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This paper examines the usefulness of Theodor Adorno's (1966/2004) formulation of negative dialectics as prescriptive praxis under conditions where signifiers for humanity are made vaporous or otherwise elusive, as with current conditions of ersatz liberalism and diminished civil liberties. For exegetical purposes, this paper applies Adorno's praxis to one instance of resistance during the Nazi Third Reich that bears lingering, personal relevance to the author. The art work of the modernist painter, Georges Braque, makes entrance here to render more vivid the essential tenets of Adorno's provocative and still timely praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the time of writing, state governments have rapidly escalated their response to the problem of climate change. The governors and state legislatures are developing a wide variety of bills and executive orders to address different aspects of the issue. This wave of policy development builds upon an expert-based, bureaucracy- and business- focused wave of actions that took place in the state capitals during the late 1990s and into this century. This paper reflects upon a future in which active citizen participation becomes a more integral component of addressing climate change. Using the adaptive leadership philosophy of Ronald Heifetz, this paper shows the beginnings of shared responsibilities for climate change policy implementation between state governments and their citizens, and discusses Heifetz's ideas as a basis for even greater citizen participation on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses feminist narrative analytics to examine Mary Ellen Guy's (2000) life history of Miss Burchfield. Burchfield played a key, but largely invisible, role in the early development of American public administration. This paper examines how Guy constructed the Burchfield narrative and the different ways it might be read (e.g., insider/outsider, visible/invisible, gender success/gender victim, public administration founder/public administration staffer). A systematic examination of her narrative can illuminate both the gender relations surrounding public administration's disciplinary beginnings and how that past moment speaks to the present moment in public administration. Specifically, Burchfield's story speaks to the problem of gender invisibility that remains in public administration today. Guy's research stands as an exemplar of feminist life history that contributes to the "emerging gender narrative" within public administration (White, 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining formidable challenges to Farmer's (2005) call for "authentic [administrative] hesitation" before the suffering of others, this paper explores how the path to the praxis Farmer advocates cannot lead us in a straight line, but ultimately must detour towards points that public administration has failed to confront. Divided into three sections, the paper is built as an allegory on the oblique trek it is argued here that public administration must take if we are genuinely concerned with discovering the post-traditional administrative virtues that many hope for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the mutual interest of the Post-modern and the Neo-liberal in sustaining a globalized, virtual and individual-sovereign consciousness. This paper explains how the ubiquity of the invisible hand of the market and the visible hand of management charade is fundamental to sustaining an Epochal discourse which masks Western, especially U. S., imperialism and the expansion of forms of Corporate Imperialism. This paper provides a manifesto for a reflexive consciousness in Public Administration theory and practice attuned to the verities and high stakes involved in restoring Public Administration in an (in)visible time of exceptional fear and hubris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there seems to be widespread agreement in the public administration community on the importance of public participation, there is no consensus about what we mean when we use the term. This paper argues that we go back to the writings of Mary Follett (1868-1933) to inform the future of public participation. Although her political writings are now eighty years old, they have never been more relevant. This paper demonstrates how Follett provides concrete answers to some of the primary questions of public participation today. Follett's notions of circular response and integration, along with her thesis of neighborhood organization as a vehicle for democratic governance speak directly to the practice of a more democratic public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers the perspective of a student on the problems addressed within this symposium. Topics of import in this paper include methodology, language, the composition of graduate education programs, and the challenges of student life in public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Wheel of Science to consider the placement of the four approaches to the study of government identified by Raadschelders (2004). We introduce a Wheel of Practice embedded within the Wheel of Science and analyze how they differ and what this means in terms of a lack of integration. After suggesting ways in which bridges can be built between the two wheels, the paper explicitly considers the contributions of the practical experience approach. We propose using design science and managerial principles in a project geared toward greater theoretical as well as academic and practitioner integration in the quest to improve the study of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years ago Charles Fox and Hugh Miller (1995) published Postmodern Public Administration, which made a strong case for a discourse model of public administration and policy-making. Around the same time other books on discourse appeared, which helped create the sense that a discourse movement was underway within the discipline of public administration. This paper argues that if this movement truly is to effect a "sea change" within the discipline, then it is important to conduct empirical research informed by interpretive methods that investigates how meanings are produced and disseminated, how meanings are collectively established in actual policy and administrative situations, and