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In the past thirty years, public administration has developed more systematic patterns of inquiry about the substance of public organization behavior, public management, and public policy implementation. This book explores how the science and art of policy administration is definable, describable, replicable, and cumulative. Frederickson and Smith describe several theories and analytical approaches that contribute to what we know about policy administration. This book asks: Which theories or approaches are the most promising, the most influential? Which are the most important now and likely to be the most important in the future? The purpose of this effort is to set out a detailed description of key theories in contemporary public administration and thus improve the reliability of our knowledge and our understanding of public administration.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Preface(p. vii)
• 1 Introduction: The Possibilities of Theory(p. 1)
• 2 Theories of Political Control of Bureaucracy(p. 15)
• 3 Theories of Bureaucratic Politics(p. 41)
• 4 Public Institutional Theory(p. 67)
• 5 Theories of Public Management(p. 95)
• 6 Postmodern Theory(p. 127)
• 7 Decision Theory(p. 161)
• 8 Rational Choice Theory(p. 185)
• 9 Theories of Governance(p. 207)
• 10 Conclusion: A Bright Future for Theory?(p. 229)
• References(p. 249)
• Index(p. 267)

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CHOICE Review

This book is a godsend for instructors who teach a subject that is relatively new, multidisciplinary, overly descriptive, and, above all, practical, and that undergraduate students tend to find "boring, but necessary." Frederickson (Univ. of Kansas) and Smith (Univ. of Nebraska) elevate public administration to the status of a discipline by insisting that it is capable of generating empirically oriented, heuristic, and normative theories. Accordingly, they review seven "families" of theories: the political control of bureaucracy, bureaucratic politics, institutionalism, public management, postmodernism, decision-making, and governance. The theories are also assessed comparatively in relation to six criteria: parsimony/elegance, explanatory capacity, replicability, descriptive capacity, predictive capacity, and empirical warrant, thus providing a comprehensive evaluative guide to theory in the discipline. This theoretical map, combined with its lucid and engaging writing style, will most certainly realize the authors' hope that their "ordering of public administration knowledge and theory will stimulate debate and the subsequent refinement of theoretical categories." Better still, the book will make public administration "unboring" but necessary, as well as academic and practical, precisely how it should be presented. As such, the book is an indispensable teaching tool (and essential reference guide) for teachers and students of public administration. ^BSumming Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. A. F. Johnson Bishop's University

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

H. George Frederickson is Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas.
Kevin B. Smith is an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.