The Public Administration Theory Primer

H. George Frederickson, Kevin B. Smith, Christopher Larimer, Michael J. Licari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429973994
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Public Administration Theory Primer explores how the science and art of public administration is definable, describable, replicable, and cumulative. The authors survey a broad range of theories and analytical approaches—from public institutional theory to theories of governance—and consider which are the most promising, influential, and important for the field. This book paints a full picture of how these theories contribute to, and explain, what we know about public administration today.

The third edition is fully revised and updated to reflect the latest developments and research in the field including more coverage of governments and governance, feminist theory, emotional labor theory, and grounded research methodology. Expanded chapter conclusions and a brand-new online supplement with sample comprehensive exam questions and summary tables make this an even more valuable resource for all public administration students.

1

Introduction: The Possibilities of Theory

Why Do We Need Theory in Public Administration?

All the great human events in history were probably achieved by what we today would call public administration. Organization and management practices in collective or public settings are certainly as old as civilization, and significant changes in those practices tend to accompany historical shifts in mass-scale social organization and operation.¹ For example, the transition from feudal society to the extended nation-state was made possible by the centralization of policy, on the one hand, and the decentralization of policy implementation, on the other (Tout 1937; Ellul 1955; Chrimes 1952). The colonial era would be described the same way, but on a worldwide scale (Gladden 1972). There are splendid comparisons of British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and Belgian approaches to issues of colonial centralization and decentralization, the management of courts, and the organization and management of navies and armies (Gladden 1972, 323–333). Extensive archaeological research indicates that early Armenian civilizations were built on rather elaborate forms of administration (Von Hagen 1962; Prescott 1908; Mason 1957; Morley 1956). In China, the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960–1279) “maintained substantially the traditional Chinese system of government and administration. The Emperor, who was supreme, was advised and assisted by a Council of State whose members, varying from five to nine, supervised individually the several organs of Administration, which were grouped under (1) the Secretariat-Chancellery, (2) the Finance Commission, and (3) the Bureau of Military Affairs” (Gladden 1972, 191; Yutang 1947; Loewe 1966; Balazs 1964; Weber 1947).

In these and countless other examples, the elemental features of public administration permeated social development; indeed, it is argued that civilization requires the elemental features of public administration (Waldo 1946, 1956; Wildavsky 1987; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982). Following Max Weber, the elemental features of public administration include (1) some basis of formal authority with claims to obedience; (2) intentionally established laws and rules, which apply to all; (3) specific spheres of individual competence, which include task differentiation, specialization, expertise, and/or professionalization; (4) the organization of persons into groups or categories according to specialization; (5) coordination by hierarchy; (6) continuity through rules and records; (7) the organization as distinct from the persons holding positions or offices in it; and (8) the development of particular and specific organizational technologies (Weber 1952). Virtually all considerations of the great epochs of human history have found the building blocks of organization and management (Gladden 1972). The practices of public administration are, then, as old as civilization and essential to the development of civilization.

Although the practice of public administration is very old, the formal study of public administration and the elaboration of public administration theory are very new. As a separate self-conscious or self-aware academic and intellectual thing—a body of knowledge, a field of professional practice, an academic subject, a form of politics, a social construction of reality—public administration is young. When measured from the Federalist, public administration is more than 225 years old, more than 22 decades, more than 7 generations. When measured from the publication of Woodrow Wilson’s founding essay (1887/1941), public administration is more than 125 years old, more than 12 decades, more than 3 generations. As a separate and self-conscious collection of concepts, ideas, reforms, courses and degrees, and professed answers to public problems, public administration is a young adult.

