Virtually autonomous bureaucratic actors pursuing technological goals are discussed in terms of the cultural and political beliefs in "autonomous technology." In this theoretical construct, examples are drawn from the history of space and defense projects in order to suggest some institutional relationships between the two streams of thought that comprise the title. It concluded that conventional theories of policy formation that presently dominate American politics and public administration are inadequate to account for either the entrepreneurial behavior of administrative actors or the "telic inclination" of certain large-scale public technologies.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
CHANDLER, A. D., Jr. (1977) The Visible Hand. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
2.
ELLUL, J. (1967) The Technological Society. New York: Random House.
3.
ELLUL, J. (1980) The Technological System. New York: Continuum.
4.
FALLOWS, J. (1981) National Defense. New York: Random House.
5.
LAMBRIGHT, W. H. (1976) Governing Science and Technology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
6.
LANDES, D. S. (1972) The Unbound Prometheus. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
7.
LEWIS, E. (1977) American Politics in a Bureaucratic Age. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop.
8.
LEWIS, E. (1980) Public Entrepreneurship. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
9.
MARCH, J. G. and J. P. OLSEN (1984) "The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life."Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev.78: 734-749.
10.
McDOUGALL, W. A. (1985) The Heavens and the Earth. New York: Basic Books.
11.
McNEILL, W. H. (1982) The Pursuit of Power. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
12.
NOBLE, D. F. (1977) America By Design. New York: Knopf.
13.
RICKOVER, ADMIRAL H. G. (1974) "The role of engineering in the Navy."Speech before the National Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Seattle, Washington, August 30.
14.
SCOTT, W. R. (1981) Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
15.
THOMPSON, J. D. (1967) Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill.
16.
VEBLEN, T. (1921) The Engineers and the Price System. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
17.
WINNER, L. (1977) Autonomous Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
