Hugh T. Miller

Postmodern Public Administration

Preface 1. The Representative Democratic Accountability Feedback Loop Orthodoxy * Positivism in Public Administration * Deconstructing the Loop Model 2. Alternatives to Orthodoxy Neoliberalism * The Constitutionalist Alternative * Communitarian/Citizen Alternative 3. Hyperreality Instability and Incommensurability * Unstable Signs Leading to a Virtual Reality * Neotribalism and the Decentered Self * Symbolic Politics * Hyperreality Versus the Alternatives 4. The Social Construction of Government Constructivist Social Theory * Governmentality 5. Ideographic Discourse Symbols as Ordering Devices * Ideography * Relief from Dissonance * The Archives * Ideographic Events 6. Conclusion Orthodoxy and Its Alternatives * Media Infused Hyperreality * Constructivism and Governmentality * A Field of Political Contestation * The Changing Game * Decoherence * Implications References * About the Authors Name Index * Subject Index.

The Epistemic Community

Early epistemology assumed that the observer (a) was independent of and distinct from the object being observed and (b) could validate objective reality in a language system called the laws of science. The authors offer something different. In arguing that knowledge is responsive to the culture in which it is embedded, they take a perspectival approach, gathering localized intentionality, context, social practices, and linguistic meaning (called ground) into the project of inquiry (called figure). Knowledge building, in other words, depends on the background and interests of the epistemic community that is generating knowledge.

Why Old Pragmatism Needs an Upgrade

The working hypothesis of this essay is: If we upgraded pragmatism from the old, classic version to the newer version, public administration would work better. I very much appreciated Patricia M. Shields’s wonderful article on “The Community of Inquiry” in the November 2003 edition of Administration & Society. She draws scholarly attention to the pragmatic frame of reference and thereby contributes mightily to public administration theory and epistemology. But I wish she would take a closer look at the work of Richard Rorty (1999). Rorty, a great admirer of John Dewey, is the leading pragmatist today and America’s most famous living philosopher. His work is amazingly accessible given its level of sophistication. Writing in the pragmatist vein, McSwite (1997) and Box (2002) have appreciated Rorty’s work. But Evans (2000), Snider (1998), Stever (2000), and now Shields have ignored it. The exclusion of Rorty’s new pragmatism is significant because he poses some formidable challenges to old pragmatism. Between the time

The Irony of Privatization

What does privatization really mean? It depends on who is speaking and the specific language game in use. This article borrows an interpretive device, originally developed by Roland Barthes and further articulated by Jean Baudrillard, which lays waste to the assertion that a word has a single denotative meaning. Such an interpretation (that words represent, or correspond to, reality) is but the first step of a progressively unreal simulacrum that moves to skepticism, through masking (where a word connotes the radical absence of the object it points toward) to hyperreality. Hyperreality is the domain of self-referential imagery, where words and symbols refer only to themselves but provide titillation and visceral gratification in the process. The authors conclude that the very term privatization lacks foundational stability.

Residues of Foundationalism in Classic Pragmatism

The Administration & Society article titled “The Community of Inquiry” (Shields, 2003) recalled for me an article I wrote with the late Charles Fox titled “The Epistemic Community” (Miller & Fox, 2001), also published in Administration & Society. However, there was a different feel between these two articles, despite their similar titles and some similar problems in their arguments. My critique of Shields’s (2003) article was an attempt to put my finger on the similarities and differences (Miller, 2004b). Judging from the reception that my criticism received (Evans, 2005; Hickman, 2004; Shields, 2004; Snider, in press; Stolcis, 2004; Webb, 2004), I must have put my finger on some kind of hot button.

