Reframing public administration: A systems-methodological analysis of governance and the role of public administration.

摘要

Despite repeated attempts, no normative theory of public administration has emerged that fully and satisfactorily answers questions about the role of public administration, and public administrators, in the process of governance. This dissertation argues that such questions are unresolvable because they are framed in terms of overly simplistic systems metaphors relating to machines and organisms. When theories are framed in terms of these metaphors, they lead inexorably to dichotomies between politics and administration, policy and implementation, and between the society and its government. The dissertation attempts to "reframe" our concept of governance in terms of another metaphor that supports a view of governance as a process that is deeply interrelated and interconnected with its social environment.;To accomplish this task, systems theories and methodologies, developed for use in the management sciences, are adapted for use in analyzing and critiquing the systems metaphors that underlie the major schools of public administration. The research concludes that many of the theoretical "problems" of public administration are implied by these underlying metaphors, and that theory based in use of the brain, or learning system, metaphor is likely to produce useful thinking about public administration.;To demonstrate the applicability of the brain metaphor, and to investigate the implications of this metaphor for public administration theory, a systems-methodology based in the brain metaphor is selected and used to model our American system of governance. This model, in turn, is used as a tool to examine the implications of the metaphor for public administration and the administrative state.;The model leads to the descriptive conclusion that it is the operational functions of government that produce governance, and that public administration is indistinguishable from the process of governance itself. The metaphor leads also to prescriptive, or normative theory, about some fundamental concerns of public administration theory: legitimacy, representation and accountability, and the public interest. It is concluded that legitimacy, accountability, and the public interest are all enhanced by increasing, not decreasing the ability of public administrators to respond to the citizenry.