In his encyclopedic description of what we know about public administration, James Q. Wilson claims to have little interest in theory and expresses the opinion that theory has little to offer to an understanding of bureaucracy:

I wish that this book could be set forth in a way that proved, or at least illustrated, a simple, elegant, comprehensive theory of bureaucratic behavior. I have come to have grave doubts that anything worth calling “organization theory” will ever exist. Theories will exist, but they will usually be so abstract or general as to explain rather little. Interesting explanations will exist, some even supported with facts, but these will be partial, place- and time-bound insights. Many scholars disagree with me. More power to them. (1989, xi–xii)

If contemporary understandings of public administration are merely recitations of facts derived from research—letting the facts speak for themselves—can public administration theory be taken seriously?

One purpose of this book is to answer this question with a firm yes. Despite Wilson’s disclaimer, theory is the bedrock of understanding public administration. Indeed, in many ways Wilson’s own work is a profoundly important theoretical contribution.

There is no theorist more clever than the scholar claiming to have no theory. Simply to arrange the facts, describe the research findings, and claim no theory may appear to be safe. But theory of some kind will have guided the selection of which facts to present, how to order those facts, and how to interpret them. All theories have weaknesses, and denying theory while doing theory has the big advantage of not having to defend those weaknesses. Denying theory while doing theory has other advantages as well. It helps to avoid the stereotypes of, say, decision theorists or rational choice theorists. To claim to be atheoretical skirts the truth-in-labeling test. Without acknowledging a theory or expressing an interest in a theory, the scholar can attempt to avoid labels and stereotypes. These are all compelling reasons to avoid theoretical boxes and categories; but these reasons do not diminish the centrality of theory in all of public administration.

Can theory be important in a field as applied, practical, and interdisciplinary as public administration? This book answers this question with another firm yes. We believe it is self-evident that a need exists for greater conceptual clarity and theoretical reliability in the treatment of public administration. It is always tempting in an applied field to fall back on common sense and wisdom as sufficient to the task of implementing public policy. In fact, common sense and wisdom are necessary for carrying out effective policy, but they are not sufficient, especially when common sense and wisdom are poorly defined or not defined at all. Deep thinking is also helpful, but insufficient. The certainties derived from the deep thought of one generation are often poor guides for succeeding generations. For example, it is presently accepted almost universally that public bureaucracies are slow, cumbersome, self-serving, and inefficient—the common sense or wisdom of our day. We act on that common sense by deregulating, downsizing, contracting out, privatizing, encouraging bureaucratic risk taking and innovation, and loosening controls on government purchasing and bidding. In the 1930s, when the United States was in a deep economic depression, an opposite type of common sense prevailed. Based on that common sense, we depended on centralized government to solve common problems. We are now rapidly moving away from dependence on centralized government, and common sense and conventional wisdom appear to guide these trends.

In the past fifty years, public administration has developed more systematic patterns of inquiry about the substance of public organization behavior, public management, and public policy implementation. This work has contributed to an increasing reliability in understanding public administration. The work of public organizations has been examined with improved conceptual, methodological, and theoretical forms of analysis. These forms of analysis seek to create knowledge that is retraceable, cumulative, and, at least at some level, replicable. These forms of analysis aspire to be scientific, using the word “scientific” here to mean a kind of formal rationality by which the insights and discoveries of one generation form the foundation for the inquiries of the next generation. Knowledge, then, becomes collective and cumulative. This is not to suggest that the social world, of which public administration is a part, is as amenable to formal scientific applications as is the physical world. It is not. But it is to suggest that the art and science of public administration should be just that—art and science. The science and art of policy administration is definable, describable, replicable, and cumulative.

A further purpose of this book is to describe in some detail several theories and analytic approaches that contribute to what we know about public administration. We also aim to describe areas of public administration theorizing that are underdeveloped. If we can accept that each approach to the subject of public administration is guided, at least in some rudimentary way, by a theory or set of theories, the questions are these: Which theories or approaches are the most promising, the most influential? Which are the most important now and likely to be the most important in the future? What phenomena in public administration and governance are not yet adequately described or explained? One particular area that is in need of greater study is the “shadow bureaucracy”—the extensive network of private and nonprofit enterprises that exist to carry out public programs. The purpose of this book is to set out a detailed description of the authors’ selection of key theories in contemporary public administration in the hope of improving the reliability of our knowledge and our understanding of public administration.