how norms are introduced, negotiated, shared, and applied to policy and administrative situations. What is needed, then, is a broad, theoretical perspective that is compatible with Fox and Miller's discourse theory, but which also can serve to guide scholars' efforts to conduct empirical research into policy and administrative discourse. This paper argues that symbolic interactionism offers such a perspective. It is theoretically congruent with Fox and Miller's position, it is methodologically broad and has generated an exceptionally rich set of empirical discoveries on all manner of human activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent managerialist discourse on modernizing, reinventing or reengineering the State has often placed strong emphasis on values and ethics as a preferred means (so-called strategy) for large-scale organizational change (Frederickson & Johnston, 1999; Kettl, 2000). Building on a pragmatist understanding of organizational cultures and identities, managerialism presupposes a fusion between rule-value and action, where individual behaviour can be modulated by a flexible set of norms secreted by spontaneous "leaders." Hence, from this perspective, proper values should lead to proper behaviour in a context of individual autonomy. Building on a syncretism of critical theory (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000) and poststructuralism (Foucault, 1975, 2004; Foucault & Deleuze, 1972; Hardt & Negri, 2000), this paper intends to discuss the theoretical relevance of the managerialist perspective on values and ethics for the renewal of public administration and, in the larger scheme of things, the renewal of public governance. Simply stated, the paper asks: Does the current emphasis on ethics and values in public administration, most notably in regards to its claims of individual and organizational empowerment, lead to unintended consequences, such as collective confusion (Rouillard, 2003)? Indeed, we state that the managerialist shift in public administration appears as a symptom of a more global shift from a disciplinary society to a control society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when teams are increasingly and routinely being used in Public Administration (PA) organizations, the prevailing wisdom about teams continues to confirm that teams axiomatically bring increases and improvements in effectiveness, productivity and communication. There has been relatively little critical address of whether these benefits actually accrue, nor what the experience of team members actually is. The PA literature, in particular, remains silent on this important issue. This paper shares findings from an exploratory phenomenological study. Members of teams in organizations were interviewed and asked about their experiences of working in teams. In contrast to the current wisdom, not only did team members not report the anticipated improvements and benefits, their stories tended to highlight the negative influence that the rhetoric surrounding teams might have on individuals. This paper shares the responses of team members to that rhetoric, revealing themes of "Teams, Rhetoric and Sensemaking," a challenge to the notion of "Teams as One Big Happy Family?" while identifying "Teams as Crucibles of Resignation and Sadness." These findings indicate the continuing need for further research into understanding the experience of individuals within various team and organizational structures, especially as they operate in PA organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is widespread consensus that local communities are increasingly characterized by complexity, ideological isolation and fragmentation, mostly lacking constitutive forums to discover and create the public good. This paper expands the conventional individual focused solution to this problem by arguing that organizations play a central role in community building. Drawing from an inductive theory- building study of public, private, and nonprofit agencies, this paper presents an empirically-based framework for categorizing organizations as high or low citizens. Organizations with high citizenship bind their authority, memberships, obligations and legitimacy to a larger community venture. The paper concludes by arguing that we can more easily develop community health and community good by taking systematic advantage of high organizational citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is an attempt to further knowledge of citizen participation efforts in the U. S., particularly those where the effort to build participation is in its early stages of development. The research begins to explore the indirect role (the mask) of nonprofit organizations--governing nonprofits--in creating viable citizen organization and participation structures in governance. The paper builds on preliminary research, conducted in a city in the Midwest, which described a nonprofit organization's attempt to build citizen participation at the neighborhood level. As result of this preliminary research, the author suggests that community organizers, through the use of nonprofit organizations, are able to mask social change efforts and create "incubators" for the fostering of citizen participation-- creating the necessary foundation for a "robust citizen participation structure" (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993, p. 53). This paper explores the role of nonprofit organizations as a tool for social change and describes a community's effort towards encouraging citizen participation/involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last two decades of the 20th century witnessed a tide of privatization of public services under the banner of New Public Management (NPM). Interestingly, some proponents and opponents of NPM assume that NPM reform is something genuinely new. Drawing from administrative history during the early modern period (1500-1800), this paper argues that NPM is not genuinely new; instead, there were uncelebrated forerunners in the early modern period. From a detailed analysis of tax farming in the early modern period, this paper offers three findings that are useful for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of NPM reform, especially its privatization strategy. They are: 1. although tax farming was used in early times for its relative efficiency, it was not a