Module 2 discussion

C H A P T E R 1

Intellectual Heritage and Theoretical Developments IS PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AN ART OR A SCIENCE?

It is necessary to deny . . . that empiricism is the essence of science.

—DWIGHT WALDO, The Administrative State

The conclusions reached by a particular school of modern philosophy—logical positivism—will be accepted as a starting point.

—HERBERT A. SIMON, Administrative Behavior

There are innumerable accounts of the historical develop-ments in the field of public administration (see Frederickson and Smith 2003; Stillman 1999).1 Every introductory textbook in public administration chronicles the various periods or stages of development in the field (e.g., the orthodox or classical period; the administrative behavior movement), especially from the standpoint of practice. Indeed, the field of public administration emanates from practice, or the practical activity of administration and management in the public sector. In the United States, Woodrow Wilson is generally credited with a shift in focus toward ‘‘The Study of Public Administration’’ as is further discussed below.

By all accounts there tends to be a consensus in the field that there is no single or central core theory of public administration but that it can instead be characterized by its rich intellectual heritage (see, e.g., Rosen- bloom 1983b). In effect there is a fundamental lack of agreement regarding the scope of public administration. Some have argued that this dissonance has led to an identity or intellectual crisis in the field (e.g., Ostrom 2008).2

But public administration is not unique here, and indeed, this has not

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C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 0 . G e o r g e t o w n U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 6/24/2020 9:55 AM via UNIV OF WEST GEORGIA AN: 326638 ; Riccucci, Norma.; Public Administration : Traditions of Inquiry and Philosophies of Knowledge Account: wgc1.main.usg_locgil

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INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE AND THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTS

diminished the stature of our applied field. As will be addressed in this book, other branches of the social sciences are afflicted by this same multiple- personality syndrome. For example, sociology has been beleaguered by conflicting theoretical perspectives, which have clouded its intellectual boundaries as a field (see Collins 1986). Moreover, the dissention among sociologists about their identity as a field is ‘‘exacerbated by the philosophi- cal and methodological controversies about the feasibility and quality of social scientific research’’ (Crane and Small 1992, 199). Thus, other social science disciplines face quandaries similar to that of public administration.

The lack of a core theory has had implications for both the practice and study of public administration.3 In particular, it has led to a multitude of approaches to or theories about how public administrators (practitioners) ought to administrate and how public administrationists (scholars) ought to study public administration or engage in theory building and testing.4

For example, in his seminal piece ‘‘The Study of Public Administration,’’ Woodrow Wilson in 1887 endeavored to prescribe that in order to promote efficiency, public administrators should not engage in the enterprise of politics. Thus was born his famous (infamous?) politics/administration dichotomy, which continues to be addressed, ad nauseam, in public admin- istrative teachings today.

Other broad frameworks of public administration called for different administrative action or behavior. For example, the human relations school pointed to the importance of human behavior and in particular the inter- actions between workers and management. Motivational and psychological theories, as opposed to economic ones, were deemed critical for studying and understanding the behavior of people in organizations (see, e.g., Follett 1924; Metcalf and Urwick 1942).

Wilson’s single piece of scholarship, which received virtually no atten- tion in its day, is ascribed to the advent of public administration as a ‘‘discipline’’ or educational endeavor—what Waldo (1980) later called the ‘‘self-conscious’’ study of public administration.5 However, it is important that Wilson’s discourse was clearly set in the context of practice, not study. It endorsed rational, instrumental behavior and was followed by a series of writings from others advancing the same prescriptions for administrative behavior, or the practice of public administration, which were cumulatively labeled ‘‘classical’’ or ‘‘orthodox’’ theory. Considered among the most notable are the deliberations of Frederick Taylor (1911) and his call for scientific management, a doctrine supporting a reliance on ‘‘science’’ for determining the best way of performing jobs and then ensuring, for the sake of efficiency, that the jobs are performed according to that ‘‘one best way.’’

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The works of Gulick and Urwick (1937) were also praised at the time for generating a ‘‘science’’ of administration, whereby adherence to a set of prescribed principles, better known as the ‘‘principles of administration,’’ would promote efficiency in government, much like scientific management or Taylorism would for private industry (see, e.g., Stivers 2000). These and other orthodox theorists contributed conceptual themes to the earliest period of our field’s intellectual or theoretical development.6 And the con- tinual calls for ‘‘science’’ revolved around the practice of public administra- tion, not the study.

