Public Administration Theory Primer (Essentials of Public Policy and Administration Series.) [Paperback]

Kevin B Smith (Author), H George Frederickson (Author), H. George Frederickson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813398045 | ISBN-13: 978-0813398044 | Publication Date: February 21, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

H. George Frederickson is Distinguished Professor of Government at the University of Kansas. Kevin B. Smith is an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He has authored or co-authored several books including The Ideology of Education and The Case Against School Choice, and is published widely in academic journals. H. George Frederickson is Distinguished Professor of Government at the University of Kansas.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (February 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813398045
• ISBN-13: 978-0813398044
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #413,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Confidence Shaken, October 1, 2007

By 

Doug in Academe (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Public Administration Theory Primer (Essentials of Public Policy and Administration Series.) (Paperback)

Writing a primer of public administration theory isn't an easy task since there is some question whether there can be such theory. Frederickson and Smith give the project a fair effort looking at public administration through a number of theoretical lenses.

The substance and arguments of the chapters tend to go down hill after the first four. Chapter five on institutionalism is almost impenetrable and hardly the stuff of a primer. Then the reader's confidence in the authors' depth of knowledge is shaken where, amid a weak reading of the human relations literature and that of managerial humanism, the authors devote two paragraphs on Weber including the following on page 102:

"One important and different approach to management theory in the evolution of public administraion is the sociology of Max Weber, who founded the study of large-scale complex organizations he labeled bureaucracy. Although he did his work in the 1930s and 1940s . . . ."

One may surely question whether Weber saw himself creating an "important and different approach to management," but if he did it in the 30s and 40s, he did it from the grave. Anyone who knows anything about Weber knows that he did his greatest work at the turn of the 20th century and was dead by 1920. Not only are the authors wrong about when Weber lived, but their brief discussion of Weber makes little sense amidst an attempt at setting out human relations theory, unless it is suppose to be an illustration of McGregor's Theory X, which is introduced on the previous page. Also disturbing is the authors' inability to distinguish between the human relations perspective and that of organizational humanists. While there are several good works in the public administration literature addressing the field of organization behavior, the management-relevant topics of this field get very fractured treatment throughout the book.

Readers, especially teachers, should read this book with a critical eye to both what is said and what is left out.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Impenetrable is right!, December 21, 2007

By 

Grad Student (Corvallis, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Public Administration Theory Primer (Essentials of Public Policy and Administration Series.) (Paperback)

I read this book for a public administration graduate class. I do not have a background in political science, so perhaps the book was more difficult for me than for others. The previous reviewer used the word "impenetrable." I found about half the chapters were exceedingly difficult for me to follow and several really were impenetrable. I did, however, learn quite a bit from it, and I even will keep the book for reference, at least for a little while. It by no means is light reading, however.

I don't know how the authors split up the writing of the book, but some chapters are written following a clear outline, and I found those to be the easiest for me to follow. The other chapters were more prone to rambling, and two in particular rambled seemingly directionless for most of the chapter, providing little material for me to grasp until the very last few pages of the chapter, where all the important information on the theory was to be found.

Reading this book was not my choice, and not having a background in the subject, I am not one to say if there's anything better. But seriously...there's got to be something better! I'm just happy we had the opportunity to discuss these theories in class with the help of other materials. That was what made the book useful for me.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference to summarize PA Theories, February 27, 2011

By 

Malcolm K. Oliver (Riverside, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Public Administration Theory Primer (Essentials of Public Policy and Administration Series.) (Paperback)

This is an excellent text for any Public Administration theory course, or for a student preparing for comp. exams. This text is helpful because it groups various theories of PA into coherent topics, which brings some order to this wide ranging and far flung literature. This text is somewhere between a masters and PhD level text, so for those in need of a text that can give you good grasp of the various theories underlying PA, then this text is extremely helpful. For those that are just trying to get through the MPA to get that job or to move up, you probably don't need this text.