Showing papers in "Administrative Theory & Praxis in 2011"

Social Media and Public Administration

Abstract: (2011). Social Media and Public Administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis: Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 325-340.

You Have One Friend Request

Abstract: Local governments in the Phoenix metropolitan area have begun to create official government Facebook pages as an additional way to reach citizens. Using social media at the local government level s...

The Costs of Democratization

Abstract: This article suggests challenges, primarily, for enacting social media and networking technologies for public participation. Approached from multiple theoretical lenses for the purpose of public participation (representative, pluralist, direct, and deliberative theories) and multiple filters that can shape the design and implementation of technologies (organizational culture, administrative culture, formal institutions, and political intelligence), the article advances a research agenda in this still nascent field of inquiry. The practice of applying social media and networking tools is still evolving; the intention in specifying hypotheses is to guide future research and to encourage reflexive practitioners as they embark on new relationships with citizens.

Explaining the Democratic Anchorage of Governance Networks

Abstract: Advances in understanding the democratic anchorage of governance networks require carefully designed and contextually grounded empirical analysis that take into account contextual factors. The article uses a conjectural framework to study the impact of the national democratic milieu on the relationship between network governance and representative institutions in four European countries: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The article shows that the distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy as well as the varying strength of voluntary associations are important contextual factors that help explain cross-national differences in the relationship between governance networks and representative institutions. We conclude that a context of weak associationalism in majoritarian democracies facilitates the instrumentalization of networks by government actors (United Kingdom), whereas a more complementary role of governance networks prevails in consensus democracies (Switze...

Electronic Commons, Community Policing, and Communication

Abstract: In recent years, scholars and practitioners have bemoaned the decline in public life. The "commons," as the worry goes, is shrinking. The article investigates the effort by the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department (DC MPD) to facilitate an electronic commons in which residents and police department personnel can work together, via online discussion groups, to address crime and safety issues. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the article analyzes the threads originating between July 2005 and December 2007 to answer two research questions. Do the online discussion groups fulfill the spirit of an electronic commons? What is the nature of the online relationship between the police and the community? The findings show that although DC MPD has created an avenue for online discussion, it has had mixed success in creating an electronic commons. Insights are provided for public administrators for fostering social media to create an electronic commons, and suggestions for future scholarship.

The Ontology of Process Philosophy in Follett's Administrative Theory

Abstract: The importance of ontology to social theory is emerging in a variety of fields associated with political theory, including public administration. This article explores the ontological underpinnings...

Exemplary practitioners : A review of actors who make a difference in governing

Abstract: Some actors in the public sphere are excellent at what they do. Even if they could hardly do their work alone, they make a difference. This article presents a search for what are called exemplary practitioners. It describes and compares a group of six practitioners found in the literature: the reflective practitioner, the deliberative practitioner, the street-level bureaucrat, the front-line worker, the everyday maker, and the everyday fixer. It points at differences between the types and changes that occur over time. Also, the article concludes that the more recent types of identified practitioners add crucial skills to the repertoire that practitioners need to make a difference in the public sphere. In the epilogue, the researchers reflect on the research they did on the basis of the ideas in the article.

Digitizing Deliberation: Normative Concerns for the Use of Social Media in Deliberative Democracy

Abstract: Deliberative democracy as a form of citizen engagement and social media as a means to achieving greater citizen engagement have both received considerable attention in recent years; However, little attention has been paid to the way deliberative democracy and social media function together. The central aim of this research is to highlight the normative considerations surrounding social media in a deliberative democratic process. To do this, the article uses Iris Marion Young's model of deliberative democracy that is rooted in inclusion, political equality, reasonableness, and publicity. Applying this model's normative values to the use of audience response systems demonstrates that social media have the capacity to fundamentally shift the normative dimensions of deliberative democracy by changing the process itself. The broad philosophical and social-theoretical concerns related to the implications of social media for long-standing ontological and epistemological questions of achieving "the public good" a...

The DHS Border Fence in the Rio Grande Valley

Abstract: The authors call on related theoretical concepts to better understand the effects on the Rio Grande Valley of the U.S. government's recent border security activities. In particular, we explore the consequences of U.S. wall-building policies in terms of semiotics (Baudrillard's simulacra), space (Foucault's heterotopias), and subjectivity (Agamben's homo sacer). These three interrelated perspectives are developed as analytical tools to study impacts of national security initiatives on the life world of south Texas. Although the Department of Homeland Security has worked steadfastly on building the wall in the name of improved national security, considerable local public resistance continues. Property owners, mayors, business leaders, clergy, and others remain fearful of what the wall represents to their collective economic, social and political well-being. The authors argue that examining the phenomenon of the wall through theoretical lenses leads to the development of relevant (alternative) theories and p...

