Abstract
The 50-year anniversary issue of the journal is centered around “a new way of looking at an old idea.” I started that old idea with my colleagues at Virginia Tech back in 1981.
The impetus for what later became the book Refounding Public Administration came about because of two experiences I had while working as a consultant in Washington. The first was when Carter became president and I was asked to work on his reorganization project. Carter, like politicians before and after him, campaigned and was elected on the idea of coming to Washington to deal bureaucracy and red tape a mortal blow. The effort was a complete dud. What they found out, of course, was that campaign hyperbole does not translate into effective governing, which is extremely difficult and complex. The second was when I worked for an independent executive agency that was asked to help prepare briefing books for the incoming Reagan administration. Although long hours were spent on studying the agency and making recommendations, the books were never even looked at (in the elegant words of one official, they were “shit canned”). Instead, SESers at the agency were made the scapegoats for much of the perceived ills and told that one way or another, they would soon be gone.
Suffice it to say that these two experiences left me feeling depressed. When I shared my thoughts with a colleague, he said that maybe it was time we thought and talked about government another way. This led me to bring up the subject with my colleagues at Virginia Tech, and those conversations led to a retreat at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, where we sat around on the floor of our meeting room and brainstormed for hours. It was an amazing session. We found that although we had many differences intellectually, we could all agree on the overarching principle that public administration is a noble calling, and that those who choose it as a profession generally do so because they want to uphold the Constitution and work for the common good. The meeting resulted in a paper known as the “Blacksburg Manifesto” and later on two books, Refounding Public Administration and Refounding Democratic Public Administration.
Although I do not keep up with much of the current research in public administration, I do know that seldom has anti-government rhetoric reached such a pitch as it has today (“drain the swamp”), or have there been so many moves to both delegitimize and dismantle agencies from within. It seems to me, therefore, an ideal time to rethink (or dare I say “refound”) public administration, and the 50th anniversary issue of A&S is an ideal vehicle to get that rethinking underway.