It was in yet another iteration of the field’s intellectual development that a challenge was lodged against the so-called scientific underpinnings of the practice of public administration and, concomitantly, offered pre- scriptions for the study of public administration. Herbert Simon’s (1947) groundbreaking Administrative Behavior, along with his earlier writings (e.g., Simon 1946), debunked the principles of administration and argued that a science of public administration could never be built upon a founda- tion of practice, as Taylor, Gulick, and others had advocated. For one thing, Simon challenged the classic textbook accounts of administrators’ ability to make rational, economic, utility-maximizing decisions. Instead, he makes it clear that the ‘‘capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world’’ (Simon 1957, 198). Administrators, according to Simon, make decisions that ‘‘satisfice,’’ that is, are both satisfactory and sufficient for the situation at hand. In effect, Simon replaced the maximizing goal of choice with that of satisficing.

Simon also argued that public administration could and should be stud- ied from the viewpoint of scientific principles as they were rigorously applied in other social sciences. Thus the administrative behavior move- ment in public administration and its principal architect, Simon, paved the way not solely for progress in the study and theory building of public administration but also for polemics.7 Simon fomented a debate about the appropriateness of certain epistemic traditions or approaches to study and theory building that continues to mire the field even today, influencing the development—or, more appropriately, the conceptualization—of other intellectual undertakings in the field (e.g., policy analysis and public man- agement, which are addressed in chapter 3). But could a field built on pragmatism be studied from the standpoint of ‘‘science,’’ as traditionally defined in the social sciences?

This was a question asked by another major figure in public administra- tion, Dwight Waldo, who took exception to many of Simon’s claims about

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‘‘scientific’’ inquiry into public administration (also see Dahl 1947). The following section examines their ongoing exchange over epistemology, ontology, and methodology, which frame the core thesis of this book—that there is no one best way to study public administration.

T H E WA L D O – S I M O N D E B AT E

Herbert Simon’s Administrative Behavior, first published in 1947, marked the beginning of a critical new movement or direction in the field of public administration, particularly from the standpoint of study or theory. As a direct attack against the orthodox theorists, Simon offered, among other concepts, a fact/value dichotomy. Many interpreted his conceptualization of a fact/value dichotomy as a direct analogue to the politics/administration dichotomy advanced by Wilson. And many, including Waldo, viewed Simon’s classification as a call for the adoption of scientific ‘‘principles’’ that could be used for the study of public administration.

Simon (1997, 48) argued that when studying organizations and adminis- trative behavior, ‘‘what is needed is empirical research and experimentation to determine the relative desirability of alternative administrative arrange- ments. The methodological framework for this research is already at hand in the principle of efficiency. If an administrative organization whose activ- ities are susceptible to objective evaluation can be studied, then the actual change in accomplishment that results from modifying administrative arrangements in these organizations can be observed and analyzed.’’

The acquisition of knowledge about public administration, according to Simon, should be based in fact: empirically derived, measured, and verified. Values, he claimed, had no place in the study of public administra- tive phenomena. He urged scholars to take as their primary unit of analysis the decisions that administrators made. Decisions could be studied scien- tifically in terms of their effects as well as the processes for making them. Such inquiry, in his view, could be value free and morally neutral, uncor- rupted by the normative preferences of the people involved.

Simon (1997, 48) called for the necessity of objectivity and that ‘‘suffi- cient experimental control be exercised to make possible the isolation of the particular effect under study from other disturbing factors that might be operating on the organization at the same time.’’ He went on to say that administrative studies heretofore have been devoid of experimentation and have not observed ‘‘fundamental conditions of methodology.’’ As he

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stated: ‘‘In the field of public administration, research has been carried out without the benefit of control or objective measurements of results . . . [and thus] have had to depend for their recommendations and conclusions upon a priori reasoning’’ (Simon 1997, 49).

