Postmodern Public Administration
1st Edition
Published on 15. October 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-0-7656-1705-7 (ISBN)
Description
This widely acclaimed work provides a lively counterbalance to the standard assessment-measurement-accountability prescriptions that have made showing you did your job more important than actually doing it. Now extensively revised, it articulates a postmodern theory of public administration that challenges the field to redirect its attention away from narrow, technique-oriented scientism, and toward democratic openness and ethics.The authors incorporate insights from thinkers like Rorty, Giddens, Derrida, and Foucault to recast public administration as an arena of decentered practices. In their framework, ideographic collisions and everyday impasses bring about political events that challenge the status quo, creating possibilities for social change. "Postmodern Public Administration" is an outstanding intellectual achievement that has rewritten the political theory of public administration. This new edition will encourage everyone who reads it to think quite differently about democratic governance.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Academic and Postgraduate
Illustrations
references, name index, subject index
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
360 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7656-1705-7 (9780765617057)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Miller, Hugh T.
Content
Preface PART ONE: Critique 1. A New Approach to Democratic Governance The Argument 2. Orthodoxy and Its Alternatives I. The Loop Model of Democracy II. Quixotic Mainstream Reforms III. The Institutionalist/Constitutionalist Alternative IV. Communitarian/Citizen Alternative V. The Need for Discourse Theory 3. The Growing Gap Between Words and Deeds: Postmodern Symbolic Politics I. Modern/Postmodern II. Unstable Signs Leading to a Virtual Reality III. Neotribalism and the Decentered Self IV. Postmodern Conditions: Orthodoxy, Constitutionalism, and Communitarianism PART TWO: Discourse Theory 4. Theoretical Underpinnings of Discourse Theory: Phenomenology, Constructivism, Structuration Theory, and Energy Fields I. Theoretical Base II. Using Constructivism to Deconstruct the "Conflated Aggregation" Bureaucracy III. The Public Sphere as Energy Field 5. Warrants for Discourse I. Policy as the Struggle for Meaning Capture II. Authenticity, Ideal Speech, Agonistic Tension III. Revocable Warrants for Discourse IV. Applications of Discourse 6. Nascent Forms of Discourse