Customer Reviews

Postmodern Public Administration: Toward Discourse

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Excerpt from review by O.C. McSwite . . . Fox and Miller draw on Habermas' theory of authentic speech acts and Arendt's idea of agnostic tension (there must be argument and struggle). Following these theorists, they propose that discourse must be sincere, intended to be relevant to the situation, characterized by willing (noncoerced, nonapathetic) attention, and must involve participants who are willing and able to make a substantive contribution (no free riders or fools allowed). These are what they call warrants for discourse, freely available to all. The idea seems to be that if involvement in policy making follows these guidelines or rules, it will, perforce, constitute legitimate governance through discursive democracy.

In the book's final chapter, Fox and Miller use their model of discourse as a conceptual tool for assessing the efficacy of an array of real-world programs designed to employ discourse in governance. Their case analysis ranges from instances of elite-dominated manipulation at one extreme to expressionistic anarchy at the other. While they judge both these forms of participation to be democratic dead ends, they find hope or "intimations" in a few cases--for example, bioethical health decisions in Oregon, the Phoenix Futures Forum, the neighborhood health-care program studied by Cam Stivers--that discourse of the kind their model prescribes is possible. These projects had problems, but they also show possibilities. Such "nascent" forms of authentic discourse suggest that where democratic process approximates the out-lines of their model, it begins to achieve the structuration and coherence required of efficacious democratic discourse. As a final note, Fox and Miller prescribe a proactive role for public administration, whereby each administrator would capitalize on every opportunity to reach public action through a process of agonistic discourse with citizens. The key to administrators being able to achieve a proactive stance is that they must learn to listen, which is, of course, the core of the inclusiveness that their idea of discourse seeks.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE ANALYSIS: I mentioned that I found the critiques of the Blacksburg Manifesto and of communitarianism to be especially engaging and that the book's description of the post-modern political condition is one of the most cogent and gripping I have encountered. These were great highlights. The standout feature of the book, though, is the general integrity of its argument. I have used this book as a supplementary text in two of my graduate courses. While my students (most of whom had minimal exposure to philosophy of the sort employed in the book) often found the philosophical concepts and argumentation to be difficult, they were, nonetheless, thoroughly engaged and followed the argument well. I disagree with the suggestion that this book is thin on practical proposals. I came away from it, and certainly from my discussions of it with students, with a vividly clear idea of what these authors were arguing. In this respect, it is a great book for fostering the very productive discourse that it advocates.

Please ignore the negative review of this book. The reader was obviously looking to be spoonfed. I am a current student of Dr.Fox and I find him very insightful and must say this book is very readable and lucid. Post-industrial societies have become increasingly postmodern. This transformation entails corresponding problems for both society and governance. FM explicate what these problems are what this means for the role of public administration in America. What makes this book valuable? It is able to explain many tenants of postmodernism, public policy theory, and democratic government (as well as what is wrong with them) in less than 100 pages. The first part of the book would justify buying it. Secondly, even in the face of the postmodern condition, FM give us a conceptual scheme of how democratic governance is possible. If you feel their discourse theory seems inadequate and impossible, think through some of the postmodern trappings and you may find this is the stepping stone for paticipatory based will formation that many falsely believe is still prevalent in America. A secondary benefit is that this book helps one to understand "postmodernism" in part, without reading pretentious texts from French intellectuals such as Baudrillard, Barthes, and Derrida. Finally, anyone familiar with most public administration theory will realize this is a god send. Most P.A and Org theory is to state lightly, a sophmoric effort at best. So to restate the obvious, buy it.

Please ignore the negative review of this book. The reader was obviously looking to be spoonfed. I am a current student of Dr.Fox and I find him very insightful and must say this book is very readable and lucid. Post-industrial societies have become increasingly postmodern. This transformation entails corresponding problems for both society and governance. FM explicate what these problems are what this means for the role of public administration in America. What makes this book valuable? It is able to explain many tenants of postmodernism, public policy theory, and democratic government (as well as what is wrong with them) in less than 100 pages. The first part of the book would justify buying it. Secondly, even in the face of the postmodern condition, FM give us a conceptual scheme of how democratic governance is possible. If you feel their discourse theory seems inadequate and impossible, think through some of the postmodern trappings and you may find this is the stepping stone for paticipatory based will formation that many falsely believe is still prevalent in America. A secondary benefit is that this book helps one to understand "postmodernism" in part, without reading pretentious texts from French intellectuals such as Baudrillard, Barthes, and Derrida. Finally, anyone familiar with most public administration theory will realize this is a god send. Most P.A and Org theory is to state lightly, a sophmoric effort at best. So to restate the obvious, buy it.

Few books have challanged the conventional wisdom in public administraion as well as this work. I have used this volumn at both Master,s and doctoral levels as a text. While it is a challanging "read" for some, it opens new vistas for many students. I concur with most of he review by Mc Swite (White&McSwain)and would add that it has become one of the most influential works in the subfield of public administration theory.Henry D. Kass,Professor Emeritus,Hatfield School of Govt. Portland State U.

Charles Fox and Hugh Miller are certainly two of the most distinguished scholars in the field of postmodern Public Administration. The curious reader may ask: What is postmodern Public Administration? How can poststructuralist French philosophy (Baudrillard, Derrida, Lyotard, etc.) be combined with Public Administration? To put things in a rather simplified way, postmodern/poststructuralist philosophy states that there are no "truths"; everything one can refer to is a discursive construction. Most importantly, the postmodern outlook rejects "metanarratives", that is, social theories that aim at interpreting reality in broad terms. So far, this seems very reasonable. Of course truths are never absolute and depend on interpretation. And of course theories cannot represent the whole reality, for they are simplifying tools to aid us in our attempts to gasp social complexity. In addition, theories are not transcendentally "right" or "wrong", but must be subjected to criticism in order to be reviewed, improved, or simply discharged. So what is the problem with the postmodern approach to Public Administration? As Fox and Miller define it, "Postmodernism is the return and the revenge of the different, the assertion of the random nonpattern and the unassimilable anomaly. At risk, as the monolith fractures and then is deconstructed, is the loss of what western society took to be reality. If our ontological moorings are anchored in loose gravel, what price will we pay for the lack of putatively stable referents?" (p. 45). The answer to this question is: one has to pay the price of being overwhelmed by social complexity, unable to act over it. According to postmodernists, because social reality is fragmented and contextual, any theory that attempts to describe it is meaningless. In sum, postmodernism denies validity to all theories... except postmodernism! This reminds me of Ambrose Bierce's satirical definition: "Nihilist, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything, but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi." What one is left with then? A discourse (a most cherished word to postmodernists) that reaffirms over and over again that reality is much more complex than theories can ever tell you. I do not want to be unfair here and must mention that Fox and Miller present in their book a bit more than the restatement of the obvious. There one can find a discussion on the democratization of public administration, albeit it is necessarily to dig it from a pile of sophisticated - or perhaps pseudo-erudite - argumentation. However, their arguments lack the one thing which is fundamental to any discussion about democracy: a theory of power. But what can one expect from theoreticians who deny the relevance of theories?

Absolutely laborious to read. And when you do finally manage to wade through it, you find that Fox and Miller fail to ever reach a conclusion by adequately describing this elusive concept of discourse. Indeed, the last chapter is entitled "Nascent forms of Discourse"! Where is "Successful forms of Discourse"? Not in this book!