No abstract

In the public administration field, the legislative, executive and judicial frameworks should be consistent. The institutional framework of the Palestinian local government, however, seems largely impacted by an incoherent legal framework. Against this backdrop, this study describes the current local government institutional framework. Secondly, this study investigates the current issues relating to the legal and institutional frameworks of the Palestinian local government. A qualitative research approach was adopted to collect data in order to achieve the objectives of the study. The present research utilizes a combination of primary and secondary data. Nine interviews were conducted to gather the primary data, while scholarly works and government documents were used for gathering secondary data. The results show that fully governmental institutions are the most active within the institutional framework while non-governmental institutions are less active. The results also show that the primary obstacle for an efficient legal framework is due to previous laws, overlapping powers and weak legal practices. Furthermore, the institutional framework suffers from deformed structure and weak integration. The discussion section revealed that the current local government system can be best described as a “Chaotic Hybrid System”. When comparing the empirical results with the theoretical concepts, it is indicated that the current local government structure reflects the Public Choice Theory perspective, which advocates for horizontal and vertical fragmentation. However, the Israeli occupation and international funds seem to contribute to complicating the fragmentation of the structure. The structure hence could be described as “Altered Fragmented Structure”.

Public policy is classified as a major field in public administration. Therefore, to understand the context of public policy as a field, it is essential to explore its root developments in public administration from epistemological and chronological perspectives. This chapter is a review study referring to main scholarly works including books, academic articles, and studies. The chapter first helps researchers and students in comprehending the evolution of public administration in its four main stages including classical public administration, new public administration, new public management, and new public governance. Second, the chapter presents a general overview of the evolution of the public policy field with particular attention paid to the concepts of Harold Lasswell who is seen as the father of public policy. The chapter then discusses different definitions of public policy. Various classifications of public policy are also investigated. The chapter ends with a critical discussion of the stages model (heuristics).