Comparative Administration: Ontology and Epistemology in Cross-Cultural Research

Abstract: A review of methodological inquiry shows that, from its inception, comparative public administration (CPA) scholarship brushed over important epistemological and ontological questions in favor of searching for broad-based, generalizable theories that subscribed to only objectivist ontologies. This article traces these problematic methodological assumptions in contemporary CPA research back to the mischaracterization of the terms idiographic and nomothetic in CPA research. Revisiting this history is important because the recognition of this distinction allows room in the field for research that highlights the uniqueness of different cultural contexts and constructs.

Bullying Targets as Social Performers in the Public Administration Workplace

Abstract: This article argues that workers in public administration (PA) who are targets of bullying engage in social performances in an attempt to maintain control over their situation. The article considers the literature on social performances, including Hochschild's concept of emotional labor and its emergence in the PA arena. A case study is then presented that includes a nonfiction narrative describing the bullying of a library worker followed by a constructed (fictional) vignette vivifying the target's experience of being bullied and her possible social performances in response to that. The vignette depicting social performances is then analyzed via various social performance theories: surface and deep acting, emotional self-management, organizational display rules, impression management, and self-monitoring. The article concludes by returning to LaBier's notions of the working wounded and modern madness. Comparing the responses of targets of bullying to the troubled careerists studied by LaBier offers many ...

A Neopragmatist Approach to Administrative Authority

Abstract: Public administration is challenged to provide a coherent model of authority. A warrant for authority is necessary for governance, yet it is also anathema to many of the tenets of liberal constitutionalism. From the postmodern perspective, a nondiscriminatory approach to governance requires new understandings of the source and purpose of administrative authority. This process involves deflating the metanarratives of governance and the foundational traditions that have informed administrative practices. This article offers neopragmatism, the upgrade of pragmatism's truth-utility function through contextual and linguistic considerations, as an approach to reframe authority. Social progress—defined by Richard Rorty as movement away from that which is unjust and cruel—is the justification for that authority.

Portraits of Politicians, Administrators, and Citizens

Abstract: Since 2008, Administrative Theory & Praxis has included space for “Reflections on Theory in Action.” As noted in the call for participation, such reflections were hoped to serve a variety of purposes that highlight the practical value of theory and theorizing. The section also invited “teaching notes about how to make sometimes difficult critical theoretical views communicable to students and practitioners” (Kensen, 2008, p. 376). The present Forum on Public Administration and Film provides an excellent opportunity to respond to both invitations simultaneously. Like other types of case studies and storytelling, reflective essays are quite valuable in bringing theory to life. Very few practitioners and scholars get excited about theory purely at an abstract level. Theory typically becomes compelling only when it is connected to experiences and phenomena to which we can relate or care about. Indeed, case studies are the mainstay of public administration research and pedagogy (Bailey, 1992; Barzelay, 1993; Eisenhardt, 1995; Jensen & Rodgers, 2001). Collections for use in graduate programs abound (Denhardt & Hammond, 1992; Golembiewski, Stevenson, & White, 1997; Lerner & Wanat, 1998; Meyer & Brown, 1989; Miller & Alkadry, 1998), and some actually frame introduction courses in their entirety (Garvey, 1997; Lutrin & Settle, 1992; Stillman, 2005). A more recent approach seeks to use practice stories to inform theory (Elias, 2010; Hummel, 1991; King & Zanetti, 2005; Stout, 2010). Case studies are generally used in one of two ways in teaching public administration theory. First, they are a target for analytical practice. In other words, we ask students to use a particular theoretical lens to understand what is happening in a situation to test their capacity for applying theory to practice. However, we also use case studies to illustrate how theory works in practice. These types of stories become invaluable for the growing number of preservice students we see in master’s-level programs. Such students have little experience to reflect on to help make sense of theory. Indeed, regardless of theoretical preference, the field as a whole has long believed that it is critical to link theory to practice (Bowman, 1978). This linkage is crucial for a practice field, in case, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reportedly commented at a luncheon, “They aren’t interested in the why of what we’re doing, only in the what of what we’re doing, and because they

The Emergence of Partisans and Terrorists: How Enemies of the State Mold Public Action

Abstract: The changing status and capacity of enemies of the state play an important role in the evolution of the securitization of the state. Examining how enemies of the state mold state action, this article uses Foucault's concern with governmentality and Schmitt's theory of the partisan to describe how and where agencies have begun to manage closed and open spaces. From this administrative angle, the interplay between these two ideas sheds light on how administrators devise disciplinary and security-based measures. This article more fully describes the dynamic of how administrators have countered active threats by constructing closed spaces designed to discipline and operating in open spaces designed to exclude. The execution and interaction of extending mechanisms of control and calculation to closed and open spaces not only provide enhanced protection but also threaten the fruition of constitutional and democratic values in the twenty-first century.

