Can a Social Vision be Compelling Without Being Oppressive? On PAT-Net's Potential for Diverting the Public Administration Mainstream

Abstract

This paper argues that the ascendancy of neo-conservative social vision in the United States stems in significant part from the failure of its critics to lay out a compelling alternative. It suggests that efforts to avoid the totalizing trap of the metanarrative have led the critics of modernity, including many in the Public Administration Theory Network, to focus on partial and piecemeal social alternatives rather than on broader vision. It argues, however, that the oppressive consequences of modernist notions of progress follow not from their comprehensiveness, but from the ethnocentric character of their universalist claims. It uses the “I have a dream” speech of Martin Luther King Jr. to demonstrate how a vision of enhanced social practices can be both great and compelling and yet avoid the dangers of the metanarrative. It suggests a crucial role for anti-modernist theorists of public service in articulating such a vision.