cost-free mechanism and its short-term efficiency would have detrimental long-term results in revenue generation and financial management; 2. because of privatization, the public interest might be undermined by private profits; and 3. with privatization, citizens would be subject to the greed of tax farmers. These lessons have implications for contemporary NPM reform, especially its privatization strategy, leading to a warning that what had occurred under the tax farming system may happen with the recent privatization of public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key contributions of the theorist is to present alternatives--in Truman Capote's (1948) telling phase, "other voices/other rooms"--to taken for granted disciplinary realities through the introduction of new or different perspectives, concepts, and ideas. The "other voice" of feminism has the potential to establish "other rooms" within American public administration that could create spaces for broader theoretical conversations within the discipline. Specifically, this paper will focus on feminist theorists--Joan Tronto and Viriginia Held, among others--who have given voice to care as an important concept and value that hould inform practices in public life. It will argue that within public administration a discourse on care must be developed for the purpose of ensuring that care is considered one of the "hallmarks of good government and meaningful citizenship" (Mackay, 2001, p. 155). To that end, this paper first explores "the other room" of the care perspective, noting that the care perspective offers an alternative framework for public administration that is gender sensitive. Second, five implications of the care perspective for public administration are explicated. These include complicating the discipline's conventional founding narrative, recognizing Mary Parker Follett as a pioneering thinker, legitimating relational leadership, making care ethics more prominent, and establishing a different assumptive base for public administration theory and practice. Third, the paper concludes by arguing that essential to all of the prospective new work within public administration grounded in the care perspective is the establishment of a fresh discourse that legitimizes care narratively by telling the many stories of how care is valued and practiced by people at all levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and writing on women, research taking a gender perspective, research authored by women, and accounts of women's experiences as public administrators and leaders have been slow to find their way into the literature of public administration. This paper seeks to deepen the current understanding of the gender narrative by examining how and in what ways gender has come to be written into the discipline of American public administration. This paper will ask how American public administration's gender story has unfolded through research and writing, and in answering this question it will use both the metaphor of voice and the concept of narrative. This paper, specifically, will examine gender writing in American public administration from varying perspectives: historical, description/ explanation, interpretive, and critique. The author also tells her story about finding her gender voice, in keeping with the personal writing feminist scholars emphasize as a means to interpret one's own experiences. Finally, borrowing from Virginia Woolf (1929), this paper considers whether women have a room of their own in the house of American public administration. It concludes that a "gender room" has been emerging, but it needs to be furnished with more interpretive gender research, including the voices or a wider range of women administrators and employees. Moreover, the critical tools found in that room must be used in the other rooms of public administration research and writing if the discipline is to be transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the descriptive, critical, and prescriptive potential of a discourse approach for the analysis of environmental policy processes by examining the political controversy surrounding the siting of a radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Following the work of Michel Foucault, we take different discourses as being immediately incommensurable with one another, thereby leading to breakdowns in communication among those negotiating policy. A discourse approach can, at a descriptive level, map the different and competing rhetorical positions available to possible participants. Critically, such an approach alerts us to processes of exclusion by which any discourse gains its coherence. Going beyond uncovering the difficulty that different actors might have communicating with one another, this paper uses Stanley Fish's account of how communication between actor, ensconced in different discourses actually occurs as the theoretical basis for overcoming the incommensurability problem. Drawing on these complementary insights from Foucault and Fish, we offer a discourse approach to policy issues that can both orient our analysis of the discursive terrain on which a given issue is contested and suggest an ethic of participation that informs our judgment of real world policy processes such as the Yucca Mountain siting controversy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores governance failure through an investigation of the philosophical assumptions oF three modes of societal governance hierarchy, interactive (or network) and markets--and their behavioral implications. The analysis utilizes a typology drawn from the philosophy of the social sciences to identify the foundational assumptions of these societal governance modes. The paper then considers their epistemological, ontological and nomological limitations, and proceeds, through a behavioral analysis, to identify the implications of these various philosophical issues for the relationship between governors and the governed. Finally, it proposes, drawing upon recent developments in the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophical requirements for the resolution of governance failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategic public governance of health services in Australia, as a federation of states and territories, is shared between three levels of government and