Menzel Donald C. - The state of public administration: issues, challenges, and opportunities

THE STATE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

THE STATE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

ISSUES, CHALLENGES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

DONALD C. MENZEL AND HARVEY L. WHITE, EDITORS

First published 2011 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The state of public administration : issues, challenges, and opportunities / edited by Donald C. Menzel and
Harvey L. White.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7656-2504-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7656-2505-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Public administrationUnited States. 2. Administrative agenciesUnited StatesManagement.
3. Executive departmentsUnited StatesManagement. I. Menzel, Donald C. II. White, Harvey L.

JK421.S718 2011
351.73dc22 2010022573

ISBN 13: 9780765625052 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765625045 (hbk)

Richard Stillman

Donald C. Menzel and Harvey L. White

Laurence E. Lynn Jr.

James S. Bowman and Jonathan P. West

Patricia M. Shields and Nandhini Rangarajan

Wendy Haynes and Beth Gazley

Jeffrey A. Raffel, Steven M. Maser, and Crystal Calarusse

Montgomery Van Wart

Donald C. Menzel

Norma M. Riccucci

Irene S. Rubin

Judith R. Saidel

Melvin J. Dubnick and Kaifeng Yang

Stuart I. Bretschneider and Ines Mergel

William L. Waugh

Nicholas Henry

Terry L. Cooper

Louise K. Comfort, Clayton Wukich, Steve Scheinert, and Leonard J. Huggins

Robert Agranoff

Deil S. Wright, Carl W. Stenberg, and Chung-Lae Cho

Beverly A. Cigler

Robert F. Durant and John Marvel

Stephen E. Condrey and Jonathan P. West

David H. Rosenbloom

Harvey L. White

Alan Lawton and Frdrique Six

Jamil Jreisat

Louis A. Picard

David Schultz

RICHARD STILLMAN

Editor-in-Chief
Public Administration Review
University of Colorado

The past decade witnessed one of the most turbulent eras in American history. Indeed, it ranks among the top ten cataclysmic epochsthe Revolutionary War in the 1770s, the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in the 1780s, the Jacksonian populist movement of the 1820s, the American Civil War in the 1860s, the Progressive reforms and World War I in the 1910s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, World War II and the start of the Cold War in the 1940s, and civil rights, feminist rights, and gay liberation movements of the 1960s. The decade of 20002010 rightly belongs in the record books as another rare period reflecting enormous historic transformations. The decade opened with the controversial, razor-close 2000 presidential election, which spawned a national crisis involving the nations very constitutional legitimacy; the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which sparked a global war on terrorism; the double whammy of the dot-com meltdown and the housing-bubble bust, which ushered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; and, of course, the unforgettable Katrina tragedy.

At the heart of all these socioeconomic-political-military shocks stood public administration for good or ill, or for good AND ill. Yes, ill because the 2000 Florida election hung in perilous balance precisely due to inconsistencies in how county elections designed ballots and how they counted votes. In the case of 9/11, the hijackers slipped under the FBI radar screen because bureau field agents in Minnesota and Arizona could not convince their superiors at Washington headquarters that the threats they reported were real and imminent. Regulatory management at every governmental level was lax and negligent, thus precipitating market excesses that brought both the domestic and global economies to their knees. Unquestionably, the lengthy chain of federal-state-local mismanagement and faulty planning contributed directly to the deaths of more than a thousand people and the destruction of a trillion dollars-plus worth of property in the wake of Katrina.

Still, abundant good resulted from public administration actions throughout the decade. Votes were counted (for the most part) correctly in 2008, resulting in the election of Americas first African-American president. Two far-flung wars were fought in Iraq and Afghanistan thanks to the courage and professionalism of many brave men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces. A rapid response by the Federal Reserve and Treasury dramatically blunted the free fall of the U.S. and world economies. Universal health care was for the first time successfully debated, enacted, and its implementation began.

At the core of all these momentous crises stood public administration, intricately and intimately. Making government workor failis the essence of public administration. Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, public administration decisively shapes and reshapes modern life and contemporary events, with innumerable apparent and not-so-apparent consequences.

Yet, what is public administration today, given that it is everywhere and influences everything in modern society? How can we comprehend its key trends as well as unforeseen consequences? How do we ensure that it serves the public? After all, is not public the first word in public administration?

Professors Donald C. Menzel and Harvey L. White, both former presidents of the American Society for Public Administration (Americas premier professional association of administrative academics and practitioners), edited this remarkable book, which examines the state of the field; a field at the heart of myriad, complicated, even life-and-death domestic and worldwide challenges at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Wisely, the editors recruited more than thirty of the best and brightest administrative scholars to think deeply and broadly about critical public administration issues: What are the new challenges as well as opportunities facing public administration? What are the underlying factors influencing new or emerging trends? What priority issues remain unsolved and why? What do we know and not know about this seminal subject?