The Ideographic Individual

The ideographic individual encapsulates the decentering tendency of recent philosophy and does so in a way that is consistent with both postmodern and evolutionary approaches to culture. This decentering of the individual elicits a confrontation with concerns about determinism and free will. This article attempts to problematize the determinism versus free will debate while proposing an alternative conceptualization of the individual grounded in ideography. Ideographs—the socially constructed elements of a cultures symbolization system—are determinative of a cultures sense of appropriate conduct, but indeterminate with respect to predictive causality. The individual conceptualized ideographically contrasts sharply with the autonomous liberal-humanist individual of Western culture. Ad hominem treatments of the individual imply blame-worthiness or heroism, whereas meaning in the ideography framework is located in cultures symbolism and in the multiple and diffuse arenas of communication and social interaction. Both the ideographic individual in particular and ideography in general suggest alternative frames of understanding for public administration.

New Questions for E-Government: Efficiency but not (yet?) Democracy

E-government’s rise to prominence in the early 1990s was met with great enthusiasm amidst the promise that information communication technologies (ICTs) might fulfill the demands and expectations for improved democratic governance. Since then, significant progress has been made in terms of information provision and delivery of public services; yet, dialogue, a core dimension of democratic governance, remains largely unrealized within the digital context. This study employs content analysis within the frame of a check-off research protocol to determine if the population of state websites has the capacity to support digital democratic dialogue. The key question is whether there is an emphasis within the milieu of state websites to support e-dialogue outside the provision of information and e-services. The analysis suggests that efficiency rather than dialogue is the primary focus in the design of the state websites. Is, therefore, e-government a new development in the historical effort to enforce efficiency as a core value of governance?

Pragmatic, Extra-Formal Democracy

Based on trends in local political participation, we wish to develop the notion of extra-formal democracy. Extra-formal democracy-democratic practices that exist outside the formalisms of electoral processes-links citizens with one another. Citizens collaborate with, or contest one another in direct, robust ways. Representative democracy, as a passive and indirect expression of desire, is not energizing in the same way. Despite its attractions in terms of it directedness and situatedness, extra-formal democracy does not necessarily bring more or better democracy; and that is why research is needed. Extra-formal democracy can take many forms, and they all raise questions of authorization, both in practice and in theory. The authors propose a pragmatic form of democracy-emanating from particular questions arising from the situation. In the process, pragmatism is reconceptualized. Action emanates not only from intentions and new projects; it is also rooted in historical practices and relationships.

Everyday Politics in Public Administration

The politics-administration dichotomy was long ago dismissed as either a descriptive or (except for a few notable holdouts) prescriptive account of what the role of public administration should be. Yet the dichotomy endures in practice and in habit of mind, embedded in institutional traditions and in the legal code as well. Political involvement-coalition formation, symbol manipulation, constituency mobilization-by public administrators is an everyday occurrence. Inside and outside the agency are struggles over resource distribution, professional norms and proper procedures, or the level of threat/reassurance that should be attached to various events, groups, or individuals. Political engagement remains problematic for public administrators, however. If political involvement is permitted, someone will have to rethink the meaning of Progressivism, neutral competence, professionalism, and an expert-based civil service. More daunting still, compelling critiques of representative democracy have placed electoral institutions on the table for discussion as well. A hopeful future for public administration is grounded in a renewed assertion of the viability and meaningfulness of the public interest as a standard against which claims offered in the public conversation may be judged. A healthy public discourse preserves and creates an authentic polls that is able to focus on community aims and purposes, hence clarifying public administrations legitimate role in governance.

The Depreciating Public Policy Discourse

Public policy discourse has entered an era of media-driven hyperreality, becoming detached from the lived experience of the polity. Bumper-sticker political symbols, such as “the war on drugs,” have displaced vibrant discussion of public issues. This depreciation of the public discourse can be apprehended if we conceptualize this problematic as a postmodern phenomenon. By borrowing vocabulary and concepts from postmodern thought, we can try to figure out what is going on. How is modernity different from postmodernity? How does reality become hyperreality? After a description of postmodern conditions—and the implications of this for public policy discourse—the “war on drugs” is deconstructed to supply a vivid example of the slippery slope from reality to hyperreality.