Parenthetically, Simon recognized that the administrators involved in decision making would not behave in this manner. The activities of prac- titioners, he and James March recognized, were circumscribed by ‘‘bound- aries of rationality’’ (March and Simon 1958, 171). Due to human limitations, decision makers in government did not maximize their prefer- ences or find optimal solutions, but rather they satisficed.8 In practice, they made decisions that met minimum standards of satisfaction, sufficient for the task at hand. Thus Simon expected persons engaged in the study of public administration to behave rationally and scientifically, but not the people toward whom those studies were directed.

Simon was heavily influenced by the behavioral revolution beginning to sweep the social sciences. This revolution found its historical roots in the philosophical movement known first as positivism, as advanced by Auguste Comte, and later as logical positivism, as advanced by the Vienna Circle.9 Rudolph Carnap, of whom Simon was an acolyte, was a major proponent of the logical positivist movement. Carnap (1996) called for ‘‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language.’’ Through his work and that of a number of others, particularly Simon’s, logical positivism in public administration became synonymous with quan- titatively empirically based research traditions, subject to verifiability or validity. As noted, Simon opined that public administration should be based in fact: empiricism, measurement, verification. This and related issues will receive greater attention in chapter 4.

In sum, whereas leaders of the early public administration movement sought to discover principles of administration founded in practice, Simon and his followers championed research about administration based on scientific principles.

Dwight Waldo emerged as one of Simon’s chief critics. In The Adminis- trative State, Waldo (1948, 1984) sought to understand why the scientific perspective had played such a large role in early efforts to understand the administrative state.10 Waldo recognized that from Luther Gulick’s efforts to classify administrative studies as a social science to Frederick Taylor’s promotion of ‘‘scientific management,’’ scholars in the newly emerging field had embraced the philosophy of scientific inquiry (also see Waldo 1968 and, more generally, Charlesworth 1968). Waldo (1984, 177–78) observed that empiricism and experimentalism ‘‘have a prominent place

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in the methods of physical science.’’ However, he strongly argued, ‘‘there is much in scientific method which is nonempirical and nonexperimental.’’ Why then had administrative scholars so enthusiastically adopted the lan- guage of science? As was typical for his work as a whole, Waldo saw the phenomenon in cultural terms. Administrative studies, he observed, were distinctly pragmatic, often drawing knowledge from common experience. Yet administrative scholars wanted people to respect that experience. What better way, Waldo (1984, 168–69) suggested, than to mask pragmatism in ‘‘the prestige of the ‘philosophy of science’ ’’?11

Waldo maintained that Simon and his followers unjustifiably sought ‘‘to place large segments of social life—or even the whole of it—upon a scientific basis’’ (Waldo 1984, 57). Waldo (1984, 171) elaborated that although some administrative matters may lend themselves to ‘‘treatment in the mode of natural science, . . . administration is generally suffused with questions of value.’’ He stated that ‘‘a physical science problem is a problem of ‘What is the case?’ An administrative problem is characteristi- cally a problem of ‘What should be done?’ Administrative study, as any ‘social science,’ is concerned primarily with human beings, a type of being characterized by thinking and valuing’’ (Waldo 1984, 171, emphasis in the original).12 For him, many of the most important issues affecting the development of the administrative state were simply not amenable to the methods advanced or supported by logical positivism (see Dubnick 1999).

An explicit, explosive tête-à-tête erupted between Waldo and Simon in 1952 in a series of antagonistic, vitriolic commentaries published in the American Political Science Review.13 It centered on a few issues but, most prominently, on philosophies of science from the standpoint of ontology, epistemology, and, by inference, methodology.14 The debate often devolved into ad hominem invective and antipathies.

Waldo, a political theorist, not surprisingly stakes an ontological claim on public administration as democratic theory. He states: ‘‘If administra- tion is indeed ‘the core of modern government,’ then a theory of democracy in the twentieth century must embrace administration’’ (Waldo 1952a, 81). He makes a case for democracy as the core value of public administration, a sort of triumph of democracy over efficiency, the latter having consumed the classical or orthodox theorists in the first half of the twentieth century. He methodically critiques classical theories of public administration and goes on to say that ‘‘Herbert Simon’s recent Administrative Behavior pre- sents a closely reasoned defense of the notion of an abstract science of administration centered on efficiency’’ (Waldo 1952a, 87–88). He then presents a forceful argument that the principal obstacle to the further

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development of a democratic theory of public administration is the belief that ‘‘efficiency is a value-neutral concept’’ and that the field must accept ‘‘efficiency as the central concept in our ‘science’ ’’ (Waldo 1952a, 97).

