Abstract
In Disputatio Sine Fine, David Oliver Kasdan (2012) replicates a survey of Frank Sherwood’s on the “great books” of public administration but limits the survey to those books published between 1990 and 2010, the latter being the year of his survey. Kasdan compiles his list from a survey of 30 scholars, and 15 responded with nominations. 1 Although we find that the list contains reasonable books, many of which appear on our PhD syllabi in public administration and some of which we require graduate students to read, we would like to make seven comments on the approach and the list.
First, it is inherently unclear what the results of any survey designed like this one actually mean. The respondents were asked to nominate “most influential” books while also being reminded that the referent group (influential for whom?) was being left “ambiguous by design” (Kasdan, 2012, Appendix 1, p. 636). Respondents could have indicated books that influenced them, or their colleagues, or might be important for their students, or a broader public, or people outside the academic field who might be drawn into it, or—who knows? Kasdan’s article even introduces and comes close to endorsing yet another criterion of influence, ex post facto: influence on practitioners. The study was designed, as Kasdan indicates, as an interpretivist one. Unfortunately, it is impossible to interpret the results in any sensible way.
Second, 15 is a very small sample and subject to a great deal of sampling bias. Kasdan (2012) notes that he broke ties by referring to Google Scholar citations, but dismisses Google Scholar as a primary tool in determining scholarly influence by noting that, “a citation count may contribute some nuance to the rankings if there is dispute about relative influence, but the citation count alone has questionable value” (p. 630). Why it has questionable value is not explained. After all, a citation count means someone thought enough of the book to actually reference it in their own research. Although we would not contend that everyone who cites a book has actually read the book let alone been influenced by it (reading Frank Goodnow’s Power and Administration 2 has disabused us of that notion), we think Google Scholar serves as a far more inclusive representation of the field of public administration than the opinions of Waldo Award winners, editors, and book review editors. 3
Third, to the extent that Kasdan (2012) engages the articles versus books question, he seems to muddy the waters by suggesting that books are the outlets for discursive and qualitative arguments, while articles are the home for statistical analysis. We think this distinction reflects a common but misleading stereotype. The most cited article between the two of us is a conceptual, theoretical, and agenda-setting article with no empirical findings and no quantitative or even methodological content. We have also cowritten or coedited three books, all of which contain considerable quantitative empirical results in the text.
Fourth, Table 1 lists the Google Scholar citations to all the books that were nominated for consideration in the Kasdan’s (2012) survey, with those designated as the six finalists noted by asterisk. Table 2 is a new list based on our own few-hours search in Google Scholar (it does not include those in the original survey). 4 A comparison of the lists shows the problems of small samples, no matter how well informed. Lin Ostrom, Governing the Commons, does not even make the Kasdan list, yet its citation count is two orders of magnitude greater than many that do. One likes to think that a book that was fundamental in winning a Nobel Prize might be considered influential. Although some might contend that Governing the Commons is not a public administration book, it is on our syllabi and a variety of others. It deals with the need to take collective action and create governance structures to manage common-pool resources; that strikes us as meeting what we think of as the Waldo test for public administration: Would Dwight have included discussion of the book in The Administrative State if the book existed at the time he did his research?
The “Great Books” Ranked by Citations
An Alternative “Great Books” List Ranked by Citations
Fifth, Table 2 also indicates how parochial the list in Table 1 is. Table 1 is composed, by and large, of U.S. scholars. As much as we might like to believe that the United States is the center of all public administration scholarship, that is just not true. Combining the two lists and tossing out Gaebler and Osborne as not being public administration scholarship, 6.5 of the 10 most-cited scholarly books are written or edited by non-U.S. authors (apologies to Guy Peters for splitting him in half). Pollitt and Bourkaert, Public Management Reform, has been highly influential (by citation count) and, unlike Osborne and Gaebler, is a scholarly treatment of the adoption of new public management reforms worldwide. Kickert, Klijn, and Koopenjan’s Managing Complex Organizations has stimulated extensive work on the subject of networks and public administration. It is the scholarly forerunner of Eggers and Goldsmith and far more deserving of the designation “great book.”
Sixth, as Kasdan (2012) concedes, the list does omit influential articles and thus paints a clearly limited sense of the direction of the field. Our graduate seminars do not teach the great books; they teach the ideas that currently define or should define public administration. Our PhD syllabi include not only books but also many articles. 5 Simply to illustrate, let us pick on our friend Jim Perry, whose Handbook of Public Administration makes Kasdan’s list. The Handbook is very useful, but to consider it the premier contribution of Jim Perry to public administration research is to do a disservice to Jim. Two of his articles have had significant impact and have to be considered seminal works in the field. His early article with Harold Angle (Perry & Angle, 1981) in Administrative Science Quarterly on organizational commitment and his article with Lois Wise (Perry & Wise, 1990) in Public Administration Review introducing the concept “public service motivation” have both had far greater influence on the field—as a field of scholarship—than the Handbook.
Finally, the list really does suggest that we should have a serious discussion of how to conceive of the field. A brief comment by Gary Wamsley in introducing the article focuses attention on this point. Gary’s view is that “public administration is not, and should not be an academic discipline, but rather, a field of study and practice that draws upon academic disciplines.” On one hand, we could be inclined to agree. But, on the other, where is the interdisciplinarity in this list? Where are the influential works of sociology, psychology, economics, and organization theory? Only political science (via Dan Carpenter) is represented on the list. Where is Arthur Bandura? Daniel Kahneman? William Ouchi? James D. Thompson? Amos Tversky? Paul DiMaggio? Oliver Williamson? Can we even be a “field of study and practice” without an intellectual core? If our important questions are defined by popular books that somehow catch the eye of politicians, is it no wonder that public administration is sometimes treated as the scholarly equivalent of Poland, conquered and reconquered by foreign armies?
Whether a “great books” list has any meaning in contemporary public administration will be determined by what the current scholars of public administration decide is worth studying. Perhaps returning to classic times and classical issues might have some value, and Sherwood’s original list might be the basis for a curriculum. Perhaps the current list will have enduring value. More likely, in our view, the issues that excite current graduate students and prompt them to follow the scent will be the ones that have intellectual staying power.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.