Summary
Contents
The contributors to this volume contend that the North American political system is undergoing a serious governmental crisis - political leaders know only how to campaign, not how to gain consensus on goals or direct a course that is to the good of the nation. Public administration is therefore forced to compensate for the growing inadequacy of the `leaders', and with a normative-based body of theorizing, perform its key role of governance within a democratic system of polycentric power. The book offers a revisualization of the relationship between public servants and the citizens they serve, and a continuing discourse on how public administration can constructively balance forces of change and stability in order for democr
Moving beyond Prescriptions: Making Sense of Public Administration Action Contexts
Moving beyond Prescriptions: Making Sense of Public Administration Action Contexts
Publication of the Blacksburg Manifesto and Refounding Public Administration produced varied reactions. For some readers, the works seemed abstract, and their relevance for public administrators was difficult to visualize. Others interpreted the authors as claiming to have found the answer for fixing public administration's ills, thereby rendering all other approaches either obsolete or inimical to the public interest. Predictably, the authors’ ideas had all the makings of the next fad du jour to be foisted upon administrators trying to face administrative challenges.
All fads and new prescriptions tug and pull at public administrators, and all urge adoption of new ways to ...