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.
Deconstructing Public Administration Empiricism
Like much social science empiricism, public administration empiricism at its best recognizes that it presents probabilistic truth claims rather than universal ones. In doing so, public administration empiricists are (to a degree) recognizing the tenuousness of their claim that their approach to research is better connected to reality than research that does not adhere to empiricist protocols. To say that one is 95% confident that a quantitative model explains 25% of the variation being studied is not a very bold claim about understanding reality. They are also masking a more fundamental claim that they know an objective reality exists. The existence of an objective reality is the essential foundation on which empiricism relies for its claim to provide a research approach that is superior to all others and, therefore, is in a position to set the standards to which all research should be held (Brady & Collier, 2004; King, Keohane, & Verba 1994). In one of the most direct expressions of this claim, Meier (2005) has stated, “there is an objective reality” (p. 664). In support of that claim, he referenced 28,000 infant deaths in the United States in 2000. He went on to attribute about one-third of those deaths to an inadequate health care system. Recognizing that the one-third figure was conjectural, he described the suspiciously rounded 28,000 number as real. This brief anecdote points toward the direction of my argument. This article will not challenge the existence of an objective reality; it will take an Administration & Society Volume 39 Number 4 July 2007 527-544 © 2007 Sage Publications 10.1177/0095399707303813 http://aas.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com