Introduction: Can a High-Modern Project Find Happiness in a Postmodern Era?

Normative and Instrumental Perspectives on Public Participation

“…Democratic theorists propose that current societal conditions, and the associated understanding of individuals in relation to their government in liberal democracies, make it ever more likely that citizens will seek to involve themselves in public decisions (Fox & Miller, 1996;Maier, 1994;Wamsley & Wolf, 1996). The use of public discourse as a means of answering questions, rather than rational analysis associated with bureaucratic structures, provides the key unifying factor behind postmodernists who consider themselves discourse theorists (King, Patterson, & Scott, 2000).…”

Notes from the Margin: Race, Relevance and the Making of Public Administration

“…These scholars have revealed the selfsealing characteristic of administrative scholarship (they dub, collectively, as "traditionalist") that fails to examine how and why American public interest is so consistently made subordinate to the aggregation of individual preferences and at the expense of a fuller consideration of Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 11:06 14 June 2016 human needs, suffering, and striving. Attributed by critics to either over-weaning positivism (Dennard, 1996;Farmer, 1995;McSwite, 1996McSwite, , 2003Stivers 1990Stivers , 1996Stivers , 2000Stivers , 2002aWamsley, 1990;Wamsley & Wolf, 1996) or to masculinist predilections for dominance over nature and the subordination of natural processes to control edicts (Stivers, 2002b), traditional public administration is believed by feminist and kindred scholarship to impair public will formation, of which Addams renders in allegory above. Concomitantly, public administration's "control imperative" has been construed to originate in matters ancillary to substantive democratic process; as such, "procedural rationality" within public administration is believed to have become mostly divested of the "substantive rationality" upon which all public will formation arguably depends for its legitimacy.…”

“…(Wamsely, Goodsell, Rohr, Stivers, White, & Wolf, 1990, p. 39) Matching the ardor of the Minnowbrook scholars, this statement of manifesto is noteworthy also for what it elides: any direct reference to the constellation of commingled consequences shaped by official policy that had for decades been orchestrated, propagated, refined and implemented with full consent of governing authorities and an extensive matrix of lending and land development institutions at all levels of government; an American Apartheid in all but name. Keyed more so to pure theory than were the Minnowbrook papers, The Blacksburg Manifesto marks a distinctive turn in public administration scholarship away from an account of public administration praxis historically situated in public events qua events, towards an increasing interest in public administration phenomenology, which, in the ensuing decade, would culminate with three forceful testaments to "postmodern" public administration praxis, including Refounding Democratic Pubic Administration: Modern Paradoxes, Postmodern Challenges (Wamsley & Wolf, 1996), The Language of Public Administration: Bureaucracy, Modernity, and Postmodernity (Farmer, 1995), and Postmodern Public Administration: Towards Discourse (Fox & Miller, 1995). From the mid-1990s forward, the center of public administration theory writing became firmly grounded in the journal Administrative Theory & Praxis, which, by turn of the century, hosted a maturing scholarship distinctive, onlookers have noted, for its forked inquiry into critical and interpretive exposi- tions on the field and its prospects (Bogason, 2001).…”

“…Public administration's cumulative malaise has been attributed by post-traditionalist scholars to an extensive array of likely candidates for explanatory regression coefficients, including but not limited to: the late 19th century onslaught of urbanization with the development of communication and transportation technologies; the surging migration of the early 20th century; the profligacy of corporate capitalism and resultant economic crises; and the unexamined paternalism of Progressive Era governmental "reform" efforts (Wamsley & Wolf, 1996). These insights and revelations notwithstanding, Saveth (1939) pinpoints how Jane Addams was among the few who directed her intellectual and activist contretemps towards the patrician indifference and racist, intellectual antiquarianism that was so prevalent in America during Addams' time, at least as much as ever the Settlement House pioneer criticized the positivistic predilection emanating from "traditional" public administration.…”

Governance and public management, an introduction

“…The definition of governance that we suggested earlier-regimes of laws, rules, judicial decisions, and administrative practices that constrain, prescribe, and enable the provision of publicly supported goods and services-links constitutional institutions with the realities of policymaking and public management. 6 Underlying this concept is recognition that governance involves means for achieving direction, control, and coordination of individuals or organizational units on behalf of their common interests (Lynn, Heinrich, and Hill, 2001;Vickers, 1983;Wamsley, 1990). From this fundamental starting point, it is possible to construct an analytic framework that provides conceptual order to the systematic empirical study of governance.…”