Spicer provides a very readable and concise argument for a particular role of the state in US public affairs, including public administration and the character PA inquiry. It is readable because it is short (139 pages of text), avoids highbrow jargon, and flows well.
First, Spicer argues that political theory has largely been missing public administration. Despite its claims to ideological neutrality, public administration has a very strong and politically value-laden vision of the state as a purposive association driven by some substantive ends. That is, the state has a teleological character. He argues that this contrasts with the vision of the US Constitution, which imagines the state as a civil association in which the state sets the rules of conduct for individuals and groups to pursue their own ends.
The book is one of the few that brings long-standing and 'classical' arguments in political theory into mainstream PA literature. It is the statist v. libertarian argument applied to PA theory, then couched, in its later chapters, in the view of postmodern society. The 'postmodern' part of the title refers to the fragmentation of political culture that some have termed the postmodern condition, and it not about postmodern philosophy as such. Spicer argues that the purposive state model does not, and cannot work in the postmodern society. In sum, this is a well done and important piece in PA thought, and worth the read.
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