In a coup de grâce Waldo (1952a, 97) goes on to say that ‘‘to maintain that efficiency is value-neutral and to propose at the same time that it be used as the central concept in a ‘science’ of administration is to commit one’s self to nihilism, so long as the prescription is actually followed.’’ Waldo’s (1952a, 97) footnote to this statement reads: ‘‘I believe that there is no realm of ‘factual decisions’ from which values are excluded. To decide is to choose between alternatives; to choose between alternatives is to introduce values. Herbert Simon has patently made outstanding contribu- tions to administrative study. These contributions have been made, how- ever, when he has worked free of the methodology he has asserted.’’

Simon responded to Waldo’s assertions with his own blend of sarcasm and diatribe. He begins by stating: ‘‘I am impelled to do this in part because the faults of Waldo’s analysis are characteristic of the writings of those who call themselves ‘political theorists’ and who are ever ready to raise the battle cry against positivism and empiricism’’ (Simon 1952, 494). He goes on to say:

Study of logic and empirical science has impressed on me the extreme care that must be exercised, in the search for truth, to avoid logical booby traps. For this reason the kind of prose I encounter in writings on political theory, decorated with assertion, invective, and metaphor, sometimes strikes me as esthetically pleasing, but seldom as convincing. Since I am unable to discover definitions in Mr. Waldo’s paper for his key terms, since he does not set forth his basic premises in any systematic fashion, and since his propositions appear to skip from philosophy to psychology to history and back, I have not succeeded in reconstructing the syllogisms by which I presume he reached his conclusions. (Simon 1952, 494).

In a final blow, Simon takes aim at Waldo’s philosophy of science in the broader context of an attack on political theorists and their contributions to public administration. Simon (1952, 496) argues: ‘‘Quite apart from whether Mr. Waldo’s premises are right or wrong, I do not see how we can progress in political philosophy if we continue to think and write in the loose, literary, metaphorical style that he and most other political theorists adopt. The standard of unrigor that is tolerated in political theory would not receive a passing grade in the elementary course in logic, Aristo- telian or symbolic.’’

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Waldo (1952b, 501) gets the proverbial last word with this mordant admission:

According to my philosopher friends who regard themselves as empiricists, logical positivism has performed a useful function as an apparatus of criti- cism; but we have already reached a point from which it can be viewed in perspective, not as the end of philosophy, not as The Philosophy, not even as the Philosophy of Science, but merely as another chapter in the history of philosophy. Presently, three ‘‘generations’’ contest for leadership of a movement that is seriously divided. May I state for the record, though I had hoped that I had made it clear, that I am not opposed to positivism and empiricism as whole bodies of thought or techniques of investigation or action. I am indebted to self-labelled positivists and empiricists for much information, clarification, and stimulation.

It is interesting to note that in ‘‘The Administrative State Revisited,’’ a retrospective examination of Waldo’s treatise, that appeared in a 1965 issue of Public Administration Review, Waldo softened his criticism somewhat. He had been ‘‘bludgeoned,’’ he said, by Simon in the early 1950s, causing him to examine more closely the central tenets underlying the philosophy of logical positivism. Upon closer examination, Waldo recognized that there was a tendency for many, including himself, to view public adminis- tration as ‘‘normative theory, i.e., theory about how organizations should be constructed.’’ A more contemporaneous treatment, he confessed, would recognize the possibility of an administrative theory that was ‘‘nonnorma- tive’’ (Waldo 1965, 13; emphasis in the original).

Waldo concluded that although he found the philosophy of logical positivism to be ‘‘acute and useful’’ in some ways, it was ‘‘limited and misleading in others.’’ He went on to say that ‘‘Logical Positivism is content to take one area of human experience and treat it as the whole’’ (Waldo 1965, 13 n. 14). In the end, he recognized that public administration might benefit from a combination of different methodologies.

