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Conceptualizing Public Administration: Public
Administration as a Disciplinary Matrix
Abstract



This paper argues that the debate over the
proper definition of Public Administration is at root a debate over the proper
conceptualization of the field relative to both the private sector and from
other fields and disciplines in the academic sector. To this end, we discuss Public
Administration as a disciplinary matrix describing its role in the state, in the
society, and in the university; and what differentiates its institutions from
other kinds of organizations. More pointedly, we can then argue that Public
Administration, in a sense has a unified, coherent and sufficiently independent
practice, discipline, and object of study when examined through a Kuhnian
lens.





Introduction


Currently, many
practitioners and scholars of �Public Administration� view their field as
encompassing a vast and heterogeneous range of paradigms, �schools of thought,� theories, narratives and
�guiding
ideas.� All of these artifacts are thought to be clustered loosely or linked by
�family resemblances,� but to lack any single common set of practices, purposes,
values and behaviors upon which scholars and practitioners might settle as a
definition. Consequently, the study of
�Public Administration� is also thought to lack a simple, singular definition of
its scope. Rather, it is thought that there are many different, sometimes
competing, definitions of its subject matter. As these different definitions
remain relatively autonomous, the resulting confusion is held to constitute an
�identity crisis� (e.g., Marini, 1971, Box
1992; White, Adams, and Forrester 1996). Some even suggest that such a crisis
is �Public Administration�s� identity (Rutgers
1998).



We will argue that
�Public Administration� is actually a coherent discipline defined by a lucid
�disciplinary matrix.� Toward substantiating this claim we...