Marcuse Was Right: One-Dimensional Society in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract: The concept of one-dimensionality identified oppressive characteristics of societies in the 1960s, suggesting that they could intensify over time until few people are able to imagine alternatives. This concept and its related body of work are largely forgotten today, associated with a time and set of circumstances that have passed. This article argues that instead of disappearing, onedimensionality has matured and become commonplace, fulfilling Marcuse's vision of a society that lacks reflexive knowledge and capacity to change. The article describes three aspects of a onedimensional society—work, aggressiveness, and public affairs— and asks whether we are trapped in one societal dimension.

Purity and democracy : Beauty ideals and pollution reduction in democratic reform

Abstract: In debates on democratic reform, the logic of spring cleaning resurfaces over and over again. Different democratic "beauty ideals" inspire different types of cleaning in the home of democracy. Where one particular vision of democracy is "polished up," rival visions are "rubbed out," usually at the same time. Informed by Douglas's take on cleaning ritual and pollution reduction, this article distinguishes four such beauty ideals—pendulum democracy, consensus democracy, participatory democracy, and voter democracy—as well the tensions among them, which can be made productive as well as destructive, as the real world of democracy illustrates. This article argues that viable democracies cannot afford too much cleaning of one particular type, unchecked by rival visions of democracy. The advice to democratic theorists and reformers alike is to keep mixophobia—the fear of mixing related to the quest for purity—in check as much as possible.

Fear Thy Neighbor

Abstract: This article expands on Giddens's (1991) analysis of the tribulation of the self in late modernity. It examines national identities as sources of binding authority that provide a sense of ontological security to the modern individual. In analyzing the constitution of the national self the article focuses on two primary understandings: ius soli (birthright citizenship) and ius sanguinis (right of the blood). It argues that both understandings could enable the illusions of national purity, which are inherently exclusionary and could lead to violence against the Other. The article concludes that our capacity to deal with intercultural conflicts depends in part on our openness to imagining different and more plural perceptions of the self.

Public Administration and Fiction: Kicking the Hornet's Nest of Administrative Ambiguity

Abstract: Howard McCurdy once wrote that one of the advantages of using fiction in studying public administration is that fiction writers are able “to portray the essential ambiguity of situations” (1973, p. 54). This fact is important, in his view, because “successful administration depends upon the skill of a manager in perceiving situations as essentially ambiguous” (p. 54). To illustrate this ambiguity, we examine the recent trilogy of Swedish films, based on Stieg Larsson’s three best-selling novels of the same name, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stærmose & Oplev, 2009a), The Girl Who Played with Fire (Stærmose, Mankell, & Alfredson, 2009b), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Stærmose, Mankell, & Alfredson, 2009c). Some commentators have seen in these works, along with those of other Scandinavian writers such as Henning Mankell, a dark and dystopian view of the modern welfare state. Although not necessarily denying this point, we want to suggest that the trilogy actually presents four quite different and contradictory views of the state and that it is the contradictory character of these visions that shows the value of fiction in capturing the administrative experience.

Cops, Teachers, and Vampire Slayers: Buffy as Street-Level Bureaucrat

Abstract: (2011). Cops, Teachers, and Vampire Slayers. Administrative Theory & Praxis: Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 599-603.

Democratic Governance: A Response to Commentaries

Abstract: Governance refers to a shift in public administration from hierarchic bureaucracy to markets and networks. In Democratic Governance (2010), I offer a genealogical critique of recent reforms of the state, paying particular attention to their democratic effects. My main arguments are 1. Governance spread because of new modernist theories (notably rational choice and the new institutionalism) and the public sector reforms they inspired. 2. Ironically, policymakers are responding to the challenges of governance by supplementing representative institutions with modernist expertise. 3. The resulting reforms shrink the space for democratic action; instead of promoting new forms of participation, they hand decision making to unelected and unaccountable actors. I illustrated these arguments with case studies of constitutional reform, judicial reform, administrative reform, and police reform. I am delighted that these arguments have attracted the attention of some of the leading scholars associated with Administrative Theory & Praxis. Having now worked in the United States for over a decade, it is a real pleasure to find I have such congenial intellectual companions. My critics focus on the first and third of the listed arguments. They let my histories and case studies off lightly. They probe my contrast between modernism and historicism, my idea of genealogy, and my vision of democracy.