Parenthetically, the Waldo–Simon debate was followed by other deliber- ations that underscored the question of how to appropriately study public administration. For example, the new public administration (NPA) was a conscious effort to neutralize the effects of the behavioral revolution spurred by Simon. The NPA was a movement that grew out of the Minnow- brook Conference, where a group of scholars led by Dwight Waldo gathered in 1968 to study the relevance of public administration to social problems of the day such as the civil rights movement (see Box 2007). In particular, it sought to shift the locus of public administration away from efficiency

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and toward social equity (see Marini 1971; Frederickson 1971). But it also attacked the notion of a value-free public administration and the diminu- tion of politics to its essence. The NPA challenged the administrative behav- iorists in that it sought to move public administration study and theory toward postpositivism, where precise measurement and verifiable observa- tion are illusive. For the new public administrationists, it is simply not possible to divorce people and politics from values, ethics, and morality, and hence it is implausible that public administration can be studied objectively.

Another post Waldo–Simon debate emerged in 1973 with an exchange between Chris Argyris and Simon. It appeared in Public Administration Review, and couched the philosophy of science question in the context of humanism, which centers on the complex emotive and psychological attributes of humans.15 Argyris and other humanists maintained that the positivist, value-free, and ‘‘rational’’ methods of studying organizational behavior advanced by behaviorists such as Simon failed to capture the intricacies of human conduct (or misconduct, especially irrationality) and, in effect, failed to advance administrative theory in any significant way. The rational component of human behavior, according to Argyris, was eclipsing its emotional and motivational components. Argyris (1973b, 253) argued:

Organizational theory in public administration may be undergoing an important transformation. The new critics find much administrative descriptive theory to be nonrelevant to many critical problems of organization. . . . The new stirrings in public administration may be seen as part of a broader intellectual debate that has evolved in the field of organizational behavior. Scholars on both sides of the issue are in agree- ment that it is important to design organizations that are more effective. One side believes that this can be best accomplished through increasing rationality and descriptive research; the other on increasing humane dimensions and therefore normative research.

Simon (1973b) countered with his philosophy on the nature of evidence, especially the importance of scientific empirical evidence, laced with reason and facts, as compared with ‘‘normative activity’’ and anecdotal evidence for the advancement of organizational theory. He stated: ‘‘My mind boggles at how I might reach common ground with Argyris on the nature of evidence. He reacts to empirical data describing a decision process with: ‘I found another scenario more plausible.’ To which I can only answer with the punchline of an ancient joke: ‘Vas you dere Charlie (or Chris)?’ . . .

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The point simply is that when particular data conflict with a priori feelings of plausibility, the latter must yield’’ (Simon 1973a, 484).16 The metaphysi- cal tug of war between Simon and Argyris resulted in the same stalemate, hooded by complementary entrenched positions, as that produced by Simon and Waldo.

I S P U B L I C A D M I N I S T R AT I O N A S C I E N C E ?

The debates between Waldo and Simon and between Simon and Argyris over the fact/value dichotomy intersect with the question of whether public administration is an art or science. Lurking behind both debates, we have seen, is the question of the appropriate epistemic traditions for the field (see Riccucci 2006). This issue has both a practical and scholarly compo- nent, raising these questions:

1. Is public administration as practiced primarily an art, requiring in- tuition and experience, or can it can be based on scientifically derived knowledge?

2. Does the search for public administration theory require artful insight, or can it be made wholly scientific?

The debate over the first question begets another question: Are adminis- trators ‘‘born’’ or can they be ‘‘made,’’ that is, trained? The development of educational programs for public service in the first half of the twentieth century proceeded from the belief that a body of knowledge could be derived that, when taught to novices, could help them become better execu- tives (see, e.g., Mosher 1975). Yet a contrary belief maintains that innate or ‘‘inborn’’ talents predispose certain persons to become leaders or exem- plary managers, meaning that they are ‘‘natural-born leaders.’’

As Simon and others maintained, the futile struggle that characterized the early study of public administration demonstrated that governmental management could not be reduced to easily derived and trainable principles that described ‘‘one best way.’’ The practice of public administration con- tinues to require the art-like qualities associated with wisdom and experi- ence. But the practice of public administration also requires scientific training insofar as persons need technical preparation to become public administrators. Few people argue that untrained public servants would on the whole perform as well as people trained in administrative skills. Indeed, the very existence of the master of public administration degree (MPA)

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represents a scientific and analytic endeavor (never, of course, sans poli- tics). As Leonard White (1929, 1955) tells us, a society that becomes com- plex and mutable must continually rely on the technical and scientific training of government administrators. The common conception treats the practice of public administration as both art and science.