the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. While national and sub-national governments hold the legitimate authority for most strategic decision-making and service delivery, many powerful actors with vested interests influence policy agenda-setting processes. Unlike the broader public governance systems in Australia, which are founded largely on the market-based model of neo-classical economic principles, the health governance system is more socially oriented. However, there is evidence that suggests that continuing moves by governments towards a more competitive model of governance with greater private sector involvement could impact negatively on health outcomes. At the same time, it is equally apparent that the structural, instrumental and dynamic aspects of the strategic health governance system, as they stand, could create more adverse indicators of public health. In fact, some trends in the health care system put state capacity for strategic governance in doubt. This paper will use the basic principles and assumptions of the now largely universal neo-liberal economic public governance model, based on market principles, to examine how these ideas are reflected in the conceptual and practical approaches to health services management in the Australian context. In this sense, the focus is on the ill health, treatment system rather than on the governance of public health broadly interpreted. First, to provide a more global context of health governance in Australia, some comparative analysis relating to Anglo-American polities will be presented. Second, the fundamental value of health as a market product or merit good will be considered. Third, the structural, instrumental and dynamic aspects of the health governance system in Australia will be explored. Finally, the paper examines whether the Australian s [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is only one sex left, `we are all women in spirit.' (Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, 1689-1755) The modernist administrative ethos does not permit space.for a radical reconstruction of gender--restricting and thereby oppressing the articulation of a radical feminist project in public administration. This paper addresses gender discourse in anti-administration, suggesting that multigendering is one remedy for the pervasive melancholy that afflicts women, men and organizations the oppressed and the oppressors, alike. The feminist experience and perspective, largely absent in public administration discourse, brings radically different and new insights to old problems in theory and praxis. The paper concludes with a plea.for a "new enlightenment" that resists the "urges to power" which undermine prospects for anti-administration and anti-melancholy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should an anti-administrative consciousness extend to a discourse (a writing) of laughter? This paper plays with the possibility of this discourse in order to point to debilitating constraints in traditional PA. thinking. Join me and imagine a PA. discourse of laughter that is somatic in origin, and that.focuses on the "funny peculiar," which in the PA. case is understood to be socially constructed elements that are privileged in being misconceived as natural entities in any and all PA. discourses. The paper draws on Helene Cixous' "The Laugh of the Medusa" and Cixous' discussions of feminine writing and the burdens of imposed meanings. It imagines that the use of a libidinal discourse of laughter is to liberate ourselves from the distortions of our particular disciplinary discourse. It gives macro examples of political and economic myth-like stories that have become inscribed on our bodies and that make up our "governing" political and economic discourses. Using a term discussed by Milan Kundera, I suggest that a value lies in bringing us closer in touch with traditional PA.'s "litost." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In drawing attention to the prevalence of images, spectacles, and simulations in contemporary service organizations, the paper points at a blind spot in recent debates about new forms of "soft" control. Whereas the trend from negative to positive power, from hard to soft control, from obedience to commitment has received significant attention within organization studies; the shift from real to virtual power, from actual to simulated control has largely gone unnoticed. Based on stories and episodes collected during a fourteen-month organizational ethnography of an Australian coastal hotel, the paper reflects on the increasing virtualization of organizational life at this hotel in the context of an almost obsessive concern with service excellence. Drawing on Baudrillard's concept of simulation/seduction, the case of the Grand Seaside demonstrates the relevance and effectiveness of simulation as a technique for controlling individuals within service organizations. The paper concludes that the emergent mode of seductive domination corresponds to a gradual virtualization of social control and that, consequently, discussions within organization studies should not confine to issues of obedience and commitment but should address the actual/virtual dimension of power and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservative commentators have decried our society's move away from traditional moral standards in favor of a preoccupation with individual feelings, and with therapy as the means of unfettering those feelings from external moral constraints. This paper examines the corresponding notion of a "therapeutic state," one that grounds its legitimacy in its ability to influence the feelings of citizens. It suggests that the problems apparently associated with therapeutic governance follow in large part from the inadequacy of modernist vocabulary in describing the concern for human emotion expressed in certain anti-modernist approaches to public service. This paper seeks to redescribe the notion of therapeutic governance in a way more consistent with those approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil service reform has usually been viewed in one of two ways: as the triumph of integrity over greed, or as the triumph of elitism over party democracy. This paper takes a third path and interprets reform as an exemplar of what Michel Foucault called governmentality, a practice of governance under which society