Editorial Report on Public Administration Review, 2006–2011: A Global Graduate Seminar, a Privilege, and a Challenge
In this final wrap-up, PAR’s editor in chief, Richard Stillman, and managing editor, Jos C. N. Raadschelders, summarize the last six years of the journal’s objectives, contents, and accomplishments. The authors broadly discuss their editorial activities, past and present, and candidly and succinctly outline the ongoing challenges facing PAR in the future as the leading global journal for interdisciplinary public administration.
THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES
The study of public administration in the United States is large in terms of the number of academic programmes, the range of journal publications, and the number of scholars. Its scholarship attracts attention from all over the globe. At the same time it is a public administration that is clearly embedded in a specific national culture, just as anywhere else. Three of the main challenges include the strong increase of quantitative-statistical methods, the decline of practitioner authors, and substantive specialization to the extent that generalists’ perspectives are losing ground. What you can’t calculate, you believe cannot be true What you can’t weigh, has no weight for you What you can’t cost, has no value for you.
Toward a Weberian Public Administration: The Infinite Web of History, Values, and Authority in Administrative Mentalities
In this paper I will describe a more comprehensive outline of Weber’s work on administration in contrast to how is it usually characterised in administrative studies. In this case, I am emphasising three features most often ignored: history, values, and the intended combinate use of the three forms of authority (including the administrative systems and practices that are expressions of them), and the roles they play in mentality as they reflect the broad scope of his administrative writings. I have chosen these since their omission plays the greatest role in the many distortions, misrepresentations and misuses of Weber. I will also demonstrate what value a greater use of Weber’s writings has for contemporary administration. What would it mean to reposition administrative theory on this foundation, compared to the morepositivistic structural-functional or economically driven New Public Management currently being used in many international jurisdictions? In spite of radical developments on the theoretical level over the last 20 years, introducing history, cultural studies, biography, psychoanalytic studies, and even aesthetic and literary critique, all of which suggest that a more incisive understanding of administration rests on a valuationally-oriented individual analysis, the field has resisted a reevaluation of its treatment of Weber.