Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is not really a book on theories of public administration, but rather a book dealing with approaches to public administration. A "theory" as these authors use the term deals with budgeting or organizational issues. These are no more theories about public administration than a "theory" of breathing or eating is a theory about living. But that aside, this is a good book because it prevents an overview of the main intellectual currents in public administration. So from that standpoint, the book is very good in informing one of what is out there and why it matters. It is dense, but accessible for a book of this type. I would get it if you need to study for comps or prelims, but skip it if not.