Update and expanded, and featuring three new readings, this book provides a unique approach for instructors who want to expose their students to the social, political, and historical context of the practice of public administration. While most introductory texts cover a wide range of topics and are oriented toward details of management technique, this innovative volume focuses instead on the broader society within which public service practitioners work. The author's own text is skillfully interwoven with a collection of seminal readings and documents that illuminate the key issues of past and present for public service professionals in a democratic society. "Public Administration and Society" develops two important themes. One is an emphasis on the historical development of institutions and practices, giving students in-depth background and knowledge to effect meaningful change. The second theme involves local government and the public practitioner's role in fostering democracy, citizenship, citizenship, and community self-government.

The prevailing notion that the best government is achieved through principles of management and business practices is hardly new—it echoes the early twentieth-century "gospel of efficiency" challenged by Dwight Waldo in 1948 in his pathbreaking book, The Administrative State. Asking, "Efficiency for what?", Waldo warned that public administrative efficiency must be backed by a framework of consciously held democratic values. Revisiting Waldo's Administrative State brings together a group of distinguished authors who critically explore public administration's big ideas and issues and question whether contemporary efforts to "reinvent government," promote privatization, and develop new public management approaches constitute a coherent political theory capable of meeting the complex challenges of governing in a democracy. Taking Waldo's book as a starting point, the authors revisit and update his key concepts and consider their applicability for today. The book follows Waldo's conceptual structure, first probing the material and ideological background of modern public administration, problems of political philosophy, and finally particular challenges inherent in contemporary administrative reform. It concludes with a look ahead to "wicked" policy problems—such as terrorism, global warming, and ecological threats—whose scope is so global and complex that they will defy any existing administrative structures and values. Calling for a return to conscious consideration of democratic accountability, fairness, justice, and transparency in government, the book's conclusion assesses the future direction of public administrative thought. This book can stand alone as a commentary on reconciling democratic values and governance today or as a companion when reading Waldo's classic volume.

Public administration is reeling under complex challenges and pressures in the face of the changing trends in liberalization, privatization and globalization. As a pertinent area of social sciences, it is in search of a new identity in the form of theoretical bases, conceptual clarity and contextual applicability. The development of the discipline is characterized by failed, semi-developed and recycled narratives, which are unable to provide any well-defined epistemological parameters. Whatever one finds in the form of conceptual and applied growth in public administration, especially pertaining to the Third World, appears to be borrowed, imitated and implemented out of context. The discipline of public administration must therefore reinvent itself in the wake of new developments in the areas of theory building, organizational reforms, information technology, participatory development, corporate ethics, humane governance, responsive administration, non-state organizations and administrative capability. This book makes an attempt to grapple with some of these contemporary concerns in order to generate a debate on the impact of globalization on public administration. A collection of diverse topics that address various facets of public administration, the overall thrust is on developing indigenous approaches for meeting the growing demands of the changing scenario. The wide range of issues covered in the volume makes for a comprehensive view of the various perceptions within the discipline of public administration. The book will be of immense use to students, academicians, researchers, policy makers and practitioners in public administration.

Philosophy and Public Administration provides a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the philosophical foundations of the study and practice of public administration. In this revised second edition, Edoardo Ongaro offers an accessible guide for improving public administration, exploring connections between basic ontological and epistemological stances and public governance, while offering insights for researching and teaching philosophy for public administration in university programmes.

Dialog between practitioners and academics has increasingly become the exception rather than the rule in contemporary public administration circles. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, Debating Public Administration: Management Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities tackles some of the major management challenges, choices, and opportunities of the twenty-first century facing public managers across various subfields of public administration. Informed by contemporary pressures on public managers to reconceptualize purpose, redefine administrative rationality, recapitalize human assets, reengage resources, and revitalize democratic constitutionalism, the book offers students, practitioners, and researchers an opportunity to take stock and ponder the future of practice and research in public administration. Organized by three sets of major management challenges facing the field—Rethinking Administrative Rationality in a Democratic Republic, Recapitalizing Organizational Capacity, and Reconceptualizing Institutions for New Policy Challenges—the book takes an uncommon approach to the study of these topics. In it, leading practitioners and academics comment on condensed versions of articles appearing in the Theory to Practice feature of Public Administration Review (PAR) from 2006 through 2011. The authors and commentators focus on some of the best current research, draw lessons from that literature for practice, and identify gaps in research that need to be addressed. They expertly draw out themes, issues, problems, and prospects, providing bulleted lessons and practical takeaways. This makes the book a unique one-stop resource for cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and cross-professional exchanges on contemporary challenges.

The contributors to this volume contend that the North American political system is undergoing a serious governmental crisis - political leaders know only how to campaign, not how to gain consensus on goals or direct a course that is to the good of the nation. Public administration is therefore forced to compensate for the growing inadequacy of the 'leaders', and with a normative-based body of theorizing, perform its key role of governance within a democratic system of polycentric power. The book offers a revisualization of the relationship between public servants and the citizens they serve, and a continuing discourse on how public administration can constructively balance forces of change and stability in order for democracy to evolve and mature.