The second question asks whether public administration, in the schol- arly search for theory or understanding, is an art or a science. Due to the inevitable presence of human beings, public administration can never be reduced to certainties such as those found in the natural or physical sci- ences (e.g., chemistry, astronomy, and physics). Instead, as most would agree, public administration is a branch of the social sciences (see, e.g., Box 1992).

Beyond this simple taxonomy, the resolution of the art/science issue in the study of public administration intersects the perdurable debate over philosophies of science. From ontological and epistemological standpoints, one might approach the question as it is depicted in figure 1.1. Where exactly does public administration fit into this disciplinary framework? Here one can find three identifiable camps. The first group claims that public administration theory can and must be scientific; the second group asserts that it has been, historically, an art and, hence, is value laden; and the third group sees elements of both art/values and science/facts.

The first camp, comprising early behaviorists and more lately people applying economic theories to the analysis of public policies, advocated a logical positivist approach. According to this group, there is no room for the metaphysical speculation, reason, or innate ideas that early rationalists allowed. Rather, the creation of administrative theory must be deductive and based on value-free, rationally derived, testable hypotheses. The goal of knowledge, they insist, is simply to describe the phenomena experienced. Empirically based, quantitative research is the only way, the ‘‘one best way,’’ to seek and discover truth and reality. For some in this camp, quanti- tative data and research method drive ideas, concepts, and theory, rather than vice versa.

The second camp views the study of public administration as an art. For the members of this group, metaphysical concerns have a prominent place in administrative research and theory building. They leave room for reasoning, dialectic, and induction, and research that can be descriptive— even empirically so—prescriptive, and normative. The chief source of knowledge, they argue, is reason. As noted above, the new public adminis- tration, reacting in the late 1960s against the behavioral movement in public administration, is representative of this coterie (see Marini 1971).

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The third group in public administration sees the field as both art and science (see, e.g., Raadschelders 1999). Given the variegated and applied nature of the field, they maintain, public administrative research should be pluralistic (e.g., see Ventriss 1989). In their view, room exists not only for logical positivism and metaphysical speculation but also for realism, relativism, rationalism, postmodernism, and even reductionism17 (see Fernández-Armesto 1997; Kitcher 2001). For this camp, there is no one best way to do research, and given the lack of a unified theory, public administration should not strive for an ‘‘appropriate’’ methodology. As Frederickson has suggested, the field can greatly benefit from ‘‘a rapproche- ment between the . . . administrative sciences and the humanities.’’ He goes on to say: ‘‘The analytical tools of social sciences help us know how organizations operate and how public managers function. But to know public organizations and their management is not to understand them. Understanding requires perspective, experience, judgment, and the capac- ity to imagine. These qualities have less to do with analytical skills and more to do with philosophy, language, art, and reason’’ (Frederickson 2000, 51–52). For this group, a diversity of methods is the key to the acquisition of knowledge, perspective, and truth (see, e.g., Raadschelders 2005; Stivers 2000; White and Adams 1994a, 1994b; Adams 1992).

C O N C LU S I O N

The Waldo–Simon debates were instrumental at the time in the develop- ment of public administrative theory. They led to further questions about whether public administration did or did not have a paradigmatic base, which is the subject of chapter 2. These dialectical exchanges helped to significantly push the field further in its evolution as one of scientific inquiry. Interestingly enough, however, the same old exchanges perdure today. A series of commentaries appearing in such journals as Administra- tion and Society, Public Administration Review, and Administration Theory and Praxis have been inflammatory, sometimes offensive, and, perhaps due to a smidgen of obstinate hubris, intellectually futile.18 They are counter- productive, they add little to what Waldo and Simon set forth in the 1950s, and thus they have contributed only marginally to the evolution of knowledge and theory in the field.

