Practitioner as the Imaginary Father of Public Administration: A Psychoanalytic Critique

Abstract

This article critiques the ideological position of the practitioner in public administration research based on Lacanian psychoanalysis. A review of empirical focus of public administration research reveals that the practitioner serves as an imaginary ideal for researchers and provides them with the semblance of a “useful” disciplinary identity. Public administration researchers spend all their efforts trying to pander to this mythical practitioner who is supposed to save the helpless public. That is also the reason that the discipline is invested in cleansing the image of the practitioner by covering up or downplaying the negative aspects of administrative praxis. Lacanian psychoanalysis further suggests that despite this idealization, the practitioner neither possesses solutions to public problems nor can resolve the identity crisis of public administration. More importantly, this disciplinary ideal comes at the cost of limited theoretical and empirical engagement with the public, which has been marginalized in public administration research. Giving up this foundational fantasy, however, will require a fundamental reorientation of our disciplinary identity and research focus. Three critical operations (skepticism of grand imaginaries, direct engagement with the public, and a less judgmental research agenda) are cautiously suggested as a starting point in this regard.