends with whom. Switzerland is simply too small to be independent in its media reporting.

Swiss Media Landscape: Manageable Political Blocks

The Swiss media landscape is neatly divided into political blocks, with the bourgeois block having the far greatest media reach.

Most media are thoroughly entangled with politics and the economy, and with their particular interests.

This division of the media into political blocks should at least ensure that the different political currents of the country are balanced. One would think that for every scandal, there would be a publication interested in reporting it from the perspective of their political masters. But this is not the case. Switzerland is simply too small: there are too few editorially independent media that would cover everything that is objectively considered a scandal in an independent and neutral manner. Too many Swiss media report selectively and distort reality according to the agenda of their paymasters. And too often, this agenda is a bourgeois one. In these editorial offices, reports about grievances, which at least people with a social value attitude would consider grievances, simply do not fit. Such reports are not of interest. Much more interesting are reports that reflect the vain interests of the bourgeoisie. The same phenomenon occurs, in the opposite direction of course, in the few Swiss media with a left-wing profile.

Coverage of Public Interest through Media Diversity

In a large country with a colorful, diverse media landscape, there would surely be a paper for every politically colored scandal. Right-wing papers are interested in the scandals of the Left and vice versa, the papers of the Left in the scandals of the Rich. Thus, the media landscapes of Western countries once comprehensively covered the public interest with reports from various political viewpoints. In Switzerland, this coverage does not work because the Swiss media landscape is one-sidedly right-leaning and reports in a one-sidedly right-leaning filtered manner. The few remaining editorially independent and left-leaning media lack the capacity to counterbalance the one-sidedness of the Swiss media landscape due to their marginalization. Therefore, reports that would be standard for publication in other countries are often overlooked in Swiss media.

Gaps in the Spectrum

Firstly, Swiss media houses fail to fully cover the political spectrum. Almost all of them revel in the bourgeois, right-wing corner. Secondly, reports on matters that do not clearly align with the agenda of a Swiss media house stand no chance of being published. If neither distinctly bourgeois nor distinctly left-wing media pick up a story, it simply falls through the gaps in the spectrum of Swiss media coverage. And no one is interested. Because no one cares. Why should they?

The Primitive Relationship of Switzerland to the ECHR

Switzerland has signed and ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). So far, so good? However, Switzerland has not signed the Additional Protocol to the ECHR that provides effective protection against discrimination. In this regard, Switzerland is in the “good company” of France and the United Kingdom, which also have not signed this protocol. As a result, the scope of discrimination protection under the ECHR for Switzerland is limited to the articles of the ECHR itself. This means that cases of discrimination related to Swiss federal law, cantonal, or municipal laws—which account for the majority of discrimination cases—cannot be brought before the European Court of Human Rights. What would officially be considered a violation of human rights in the sense of discrimination in any civilized European country, cannot, regrettably, be considered “isolated cases” in Switzerland. Rather, discriminatory denials of rights and abuses of law, to name just two examples from the arsenal of discrimination, are commonplace in Switzerland. If the Swiss can afford outright discrimination hunts on minorities, considered regressive in every civilized culture, then we should not hesitate to call Swiss culture primitive by name.