Indeed, the dogmatic persistence of particular research traditions has been detrimental to theory building in public administration. Bozeman (2007, 1–2) addresses this issue in the context of public interest theory:

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INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE AND THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTS

‘‘The reasons for a decline in public interest argument and theorizing are many and varied. Social and academic fashion seems to have played a role. The development of quantitative social sciences and its inexhaustible demand for empirical evidence lessened our patience for topics that seem to hold little possibility of precise answers. The harshest critics of public interest theory rail loudest about its ambiguities and a seeming inability to determine when and if public interest theory has progressed.’’

These contemporary debates on the supremacy of one research tradition over another have resulted in a metaphysical dyspepsia, and ultimately a Balkanization of knowledge. They will not be regurgitated here. My goal is to emulsify the various epistemic traditions and quite simply help us turn the page.

N O T E S

1. It should be noted at the outset that this book accepts as fact the existence of public administration as a field or discipline. This issue had been subjected to heated debates over the course of public administration’s history; see, e.g., Waldo 1980. The two terms, field and discipline, will be used interchangeably hereafter.

2. See Raadschelders (1999) for a review of the identity crisis of public adminis- tration in Europe.

3. The lack of a coherent, core theory relates to the question of public adminis- tration’s paradigmatic basis, which is addressed in chapter 2.

4. Some argue that qualitative research (e.g., cross-case comparisons) is mainly for theory building and quantitative research (e.g., multiple regression analysis) is for theory testing. This distinction is not made in this book, which holds that qualitative and quantitative research can both build and test theory. See Kenworthy 2008; and the discussion in chapter 4, esp. n. 3.

5. As Stillman (1999) points out, the self-conscious study of public administra- tion occurred much earlier in other countries such as France.

6. See White 1929; Willoughby 1927; Fayol 1916, 1917, 1937. 7. It also articulated the importance of decision making as a sine qua non of

public administration in practice. 8. It should be noted, however, that in his later teachings around artificial

intelligence, Simon suggested that it might be possible to find rational decision makers. He is considered to be one of the cofounders of the field of artificial intelligence, whereby computers and computer programs can be relied on to per- form functions normally associated with human intelligence. But artificial intelli- gence goes further to suggest that the computer programs can perform with greater intelligence than human action, particularly around reasoning and optimization. See Simon 1995; Simon and Kadane 1975.

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CHAPTER 1

9. Logical empiricism is sometimes used synonymously with logical positivism. This approach is not adopted here. For a discussion, see Hardcastle 2005.

10. Waldo also advanced a democratic theory of public administration in his book The Administrative State, which was based on his dissertation at Yale Univer- sity. And Waldo, like Simon, also challenged various aspects of classical public administration theory such as POSDCORB (planning, organizing, staffing, direct- ing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting), advanced by Luther Gulick (1937) in ‘‘Notes on the Theory of Organization,’’ as universal functions of all administrators.

11. It should be noted that Waldo (1965, 11) treats ‘‘pragmatism’’ as empiricism, or as he later refers to it, a ‘‘garden variety’’ of positivism.

12. Waldo (1984, 171) went on to say that ‘‘it is submitted that the established techniques of science are inapplicable to thinking and valuing human beings.’’ However, when he revisited these arguments in 1965, he stated that this was a ‘‘half-truth,’’ confessing that ‘‘it is simply not the way I would now put and argue my opinions’’ (Waldo 1965, 13).

13. Peter Drucker’s (1952) participation and commentary in the initial debate was eclipsed by the acrimony between Waldo and Simon. Drucker’s commentary does not engage the issue of science, but rather addressed the concept of democracy from an industrial or large organization perspective.

14. For a review of the various issues, see Harmon 1989. 15. See Argyris 1973a, 1973b; Simon 1973a, 1973b. 16. In the 1930s, a radio program featured an actor, Jack Pearl, portraying the

part of ‘‘Baron Munchausen.’’ During the program, someone would question his outlandish stories, at which point he would ask in jest: ‘‘Vas you dere, Charlie?’’

17. These concepts will be elaborated upon in chapter 4. 18. See, e.g., Luton 2007a; Lynn, Heinrich, and Hill 2008; Spicer 2007. Some of

these commentaries appear in books, e.g., Lynn 1996. But see Raadschelders 2005, who admirably calls for an acceptance of methodological pluralism; also see White and Adams 1994a, 1994b.

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