Political Theory Rediscovers Public Administration
Name
annurev-polisci-051120-125131.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
332.95 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c71dd144bd609bd15c80f76c3a05df76
Author(s)
Zacka, Bernardo
Date Issued
2022
Journal
Annual Review of Political Science
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Citation
Zacka, Bernardo. 2022. "Political Theory Rediscovers Public Administration." Annual Review of Political Science, 25 (1).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Political theory is rediscovering the colossus of public administration—the vast public service and regulatory bureaucracies and their countless employees and extensions that conduct the daily business of government. This review explains how something so visible could ever have fallen from view, and surveys four burgeoning areas of research. These pertain to the legitimacy of public administration, to the articulation of standards of good government distinct from good public policy, to the analysis of how the moral agency of bureaucrats is implicated and undermined by the everyday operation of bureaucratic agencies, and to how we should conceptualize the state when we apprehend it through the seemingly banal routines of administration. What emerges from this body of work is a picture of the executive bureaucracy as an object of normative, critical, and conceptual inquiry on a par with the other two branches of government, the legislature and the judiciary.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
10.1146/ANNUREV-POLISCI-051120-125131