promotes certain practices of individuality which in turn promote specific practices of sociality, for instance professionalism and expertise. The paper contrasts this form of governance with that of sovereignty and then uses textual exegesis to tease out the meanings of key terms--"responsibility," "democracy," "sophistication"-- in the reform literature of the times. By linking reform to suburban-managerial political culture, and suburban culture to governmentality, one gains a heightened perspective on the ambiguous relation between governance and freedom as well as the possibilities for a democratic ethos in public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting the work of Jürgen Habermas as a critical reference, this paper examines the ideas exposed in the The New Science of Organizations, the last and most important work of Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, the renowned Brazilian Public Administration scholar. Guerreiro Ramos 'organizational theory has much in common with the ideas of critical theorists from the Frankfurt School, including Habermas. However, as is discussed in the paper, Guerreiro Ramos' attachment to transcendental phenomenology and to the concept of substantive reason imposes fatal limitations to his critical theoretical project. It is argued that Habermas' philosophical standpoint overcomes the theoretical limitations that emerge from the philosophy of consciousness. Finally, the paper suggests that Habermas's critical theory--for reaching beyond New Public Management positivism and Postmodern skepticism--offers a feasible alternative for research in Public Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I reflect on a rather traumatic experience. I analyze my personal experience with violence with the help of concepts that I use in my work as a consultant and researcher. My aim is to lend new perspectives to the actions of public authorities. After a description of the context and some theoretical orientations, my analysis focuses on the traumatic experience and the process of recovery. In reflection, I come up with some ideas for the improvement of the "system" aspects of government. The main result of my reflection is the proposal to create a new professional practice to support people who need to have their sense of citizenship restored after invasions of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crisis management, it seems, is unable to abate escalating crises in increasingly risk-dominated economies. Is the endeavor of reconciling economics, politics, and public duty itself in crisis or still in a strategic learning mode? This paper outlines four research-oriented problematics that suggest the latter state of play, assuming that crises represent "wicked" problems for oligarchs. It draws on examples of what may have been learnt recently and points to that which needs more, much more, attention. Crises as a dilemma, opportunity, or both is still an unresolved and relatively undebated issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's personal reflection on various papers published in different issues of "Administrative Theory & Praxis." The section examines the theories written in the journal which communicates it's author's desire for a broad dialogue on the epistemological and normative place of public administration in society. It also announces the interest of the publication to accept contributions that reflect on theory in action, either in the classroom or in organizations and communities.

This paper discusses the history of ideas as a methodological approach to normative research in public administration. It seeks to explore what the history of ideas entails, why our field has neglected it, and why, despite this neglect, this approach to normative research is useful. I argue here that an awareness of the history of the ideas and concepts that we use in thinking, talking, and writing about, as well as practicing, public administration can be helpful in avoiding the recycling of old ideas that have been tried in the past and found wanting. Equally important, it can also help us to avoid adopting ideas that are actually destructive of values that we hold dear and suggest ideas that are more coherent with these values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural events are not automatically disasters; they become disasters because of their negative impact on humanity. This paper argues that the wake of natural disasters exposes the ethical difficulty of the "voluntary state." In particular, we demonstrate that the failures of the voluntary state are exposed by disasters such as that caused by Hurricane Katrina. Such failures of the voluntary state offer an unfortunate impetus for reconsidering the role of public administration theory, which must now more than ever argue on behalf of the most marginalized populations in an era that has wrongly declared their well being to be a matter of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability development is receiving increased attention in public administration theory and practice. It has been lauded as promoting increased environmental well-being, while also improving the wellbeing of citizens. Can sustainable development principles promote social justice, equality, and citizen participation in public administration practice? Will these principles be at odds with economic stability? What are the overall consequences for civil society ? This paper considers these questions by exploring case studies in which the application and practice of environmental sustainability is integrated in public decision making. It discusses the role of sustainable development in public risk management and in promoting social justice through the use of systems approaches, time and place knowledge, and stakeholder participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article briefly explores the thought of the seminal thinkers Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk and Charles Taylor to argue that conceptions of public and nonprofit leadership ought properly to be (re)founded and rethought on the basis of a profound regard for the principle of alterity as this is realized in the exercise of the moral imagination in the pursuit of human dignity; one of T. S. Eliot's "permanent things." The article contends that whether or not one accepts the idea of moral absolutes, this