What Makes Public Administration a Science? Or, Are Its "Big Questions" Really Big?

Abstract

In his recent essay in Public Administration Review, Big Questions of Public Management, Robert Behn (1995) has asked us to consider which are to be of central importance for public management. His nomination of three suitable big questions involves more than simple academic exercise of setting a future research agenda. Far more important is what nature of those questions means both to public management and to larger discipline of public administration. Professor Behn is absolutely correct when he states that any field of is defined by big questions it asks (p. 314). By way of example, he cites certain specialized areas within broad field of physics. The big questions in cosmology, for example, concern nature of Big Bang origins of universe, while in theoretical (or particle) physics, big questions concern basic composition of matter and energy. Equally important, the big questions about physics are what make it a science (p. 314). It is immediately apparent that Behn's big questions in physics concern either basic nature of things or their origins. Surely, such questions are on their very face important and worthy of investigation, but what is it about them that makes them big questions? Why should scientific character of an entire field of study or discipline be defined by such questions? Giuliano Toraldo di Francia (1981) has perhaps given answers in his analysis of place that physical sciences occupy within modern culture. He suggests that reason that mankind must attempt to answer big questions is philosophical, in that they point right to core of what it means to be a thinking human being. The ascertainment of factual structure of environment in which we live constitutes cosmology in a broad sense. Cosmology has always been associated with [physics], especially today. Etymologically it refers to birth of universe. This supreme problem is certainly always present in minds of scientists.... But today very great interest is also focused on birth of a number of much more particular systems or structures. The examples are many and varied: galaxies, stars, solar system, mountains, animal species; hence by analogy, such cultural facts as writing, language, and so on. Why do we pose these kinds of problems? Why do we presume that such questions can have sensible answers? In my opinion, this is not merely an unjustified psychological attitude or an infantile curiosity. As we shall see in many cases, facts themselves present connotations which lead us out of necessity to formulate those questions (p. 347). Toraldo di Francia's facts take form of footprints in sand. That is, when we observe existence of some physical system - a universe, a galaxy, a solar system, a nation, an economy - we are compelled to ask such questions as Why? and Whence? We are moved to search for predecessor systems or initiating interactions. Such a searching represents mature philosophical reflection (p. 348), and it is such that gives discipline in question character of a science. It may be asked whether such a search for origins or primal concepts can take place within social as well as physical sciences. Indeed, does existence of mature philosophical reflection allow social sciences to aspire to a place among real sciences? Arguments against such an inclusion have a venerable history and perhaps have been best stated by positivists, who would define a according to its empirical methods of observation, analysis, and proof. The eminent physicist, Sir James Jeans (1981), has suggested that positivist definitions for may not even be wholly satisfactory for traditional natural sciences. Besides being able to observe, measure, and predict, scientists wish to understand processes of nature. …