The Study of Public Administration in Times of Global Interpenetration: A Historical Rationale for a Theoretical Model

Abstract

This article offers historical interpretation of the role of the administrative state in the construction of social order and articulates the foundation of theoretical modelfor the study of the relationship between globalization and public administration. The author contends that the study of public administration in times of global interpenetration requires reinterpretation of the administrative state at historic moment when profound changes are underway in conventional understanding of the general interest, of social responsibility, and of the relationship between the market and the state. In order to actively participate in building the new structures of social relations that globalization is bringing about, the discipline of public administration must develop its theoretical capacity to transcend the ahistorcal, voluntaristic, instrumental, parochial, and state-centered nature of its approaches and explanations. Reviews of the historical evolution of the discipline of public administration often acknowledge that the practice of public administration is as old as society itself.' This awareness, however, has not generated systematic efforts to elucidate the relationship between sociohistorical change and public administration.2 The result of this is absence of sound explanations of the role of public administration in the formation, reproduction, and transformation of social relations and social order. Therefore, the study of public administration lacks of the state and explanation of the role of state bureaucracy in the development of modern political societies.3 The objective of this article is both to develop historical interpretation of the evolution and social significance of the administrative state and to develop foundation for theoretical for the study of public administration in times of global 615/Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 'This article discusses the public administration tradition initiated by Woodrow Wilson. 2This is not to suggest that there have not been important and successful attempts to explain this relationship within specific temporal and spatial contexts (see Stillman 1991; Rouban 1993). 3To large extent, the absence of such and explanation is due to the fact that the intellectual development of public administration has been based largely on the view of the United States as stateless society (see Stillman 1991, 19-41). J-PART 7(1997):4:615-638 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.176 on Sat, 09 Apr 2016 06:47:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Public Administration in Times of Global Interpenetration interpenetration.4 The purpose of the is to facilitate understanding of the broad framework of historical limitations and possibilities within which public administrators operate today. Needless to say, this is only preliminary attempt to overcome public administration's inability to deal theoretically with the relationship between sociohistorical change and the administrative state. Part 1 of this article is critical characterization of the intellectual foundations of the public administration discipline. Part 2 outlines and interprets the historical evolution of the administrative state. Out of this historical analysis public administration emerges as systemic activity-the purpose of which is to institutionalize patterns of social relations over time and space. This conceptualization is central to the rationale of the theoretical that is presented in part 3. Part 4 offers some concluding remarks about the study and the practice of public administration at century's end. THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A CHARACTERIZATION Critical analyses of the intellectual foundations of public administration abound (see for example, Dahl 1947; Mosher 1956; Charlesworth 1968; Heady 1979; Guerreiro Ramos 1981; Daneke 1990; Riggs 1991; Bailey and Mayer 1992). Nevertheless, the discipline continues to be characterized by the ahistorical, instrumental, voluntaristic, parochial, and state-centered nature of its approaches and explanations. These characteristics severely limit public administration's capacity to deal theoretically with the crucial relationship between sociohistorical change and the administrative state. Public administration is ahistorical because it is fundamentally concerned with the synchrony of the administrative state rather than with its dyachrony (see de Saussure 1986, 80).5 In other words, it is concerned with the study of the functions and structures that characterize the administrative state within given moment of its history rather than with the study of the evolution of the administrative state over time.6 Ahistorical approaches in public administration follow instrumental theoretical orientation. Public administration generally can be regarded as instrumental because it is concerned primarily with the immediate and practical problems of public administration rather than with explaining the historical and structural factors that condition the organization and administration of the state.7 6161J-PART, October 1997 4A can be defined as a conceptualization of group of phenomena, constructed by means of rationale, where the ultimate purpose is to furnish the terms and relations, the propositions of formal system which, if validated, becomes, theory (Willer 1967, 15. The rationale of constitutes an explanation of the nature of the included phenomena and leads to the nominal definitions of the concepts of the model