No claim is made here for only one theory of public administration. Because the field is both interdisciplinary and applied, a single theory derived from a contributing discipline, such as the market model from economics, may be informative and useful. But much of public administration cannot be described, explained, or accounted for by using the market model. Each of the other theories described in this book informs our understanding of public administration and public policy. No theory standing alone is capable of accounting for the complexity of the field. Taken together, however, the theories significantly contribute to what we know and understand public administration to be.

The Uses of Theory

Consider this policy arena: With the destructive power of hurricanes, tornados, floods, tsunamis, and wildfires, the critical nature of public administration is self-evident. Is public administration in the form of the disaster prevention and management system (Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Forest Service, Coast Guard) doing the best it can with a “wicked problem” (Rittel and Webber 1973)? Will better public leadership and management help (Kettl 2007)? How valuable and efficient is planning when natural disasters are so infrequent in any one location? How can better coordination with nonprofit and charitable organizations, such as the Red Cross, help? Will stricter regulations about where and how people may build houses and businesses help? How much responsibility do government agencies have for rescuing people who have ignored orders to evacuate? Where is the balance between effectiveness of government programs and their cost?

Before we can seriously consider these public policy and public administration issues, a certain reliability of understanding will be helpful. How do we comprehend the issues and order the facts? How does our understanding, thus derived, guide policy and action? The themes set out in the remaining chapters of this book promise to improve our understanding of public administration and suggest, therefore, how it can be strengthened. When a good theory is based on reliable and replicable knowledge, nothing is more practical. What is the best theory or mix of theories to inform our policy decisions and policy implementation in crime and lawlessness? What could be more practical than the answer to that question? That answer would be especially useful and practical if the theory or theories were based on the observation of specific events and on observations and accumulations of patterns, experiences, and occurrences that, taken together, suggest a way to ameliorate the problem.

How can theory be useful? The validity or usefulness of any theory depends on its capacity to describe, to explain, and to predict.

A theory, to be useful, should accurately describe or depict a real-world event or phenomenon. Most theories do this at some level of abstraction. Most important public administration phenomena are complex, and therefore description is an abstract representation of phenomena. All descriptions require that the analyst decide which elements in a complex phenomenon to emphasize. All descriptions are distortions of reality and are relative to the circumstances prevailing at the time of the description. Descriptions are often like a still photo or a series of still photos—and often fuzzy photos at that. Description is less often like a videotape. In the same way that motion photography is an advancement on still photography, our descriptive technologies in public administration are still relatively primitive still photos.

Because of the limitations of descriptions, a useful theory will explain the phenomenon being described. Explanation can account for the known distortions of reality embedded in description. Explanation can also account for why the analyst sees some factors in an event or phenomenon as more important than others. A description asks what happened or what is happening, but even the best description of what is happening may fail to answer these equally important questions: Why did this happen, or why is this happening? Explanation may not sharpen the fuzzy photo of a description but, as Ansel Adams demonstrated with his black-and-white still photography, there is an important difference between seeing a picture and understanding a picture. In public administration, the descriptive features of theory help us see; the explanatory features of theory help us understand.

If theory helps us to see and understand public administration phenomena, should theory, therefore, help us to predict? Yes. Consider Herbert Kaufman’s (1969) theory of cyclical change from a professionally based and neutrally competent public administration to a politically responsive and partisan public administration. Kaufman’s theory contains strong predictive properties. Although less specific to public administration, Albert Hirschman’s theory (1982) of change in the social and political world is similar and equally as useful.

