`Towards a New Public Administration theory'
| Author | Christopher Pollitt |
| Date | 01 March 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852307075698 |
| Published date | 01 March 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
‘Towards a New Public Administration theory’: some
comments on Jocelyne Bourgon’s 5th Braibant Lecture
Christopher Pollitt
As Editor, I had not been intending to contribute to this collection of commentaries,
but simply to coordinate the process of assembling them. However, one of our com-
mentators unfortunately fell out at a late stage, so, rather than ask someone else at
very short notice, I decided to step into the breach. And — to be truthful — I was rather
pleased that the fates had provided me with an excuse to enter such an enticing
debate.
The first thing to say is that we should all — academics and practitioners alike — be
grateful to Jocelyne Bourgon for raising such a large and important set of issues. I
would venture the opinion that rather few top civil servants share her capacity to
articulate such topics and to take up clear positions on the perpetually slippery
ground that lies between public administration as a practice and public administration
as an academic field. Her own wide experience and intellectual command of the
subject gives her that advantage which, regrettably, few of her peers and few of my
academic colleagues can hope to equal.
Let me move to the substance of the Braibant Lecture. When I sat listening to it I
was first struck by a sense of surprise at Jocelyne Bourgon’s solution. She identified a
series of challenges to contemporary public administration practice and then set off
in search of a theory. Of course theory is always welcome to an academic, but it is
also a relatively unusual course for a top practitioner to take. More common is the
declaration of a five-step programme, or a civil service code, or a new model of
customer-centred service or some other apparently concrete and practical set of
actions. ‘Theory’ has almost become a dirty word in some jurisdictions. Yet I funda-
mentally agree with Bourgon’s line. It is indeed a theory (or possibly theories — see
later) that we need. We have had a quarter century of initiatives and programmes,
but not much of this reform activity has been clothed in theory, and one result of this
is that it has often been hard to see the big picture or, indeed, how one reform relates
Christopher Pollitt is Editor of IRAS and Research Professor, Public Management Institute,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
Copyright © 2007 IIAS, SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
Vol 73(1):37–41 [DOI:10.1177/0020852307075698]
38 International Review of Administrative Sciences 73(1)
to another. Without some overarching theory the kind of serial reform waves which
states such as the UK, the USA, New Zealand and Australia have experienced too
easily come to seem like a fashion parade — one thing follows another and it is...
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