The Aims of Public Administration: Reviving the Classical View

Abstract

The scholarly field of public administration (PA) was launched at a dangerous moment in American and world history. This fact influenced early understandings about the aims of the field. PA was understood to be concerned with big problems of governance relating to the very survival of liberal democratic states. This expansive view of PA no longer prevails, for two reasons. One is the cession of territory once included within the domain of PA to fields such as International Relations, Statebuilding, and American Political Development. Another is the rise of Public Management (PM), a more constricted way of thinking about the territory remaining within the domain of PA. Criticisms recently made against PM suggest that a new approach to PA is needed. This new approach should reclaim abandoned territory and revive understandings about the aims of the field that were prevalent at the time of its founding

Keywords: Public Administration, intellectual history, Public Management, International Relations, Statebuilding, American Political Development