This article argues that it would be not only possible, but also prudent, for the field of public management to reclaim the philosophy of John Dewey as a guiding ethos for its practice. In Dewey’s view, the democratic community is responsible for ensuring that each person’s capacity for participation and self-government is fully developed. In such a community, citizens would engage in inquiry to choose appropriate action in particular situations. The public manager would participate in this process by contributing his or her expert knowledge but would not make policy decisions. Today’s decentralized and reinvented government presents an opportunity for the practice to reconnect to citizens in processes such as those advocated by Dewey.

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This article addresses the strategies and tools that public administration scholars use to understand phenomena of interest. The range of qualitative methods used has been limited, and the kind of rigor generally associated with quantitative methods has largely been absent in the application of their qualitative counterparts. Two conclusions are drawn from an analysis of articles published in two respected journals: Training on research methods in Ph.D. and M.P.A. programs should be expanded to include a broader range of strategies and tools, and the rigorous use of a broader range of research tools promises to better position the field of public administration to identify, examine, and answer the many big questions that it now faces.Scholars continue to express concern about the quality of research produced in the field of public administration. Perry and Kraemer (1994) drew three conclusions from a review of articles published in Public Administration Review (PAR) between 1975 and 1984: (a) Articles reflect a near-exclusive focus on applied rather than basic research, (b) research in the field is not cumulative in nature, and (c) there is a lack of institutional support for research. White, Adams, and Forrester (1996) examined the publication records of eight classes of doctoral recipients in the field. They determined that their overall contribution to knowledge and theory

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