set of capacities is critical to the effective functioning of many nonprofit organizations and may constitute a basis on which these may legitimate and distinguish themselves from for-profit and public entities. Using Taylor's work, the paper provides a means by which to justify this stance that does not assume the existence of moral absolutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between authority and authoritarianism, and the significance of this relationship to public administrators and their practice. I argue that authority and authoritarianism are not distinct, and that public administrators should rethink the value of authority as a justification for action. I explore two sources of authority/authoritarianism, personality and institutions, through the works of George Orwell, Theodor Adorno et al. (1950), and Michel Foucault. Though I do not posit a root cause of authority/ authoritarianism, I suggest ways that public administrators can reduce their reliance on authority as a justification through self-awareness and the resistance of the institutional roles that they take on. In conclusion, I link the resistance of political authority to theories that undermine epistemological authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the celebrity-like status accorded to U.S. public administration theorists, in context and out of context. The Friedrich-Finer debate of 1940/1941 is re-visited not only in a comparativist re-casting of the democratic project and the vacuum of Weberian discourses but also in the context of the emerging, Neoliberal agenda of the role of the agentic Sovereign Individual within the globalizing grand narrative of cyberspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the ontological evolution of public administration theory from a speculative point set one to two decades out in the future--as the scholars of this symposium might typically reach the heights of influence in their careers. The intention is to discuss the threats and opportunities for public administration and to create a vision of how the field can be considered and shaped as it evolves. Its conclusions are not so much normative as they are intended as a stimulus for normative discussions on the future of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guerreiro Ramos's theoretical work on the Parenthetical Man (Azevêdo & Albernaz, 2006) emphasizes the importance of a multicentric society to realize human multi-dimensionality; and specifically his Theory of Social Systems Delimitation provides a conceptual framework for understanding this multicentric society. The theory and practice of public administration has subsequently recognized the importance of multiple social sectors in the delivery of public goods. This paper will especially highlight what the subsequent theory and practice of public administration has not addressed: the importance of multiple settings in which humans can realize personal fulfillment, and enjoy (non-economic) human associated life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the meaning of the citizen subject from a feminist perspective. I argue that a poststructuralist feminist account provides the best interpretation of the subject, how it is formed through governmental practices and discourses, but is still capable of practicing ethics. The subject in contemporary society is overly determined by naturalized accounts of gender and the body. These essentialized notions are imported into the liberal view of the subject. Administrators who approach citizen subjects as free and autonomous, but gendered in irrevocable ways, presume too much about who they are serving. I argue that administrators should practice the art of not governing too much, and be careful about the presumptions they make about citizens' identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformative potential of public administration is forestalled by the portrayal of management as sphere-specific or apolitical and the resultant portrayal of marginality as natural. The lived experiences of people at the organizational level and beyond deny the objectivity of separating public and private management and thus, through the exposure of the politics of management, open a space for discussion of the transformative potential of public administration. This paper suggests a more holistic "management" approach, built on the ideas of feminist and democratic theories and the praxis of Mary Parker Follett, Jane Addams, and more contemporary feminist theories of management. We conclude that a democratic feminist theory of management is potentially transformative in its recognition of the conditions under which all forms of marginalization are sustained and the discovery of the potential to change them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taoism has been traditionally excluded in political and administrative discussions. This paper attempts to look at public administration and governance from a Taoist perspective by exploring the world created by the great Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important questions to address when one considers the governance and bureaucracy of the future is: What about the individual? Traditional governance and bureaucracy focuses on rational features of organizations and groups, rather than the idiosyncrasies and essentials of being human, with hearts, desires, ambitions, emotions, perceptions, feelings, and life experiences that, ultimately, shape all that we do, say and feel. I urge readers to consider the specific needs of human beings--with all that they bring to organizational life--and speak specifically about the need to recognize grief and loss in the world of administration. This paper talks about grief: what it is; the forms it can take; what might spark it; and how organizations currently respond. The need to support grieving individuals in public administration (PA) organizations is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response to the comments on the paper The Value of the Dichotomy: Politics, Administration, and the Political Neutrality of Administrators. The criticism of the politics-administration dichotomy concentrate on terminology and it overlooks the crucial distinction between terms and concepts. It is also acknowledged that politics has to have supremacy or primacy and must be able to guide policy.