The Aporias of Democracy: Grasping for the Shadows

Abstract: (2011). The Aporias of Democracy. Administrative Theory & Praxis: Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 459-463.

Creating and Applying Thought Experiments in Public Administration

Abstract: This article expands the dialogue on the use of thought experiments as a strategy of inquiry in public administration. Literature on scientific and philosophical thought experiments is presented, and a genre of thought experiment, the utopic thought experiment, is created with the discipline of public administration in mind. The purpose of the utopic thought experiment is for a researcher to challenge his or her own assumptions regarding a problem found in public administration. The utopic thought experiment draws on works in the thought experiment, utopian literary, and public administration fields. An example of a utopic thought experiment is provided in which the Federal Reserve is given constitutional status. The steps used to create the thought experiment are provided and a major criticism of the use of thought experiments generally is discussed. The article supports the use of thought experiments as a strategy of inquiry in public administration.

Rethinking Difference in Public Administration

Abstract: Participating in PAT-Net 2010 was an enriching experience that provided new insight and challenged me to reevaluate my ontological lens for approaching theoretical and practical public administration questions. The concept of difference was a recurrent theme throughout the conference and underpins much of my research. The treatment of difference, or dissimilar physicality, social, and political perspectives, in public institutions can be ambiguous, complicated, and contentious given the type of difference and context in which this difference is (de)valued. This reflection focuses on considerations surrounding difference in the preconference workshop for doctoral students on intellectual identity and Dr. Michael Spicer’s plenary session, “In Defense of Politics in Public Administration: A Value Pluralist Perspective.” From these sessions, I make connections to other literatures addressing difference and the value of these treatments of difference for public administration. The preconference workshop encouraged doctoral students to identify and justify our intellectual commitments, using the notion of intellectual craftsmanship proposed by C. Wright Mills as a point of departure. We were asked to think critically about our substantive areas of research but, more important, to reflect on our ontological basis of what we know about these areas of interest. From my own perspective, a key point emerging from this workshop was the need for singularity in public administration or that the role of public administration should be to create space for each unique person as an individual. To do this, the idea of absolute particularity should be embraced by democratic society. Connecting the doctoral workshop to Dr. Spicer’s plenary, his basic claim was that politics protects the plurality of perspectives in democratic society. Moving politics from scholarship to action, Dr. Spicer emphasized that politics is a reminder of the moral responsibility inherent in the act of public administration. Spicer explains, “A major reason why a defense of politics in administration would seem especially important right now is that our discipline is showing a renewed interest in a more scientific approach to governance and public management” (2010, p. 5). Like Spicer, Richard Box offers a similar critique:

Is Bureaucracy No Longer the Technically Superior Form of Organization

Abstract: (2011). Is Bureaucracy No Longer the Technically Superior Form of Organization? Administrative Theory & Praxis: Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 447-452.

Michael W. Spicer. In Defense of Politics in Public Administration: A Value Pluralist Perspective

Abstract: (2011). Michael W. Spicer. In Defense of Politics in Public Administration: A Value Pluralist Perspective. Administrative Theory & Praxis: Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 143-148.

Truth, Telling the Truth, and Being Truthful

Abstract: This article links Oliver Sacks's examination of receptive (or global) aphasia with Julian Jaynes's hypothesis concerning the origin of reflective consciousness to clarify the role of nonverbal communication in the constitution of ethical relationships. The vehicle for explicating that linkage is a recent play by Orion White, The Girl Who Changed into a Dog. Commentary on selected scenes from the play suggests a conception of ethics based on the following assumptions: (1) Ethics is fundamentally relational rather than principled; (2) owing to its relational character, ethical action is determined by the particularities of the contexts as understood by the actors involved in them; (3) spoken language provides a better medium than written language for developing and sustaining these ethical relationships; (4) the affective dimensions of spoken utterances are no less important than their cognitive dimensions for "truthfully" depicting those contexts; (5) the affective dimensions of spoken utterances are infl...