Public Administration And Environmental Quality.

This article focuses on the role of public administration in improving environmental quality. Despite the rising national and international concern over the deterioration of the environment there has been an institutional and political lag. Public administration theory and practice has hardly faced up to the problem of environmental management, except for repeating the traditional dogmas. Few middle-level theories or administrative models which would be of aid in the control and abatement of pollution, for example, have been proposed. The article presents a brief survey or situation paper on the environmental crisis and an analysis of the slow response of public policy and institutions to the challenge. A wide and diffuse range of concerns is subsumed under the subject heading of environmental problems. Besides air, water, noise, and solid waste pollution, this term often is expanded to include other amenities of life such as beautification, reacreation, and at times urban structure and stress, transportation, food and drugs, even population problems.