This article examines, from among public administration and allied literature spanning over one hundred years, how "race" (both as fact and artifact) has shaped and similarly been shaped by scholarly output serving public administration. The paper finds that race and administrative inquiry and praxis in America have co-aligned, and entangled, since the inception of public administration. Their relevance, each for the other, is determined here to be lasting and profound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between public administration and social science in light of the postmodern condition. It is argued here that the postmodern condition limits the role of conventional social science in public administration because it increases the incidence, as well as the visibility, of conflict between incompatible and incommensurable human ends or values. While conventional social science can still make a useful contribution to public administration enquiry, as an expression of certain important values, other modes of enquiry, including philosophy and history, are also important in helping us to become more self-conscious about the political and ethical values that we express in public administration discourse and practice and the conflicts that can occur between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Administrative Theory & Praxis began in 1979 as Dialogue, the newsletter of the newly created Public Administration Theory Network. It has developed over twenty-five years as a forum for "alternative" theory in public administration. This paper describes some of the work published in Dialogue/ATP from 1979 to 2004 to illustrate issues of interest to authors in the journal during this time. Examples of articles are given in five substantive categories of theory: the nature of knowledge; the relationship of Dialogue/ATP theory to mainstream public administration; normative public administration theory; social and political theory; and marginalization and oppression. The discussion highlights writing about important topics in public administration theory from perspectives often not considered in "mainstream" journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the direction of the Public Administration Theory-Network (PAT-Net) conference. Evidence supporting the claim that PAT-Net is going against the current; Case against the PAT-Net's claim to theorize against the current; Overview of Patricia Nickel's paper which challenged the theory network's image of itself.

Theoretical research in India has unwittingly vacillated around American experience. Early studies, which were largely empirical, explored important policy variables but they missed out on theoretical frameworks, which could explain policy slippages. CAG made the first valuable attempt to define those common variables, which had the potential of explaining critical realities of all societies as an effort towards mutual learning. Its emphasis on "ecology" indicated the scope for further research into issues of identities, domination and privilege. The untimely wound up of CAG blocked theoretical maturity of its research and left public administration undefended for a blitzkrieg by state politics. Poverty reduction and "catching up" made policy structures domains of technical experts who replicated Western models, which contained serious contextual and epistemological inadequacies. Riggs enlightened practitioners about "substantive administration" and critical theory of Habermas and Roy Bhasker explained the "causal forces of society." In conclusion, the paper brings out the fact that the society is internally related through bonds, which can be called "epistemic" and through quantum mechanics a near objective assessment of the inadequacies of implanted models in governance such as the new public management can be arrived at. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes an unorthodox narrative approach to (re)-write the management discourse of Chile. Using two contrasting narrative perspectives (voices), it reflects upon historical and cultural events that triggered the imposition of this discourse under which all of Chile's societal arrangements were re-constructed and where voices of dissent were silenced, marginalized or destroyed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the phenomenological philosophies of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty and shows the parallels between these philosophies on the one hand and the implications of complexity theory and cognitive science on the other. Phenomenology, complexity theory, and cognitive science converge on the understanding that the Cartesian objectivist view of the world is erroneous and they offer a contextual and embodied view of the scientific knowledge process. The implications of this convergence for public administration and public policy theories are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, Western governments, international tribunals, and global financial organizations have descended with billions of dollars and thousands of consultants, all directly or indirectly dedicated to decentralization efforts. These monies, as well as the benefits of acceptance by the European community, are often contingent upon compliance with particular Western policy recommendations for decentralization. These efforts fail to take into account the paradox between centralization and decentralization as is manifest in the shadow environment in Ukraine, which inevitably reflects vestiges of engrained social knowledge. Decentralization as it is conceived of in the West is simply incapable of conveying an image of decentralization in Ukraine. This paper therefore "rethinks" decentralization in terms of deviation from the centralized power structure in Ukraine, suggesting that decentralization is not only legitimate, but is also crucial to our understanding of the impact of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the authors trace four main approaches to the issue of decentralization and local autonomy: the formal, dynamic, functional, and governance approach. The formal approach is primarily descriptive and deductive, but does not represent the actual workings of the administrative state, or typically lead to normative conclusions. The dynamic approach, in contrast to the formal, focuses on the process of task redistribution among tiers as a consequence of changes in society. The basic question with regard to this approach is: which form of decentralization has which effects on the quality of government under which conditions? The functional approach focuses primarily on the local level, considering issues of horizontal decentralization and the implications for local autonomy. Subsequent normative judgments are often ambiguous. Finally, the governance approach substitutes networks for issues of decentralization, concluding that local autonomy is on the wane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]