David John Farmer

The Language of Public Administration: Bureaucracy, Modernity, and Postmodernity

Coping with the practical problems of bureaucracy is hampered by the limited self-conception and the constricted mindsets of mainstream public administration thinking. Modernist public administration theory, although valuable and capable of producing ever more remarkable results, is limiting as an explanatory and catalytic force in resolving fundamental problems about the nature, size, scope, and functioning of public bureaucracy and in transforming public bureaucracy into a more positive force. This original study specifies a reflexive language paradigm for public administration thinking and shows how a postmodern perspective permits a revolution in the character of thinking about public bureaucracy. The author considers imagination, deconstruction, deterritorialization, and alterity. Farmers work emphasizes the need for an expansion in the character and scope of public administrations disciplinary concerns and shows clearly how the study and practice of public administration can be reinvigorated.I did not read David John Farmers book The Language of Public Administration until several years after its release. When I first came to it, I found the book a bit removed from my immediate interests. Such a response to Language might not be unusual; although some scholars cite the book in their work, it may not have found the audience enjoyed by other books in public administration (PA) that are more immediately useful for professional practice or empirical research. Possibly, characteristics such as the ones listed below make this book less accessible than some others. It can be said that Language:

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION DISCOURSE A Matter of Style

This article proposes that a reorientation is required in public administration’s discourse style. It suggests that traditional style(s) cannot cope with complex problems like the ongoing antipathy against bureaucracy and bureaucracy’s “iron cage” challenges. It proposes, first, that public administration discourse should become more self-conscious about style, a feature often misunderstood as a decorative and unimportant add-on. Second, a self-conscious style should be what is described as post-ist, including emphasis on the autonomously macro and longer term. Traditional and post-ist styles are contrasted.

The Allure of Rhetoric and the Truancy of Poetry

This paper offers suggestions for new directions in PA Theory-four allures of rhetorical analysis. First, it points toward New Rhetoric and rhetoric as more than the twirl on the top of the chocolate cake. Second, it suggests a five-step quick-and-dirty technique for getting into rhetorical analysis to help PA thinking. Third, it recommends greater ownership of our individual signatures. Fourth, it suggests changes in our group signature. It suggests that PA theory should include at its center a playful study of the symbolic, especially of mutuality as it relates to people aiming toward patterns of cooperative public action.

Derrida, Deconstruction, and Public Administration

Derridean deconstruction is a significant resource for public administration thinking and practice. It facilitates antiadministration, for example. This article recognizes the severe difficulties that deconstruction presents. Yet, it supports the claim that deconstruction can help public administration. It does so by exploring the nature of deconstruction, by illustrating how bureaucratic deconstruction can be used in public administration and how it is useful, and by analyzing the most significant of deconstructions difficulties.

Symposium: The Great Refusal. Power of Refusal: Introduction to the Symposium

Embrace the Great Refusal! This symposium invites Public Administration (PA) theory and practice to refuse to be constrained by current chains of power. As a start, it invites PA theory to become more self-consciously aware of its own relationship to power, and it invites fuller thinking on PA practice’s relationship to power. It’s true that considerations of power do occur in classic and other texts of PA Theory. Mary Parker Follett repeated the well-known distinction between “power” and “power-over,” for example. And there is more. Yet, the depth and scope of our understanding of PA-in-relation-topower deserves empowerment. This symposium starts from Herbert Marcuse’s concept of the Great Refusal, especially as he described it in One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Marcuse, 1964/1991). In the spirit of Marcuse, refusal for many of us includes overcoming traditional PA’s tendency to one-dimensionality in privileging speaking-from-power, or system-affirming, frameworks and actions. Refusal includes aspiring to PA thinking/practice that is radically multi-dimensional, radically human. Great refusal is Marcuse’s concept of refusal of all forms of oppression and domination, and power that should be refused is what oppresses and dominates. This great refusal centers on refusal of the one-dimensionality of thinking that uncritically accepts existing structures, norms and behaviors. Marcuse despises the flattening out that is manifested in such power-

