Understanding public management between discontinuity and continuity

Democracy as efficient and effective system of governance for people should provide sustainable institutions that enable public administration and public management to meet the needs of citizens, businesses and civil society. Thereby, the dynamics of political systems in terms of instability and uncertainty concern the political address of governments and political majority. Following a strategy-structure paradigm, political systems drive the effective functioning of public management and public administration. Following a historical path and excursus, the aim of this study is to elucidate how political discontinuity and uncertainty are sources for sustainability driving public management to face and solve problems over time. Despite the increasing attention for public leadership in complex environment, research neglected the effects of policy and organizational changes on public management behaviors. Political system in Italy has known over the years frequent government turnovers, making the government average institutional life very short. Horovitz, Hoff and Milanovic (2009) define political instability as “a basic source of variation in institutions and practices (... whose) frequency and character depend on voter preferences, political institutions, and salient events and issues” (p. 107). Political instability depending on frequent government turnovers entails both a leadership change – which is based on a change in the institutional parties that constitute a majority coalition – and an ideology change – when the new majority coalition expresses a substantially new ideology. This paper elucidates a discussion on how change in the public administration environment could create a perceived uncertainty among top–managers whose assignment will end with the collapse of the government. This uncertainty affects their competencies (i.e. the motivation to lead), in terms of efforts they exert to perform their high level administrative leadership duties, and on planning activity, in terms of the goals’ difficulty related to their projects or executive programs