The tendency is to expect too much of prediction in theory. Because public administration is practical and applied, some seek a theory that, if followed, will achieve a predictable result. Prediction should be interpreted largely to account for patterns, probabilities, and likely outcomes, not specific results flowing inexorably from the application of a particular theory. When prediction is loosely defined to account for a range of situations over time, its capacity can be impressive.

An expectation of description, explanation, and prediction from theory in public administration places this book rather firmly in the positivist tradition; however, it is recognized and understood that not all events follow foreseeable patterns. There are randomness and chaos, particularly at the microlevel or in one event or a small group of events. But in a multitude of ways, we daily see, recognize, understand, and bet on predictable patterns of collective human behavior. Broad, macrolevel patterns of individual and collective behavior in public administration can be seen, described with considerable reliability, and understood at a level that allows for reliable prediction. Aaron Wildavsky’s work (1984) on budgeting is illustrative. Michael Cohen and James G. March’s (1986) description of universities as organizations is another example. Herbert Simon’s bounded rationality is powerfully predictive (1947/1997).

In public administration theory, issues of precision versus generality are important. Greater precision and specificity in the description and explanation of a public administration phenomenon are always purchased at the price of generalization. The more a theory is precise or, as is presently popular to say, contingent, the more the power to account for a broad pattern of events, and therefore to predict a range of like phenomena, is reduced. The problem is that big theory, grand overarching theory, is usually made so general by simplifications and assumptions as to render it unable to explain anything but the most obvious occurrences. Systems theory comes to mind; so do simplified applications of market economics to public administration. The richness, texture, and substance of events and phenomena can be lost in big theory. Precise theory, on the other hand, can be so rich and contextual as to be bereft of generalizing potential. Because the contemporary use of case studies, examples of best practices, and single analyses of particular policies illustrates the weaknesses of precise theory in supporting generalizations, this book will dwell on eight theories that have qualities of both precision and empirical richness and qualities of generalization.

It is appropriate to turn now to what is meant here by theory as that word applies to public administration. At a loose and almost casual level, theory is simply an orientation, framework, technique, or approach. For example, without referring to a particular theory, one might write that there is a theory (or there are theories) of life cycles in organizations. Or one might refer to a personal opinion as a theory. Theory is not used here in this relaxed form. Theory, in the more formal meanings of the term, has the following three meanings. First, in the natural and physical sciences, theory means a rigorous testing of predictive theorems or hypotheses using observable and comparable data. These hypotheses, once tested and verified, form the basis of theories, assertions, or representations of reality. Theory in the natural or physical sciences can claim considerable accuracy in representing reality because the classification of order in the physical world is advanced, as are capacities to recognize and measure natural phenomena. Theory, thus derived, often serves as a highly reliable guide for action. In the social world, of which public administration is a part, the problems of recognizing patterns, designing categories, and measuring and comparing phenomena are much greater. Therefore, the aims of theory in public administration are different (and, some would say, lower).

Second, theory in the social sciences and in public administration means the ordering of factual material (history, events, cases, stories, measures of opinion, observation) so as to present evidence through definitions, concepts, and metaphors that promote understanding. To be sure, this understanding is, at least in part, subjective, because it was constructed by the theorist. This theory is based on the rigorous and intuitive observation of social behavior, organizational behavior, institutional dynamics, political systems and behavior, patterns of communication, and culture. We will argue here that theory derived from such observation is basic to all action in public administration. Most of this action is not formally and explicitly acknowledged as driven by a particular theory. Public administration decisions and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Introduction: The Possibilities of Theory
• Chapter 2 Theories of Political Control of Bureaucracy
• Chapter 3 Theories of Bureaucratic Politics
• Chapter 4 Public Institutional Theory
• Chapter 5 Theories of Public Management
• Chapter 6 Postmodern Theory
• Chapter 7 Decision Theory
• Chapter 8 Rational Choice Theory and Irrational Behavior
• Chapter 9 Theories of Governance
• Chapter 10 Conclusion: A Bright Future for Theory?
• References
• Index