Constructing Civil Space: A Dialogue

What are the possibilities for greater democratic authenticity in administration? How should this authenticity be understood? This dialogue looks toward the opportunities in constructing civil space, starting from the vantage point of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Some find it relatively easy to recognize what this greater authenticity stands against. It can be expressed in such oppositions as that between the administrative state and the authentic public, and it can be understood in terms of such targets as the traditional view of American public administration (P.A.) as a mere rationalizing project. Authentic citizen space is an issue that opposes the privileging of instrumental rationality and of the administrative itself. It speaks against the privileging of mere expert rationality, at the expense of notions such as citizen inclusion and dialogue (including participation and transparency). That these opposing inclinations should be live tensions is indicated whenever important decisions— such as those on economics or foreign policy—are “pushed down” into the bureaucracy. Consider an illustration. The prospect of decisions with adverse financial consequences for the elite surely has tended to encourage a pushing down of some major economic decision making (such as

The Discourse Movement: A Centrist View of the Sea Change

The discourse movement promises a sea change in P.A. thinking and practice. This paper describes the morally concerned skepticism at the heart of the centrist position in the P.A. discourse movement. It recaps discourse theory. It proposes that P.A. discourse ethics should be epistemologically realistic. Administrators need to know for sure, but there is difficulty in being sure in knowing. The paper describes authentic hesitation that is infused by morally concerned skepticism. It suggests that P.A. discourse ethics need not be constrained within the parameters of a single mind-set like the modernist.

Crime control : the use and misuse of police resources

1. Crime and Police Resources: A Policy Agenda.- Beginning Points.- Crime Control.- Resources Allocation.- New Form of Police Agency.- The Agenda.- I-Policy Administration.- 2. The Science of Policing.- Response Strategy.- Preventive Patrol.- Criminal Investigation.- Scientific and Analytic Capability.- Implications.- 3. The Art of Policing.- Ends and Means in Policing.- Triumph of Means over Ends.- Proportional Distribution Techniques.- Mathematical Modeling.- Resource Allocation Practice.- Implications.- II-Policy Formulation.- 4. Politics and Policing.- Pervasive Politics.- Controlling Political Intrusion.- Implications.- 5. Purpose and Policing.- Range of Views.- A Socio-Economic View.- Implications.- III-Policy Leadership.- 6. New Community Approach.- Profit-Making Burden.- New Modes of Thought.- On Non-Market Decision-Making.- On Criminal Justice.- On Law Enforcement Resources Deployment.- Implications.- 7. A New Managerial Approach.- Purpose-Orientation.- Leadership and Openness.- Creativity.- Implications.- IV-Policy Beginnings.- 8. The Police Manager.- A Challenge for the Chief.- Remaining Current.- 9. The Elected Official.- Challenge for the Elected Official.- No Novelty.- Knowledge Base.- 10. Epilogue.- References.- Appendix: Reading List for the Elected Official 219 Index.

The Ladder of Organization-Think: Beyond Flatland

Abstract This article specifies a ladder of organization-think in terms of discourse theory and the spatial notion of dimensionality. The ladder can represent discourses about organizations and discourses emanating from organizations; the main illustration used is its manifestation as a ladder of P.A. discourse. Seven characteristics of discourse are discussed. Four rungs of the ladder are described, and these rungs are labelled “me,” “they,” “our,” and “out of the cave.” Reasons why P.A. thinkers should be interested in the ladder are indicated.

See Spot Run

Market fundamentalism deserves even more analysis and opposition, and this paper will think about it in the form of neoliberalism. But I think that the See Spot Run talk that we have in mainstream govern ance theorizing (e.g., within the constraints of mainstream PA dis course, within mainstream economic discourse, within the dominant discourse of political economy) stands in the way; theres not only a misallocation of energy toward what is inside the boundaries of the traditional disciplines but also distortion of content. Market fundamentalism, central in ideologies like neoliberalism, holds that market exchange is the best guide for all human actions; it maintains that the free market is the only true ethical, or prudential, guide to life. Work has already been done in PA on this topic, e.g., Thorne & Kouzmin, 2006. But the suggestion is that we need even more.