No abstract

This article examines how the choice of Ukraine’s constitutional system affects both the relationship among key constitutional actors and the prospects of institutional change. It analyzes the character of the relationship between the president and parliament in the context of their competition over control of the cabinet. It then examines how and why the institutional interests and preferences of key political and public policy actors who inhabit the presidency, the legislature and the cabinet affect the prospects of maintaining or changing the constitutional status in Ukraine. It concludes that the institutional stability in Ukraine is still in a state of flux.

No abstract

Postmodern public administration theory: from Weber to the present day and back again?, Papadoulis, K. Teaching Public Administration 2005 25(2) p 15-28 doi: 10.1177/014473940502500202 has been retracted. This is because in the opinion of the editors and the publisher, the article plagiarizes Bureaucracy: Is it efficient? Is it not? Is that the question? Uncertainty reduction: An ignored element of bureaucratic rationality, Gajduschek, G, Administration and Society 2003 34(6) p 700-723 doi: 10.1177/0095399702239171 to which readers are encouraged to refer. Teaching Public Administration and SAGE wish to express sincere regret to Gyorgy Gajduschek and to readers over this matter.

This article examines postmodern reasoning in academic Public Administration (PA). It claims that the arguments that abound in postmodern public administration present a fallacy. They conflate administrative practice and/or wrongs of bureaucracy and their study by social science. In effect, postmodernists confuse social engineering and social science (or rational inquiry) and then they appeal to relativism in order to explain this conflation. This article opposes them and argues that the main objection that postmodern academics have against modern science and administration has nothing to do with positivism or modern science and cannot be cured with relativism. It also disputes the related claim, common in postmodern public administration studies, that interpretative social science marginalizes social groups, because has no place for the 'native's point of view' since it acknowledges only empirical evidence. It also argues that interpretative social science and rational inquiry are not at all mutually exclusive. Herbert Simon's heritage makes public administration theory particularly well suited to show that we do not need relativism to reckon with the 'natives' point of view' or, cruder, the self-interest and/or selfishness ofsocial strata.