REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.0033-3298.2005.00447.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2005 |
| Date | 01 March 2005 |
REVIEWS
Public Administration Vol. 83 No. 1, 2005 (243–264)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
RETRACING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Mark R. Rutgers (ed.)
JAI/Elsevier Science, 2003, 365 pp., € 86, $86 (hb)
ISBN: 0762309563
Retracing Public Administration is one of the outcomes of an ambitious
endeavour. The research was initiated at the University of Leiden, and it has
involved many Public Administration scholars. It is no coincidence that
most of them have been Dutch and American. In both countries, Public
Administration (with initial capital letters) is widely considered to be an
independent field of research with its own schools and departments. It also
has its own research agenda. This contrasts these scholars to other institu-
tions and scholars, whose research and teaching is also directed against
bureaucracy in public administration and the civil service, but who are institu-
tionally integrated into and professionally affiliated to political science.
The distinction is important for the understanding of Retracing Public
Administration and, as will become clear, for understanding the message of
this review. Retracing Public Administration presents a series of essays that
together confront what is considered to be some of the fundamental issues
in Public Administration (PA) research. The essays and the ensuing discus-
sions are organized around some of the classic key concepts of PA theory. In
large part they are presented in terms of dichotomies such as public-private,
politics-administration, state-society, purpose-value, but the dissection of
the two latter concepts leads to a discussion of the concept of rationality that
has been and still is one of the core concepts of administrative analysis.
The general idea, as represented by the Editor, Mark Rutgers, is to rebuild
the present from the past by reappraising the concept of public administra-
tion and to re-evaluate its roots and the ideas behind them. It is in this context
that the focus on dichotomies such as public-private and politics-administra-
tion should be seen. In both cases the contributors argue that they are not
only central to the understanding of public administration, but that the disci-
pline of Public Administration itself has something essential to say. Udo
Pesch discusses Vincent Ostrom’s The Intellectual Crisis of American Public
Administration against Cheryl King and Camilla Stivers’ The Government Is Us.
244 REVIEWS
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
He finds weaknesses in Ostrom’s individualistic and King–Stivers’ com-
munitarian approach. His claim is that the latter is much more constructive
when it comes to understanding the role of public administration in develop-
ing a democracy. His argument is that ‘the administrative state enabled the
formation of a cultural identity that transcended the boundaries of the com-
munity. An impersonal public space emerged, creating public spaces in
which people could determine their own lives to an extent that was unprece-
dented. The state provided the opportunity for individualism...’. While the
public-private dichotomy here is a source of normative concern, Gerrit Dijkstra
and Frits Van der Meer, in their chapter, are primarily interested in the
empirical complexities involved. By simple 4 by 4 tabulations they show the
real world intricacies involved when the dichotomy is applied, as it often is,
in practical discussions on the organization of public policy implementation.
Even if many analysts have done away with the politics-administration
dichotomy over the years, it seems to live on. This happens constantly in
discourse that involves politicians and civil servants. In their proper con-
texts these practical discourses present few mysteries from a political science
perspective. Most often they focus on the delineation of the spheres of
authority and power between the principal actors of public policy; about
who to blame for policy failure; and, finally, how to legitimize a particular
allocation of authority. Patrick Overeem and Mark Rutgers take a different
perspective by both pointing to the many synonyms and disguises which
the distinction takes in the literature and its centrality to the classic texts of
political theory, whether von Stein’s ‘willing and acting’, Weber’s emphasis
on the distinct roles of politicians and civil servants, and, in the American
and European tradition, the separation of powers doctrine.
For Overeem and Rutgers, the principal message seems to be that we have
to deal with a complex, but indispensable, distinction. Even if they acknowl-
edge the complexities (and perhaps obscurities) involved, they stick to their
subject as the contributors already cited stick to the public-private dichot-
omy. This raises several issues that are worth debating. Here ‘our challenge,
it seems, is to rid ourselves of the dichotomies that neither serve the field nor
adequately describe what is going on and move to the next level’, as Cheryl
King notes in her rejoinder to Pesch (pp. 84–5). Fully in line with this, Jim
Svara and James Brunet draw on empirical research done by themselves and
others and argue that by sticking to the politics-administration dichotomy
Public Administration scholars close their eyes to the complementary rela-
tionship between political and administrative roles and activities in public
administration. In addition, they make an important point in reminding us
that the dichotomy does not possess the strong roots in political and admin-
istrative theory that its modern-day devotees claim. Petra Schreurs, in her
concise and instructive discussion of Weber’s concept of bureaucratic ration-
ality, makes a very similar point when she shows how Weber was fully aware
of the need for bureaucratic discretion within an otherwise rule-bound
administration.
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