Richard C. Box

Running Government Like a Business Implications for Public Administration Theory and Practice

The public sector faces increasing demands to run government like a business, importing privatesector concepts such as entrepreneurism, privatization, treating the citizen like a “customer,” and management techniques derived from the production process. The idea that government should mimic the market is not new in American public administration, but the current situation is particularly intense. The new public management seeks to emphasize efficient, instrumental implementation of policies, removing substantive policy questions from the administrative realm. This revival of the politics-administration dichotomy threatens core public-sector values of citizen selfgovernance and the administrator as servant of the public interest. The article examines the political culture that encourages expansion of market-like practices in the American public sector, explores the issues of the purpose and scope of government and the role of the public-service practitioner, and offers a framework for the study and practice of public administration based on citizenship and public service.

New Public Management and Substantive Democracy

The authors are concerned that a remaining refuge of substantive democracy in America, the public sector, is in danger of abandoning it in favor of the market model of management. They argue that contemporary American democracy is confined to a shrunken procedural remnant of its earlier substantive form. The classical republican model of citizen involvement faded with the rise of liberal capitalist society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Capitalism and democracy coexist in a society emphasizing procedural protection of individual liberties rather than substantive questions of individual development. Today’s market model of government in the form of New Public Management goes beyond earlier “reforms,” threatening to eliminate democracy as a guiding principle in public-sector management. The authors discuss the usefulness of a collaborative model of administrative practice in preserving the value of democracy in public administration.

Pragmatic Discourse and Administrative Legitimacy

Legitimacy, the place of public administration in governance, has always been a concern in American society. Responses to this concern have included efforts to control bureaucracy by defining what it should do, to free it from control by elevating its status in relation to other branches of government, and to confine it to micro-level, market-like management techniques. The discourse theory of O. C. McSwite, based on pragmatism, suggests that governmental legitimacy in America may be revived by shifting from an emphasis on the public administrator’s role in directing agencies to thinking about how administrators may assist in creating community through collaboration with citizens. This article offers a critique and extension of McSwite’s work based in part on critical theory, arguing that to recover administrative legitimacy through collaborative discourse, it may be necessary to recognize and respond to the nature of the liberal-capitalist political environment.

Experiments with Local Federalism Secession and the Neighborhood Council Movement in Los Angeles

Federalism involves allocation of powers between units of government at different geographic levels. In local areas, changes in relationships between units of government may be effected through incorporation or disincorporation, annexation, formation of new layers of government, or interjurisdictional agreements. It may be difficult for residents who seek change to achieve it through alteration of jurisdictional boundaries or intergovernmental hierarchical relationships, however, they may gain similar benefits through intrajurisdictional arrangements such as neighborhood organizations. Such strategies of change from within are common, however, in an interesting variation, failed efforts at forming new jurisdictions through secession from the City of Los Angeles have occurred during startup of a neighborhood program intended to give greater voice to subjurisdictional areas. The article examines this situation, suggesting that formation of intrajurisdictional units may operate as an alternative form of local federalism.

Redescribing the public interest

Abstract Though it is a vague, indeterminate construct, “the public interest” continues to be used in public administration writing. It is suggested that extant substantive, aggregative, and process descriptions pay insufficient attention to the economic and political context, the ability of members of the public to determine what their interests may be, and the temporal dimension of the public interest. A critical redescription of the concept is offered that takes into account societal conditions, public knowledge, and change over time.

Contradiction, Utopia, and Public Administration

In 1964, in the midst of a dominant political-economic system providing an unprecedented standard of living, Herbert Marcuses One-Dimensional Man challenged the status quo. Marcuse argued there exists a contradiction between a life of material plenty supported by instrumental thought crowding out awareness of alternatives, and potential life options people might choose if they were free to understand them. This contradiction is evident in four areas of social practice discussed by Marcuse in several works: democracy, the “Warfare State,” research, and gender. The paper relates Marcuses analyses of these areas of practice and his utopian solutions, suggesting they may be useful for public administration theory and practice.

Regressive Values and Public Administration

Public administration in Western nations functions within a liberal-democratic societal context that shapes the roles and work of public service academicians and practitioners. In recent decades, values enacted in the societal context have increasingly been regressive, emphasizing aggressiveness, premodern belief, economics as an end in itself, great social inequality, and Earth as a resource pool for business activities. This trend is in contrast to the progressive values of cooperation, knowledge of and openness to alternatives, economics as means, limited inequality, and Earth as a home to be protected. The emphasis on regressive values is particularly apparent in the United States, which may be used to illustrate the nature of the phenomenon. This paper discusses the potential for public administration academicians to counter the spread of regressive values and encourage enactment of progressive values.

Alternatives to Representative Primacy and Administrative Efficiency

Historically, institutional practices and formal structures have been used to maintain preferred distributions of wealth and power. Advocates of greater democracy may think that decentralization of authority in public institutions, from elected officials and public professionals to citizens, is better than centralization. However, the potential for citizen self-governance is limited in a centralized system characterized by representative primacy, the assumption that elected officials should be the primary or sole decision makers, and administrative efficiency, the assumption that cost-efficient implementation is the central purpose of public administration. Representative primacy and administrative efficiency are supported by the belief of the political/economic elite that the public can be a threat to dominant economic interests. Though it may be argued there are no realistic alternatives to representative primacy and administrative efficiency at the national and state levels, such an argument is more difficult to sustain at the local level. Coordinative representation and facilitative administration are offered as decentralized alternatives that favor citizen self-governance.

Marcuse Was Right: One-Dimensional Society in the Twenty-First Century

The concept of one-dimensionality identified oppressive characteristics of societies in the 1960s, suggesting that they could intensify over time until few people are able to imagine alternatives. This concept and its related body of work are largely forgotten today, associated with a time and set of circumstances that have passed. This article argues that instead of disappearing, onedimensionality has matured and become commonplace, fulfilling Marcuses vision of a society that lacks reflexive knowledge and capacity to change. The article describes three aspects of a onedimensional society—work, aggressiveness, and public affairs— and asks whether we are trapped in one societal dimension.

Dialogue and Administrative Theory & Praxis: Twenty-Five Years of Public Administration Theory

Administrative Theory & Praxis began in 1979 as Dialogue, the newsletter of the newly created Public Administration Theory Network. It has developed over twenty-five years as a forum for “alternative” theory in public administration. This paper describes some of the work published in Dialogue/ATP from 1979 to 2004 to illustrate issues of interest to authors in the journal during this time. Examples of articles are given in five substantive categories of theory: the nature of knowledge; the relationship of Dialogue/ATP theory to mainstream public administration; normative public administration theory; social and political theory; and marginalization and oppression. The discussion highlights writing about important topics in public administration theory from perspectives often not considered in “mainstream” journals.