Beneficence in Public Administration Research, or Who Needs the NSF Anyway?

• Author: Sara R. Jordan
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399713518207
• Published date: 01 January 2014
• Date: 01 January 2014
• Subject Matter: Disputatio Sine Fine

518207AASXXX10.1177/0095399713518207Administration & SocietyJordan
research-article2013
Disputatio Sine Fine
Administration & Society
2014, Vol 46(1) 112 –121

© The Author(s) 2013
DOI: 10.1177/0095399713518207

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Beneficence in Public
Administration Research,
or Who Needs the NSF
Anyway?
Sara R. Jordan1
Editor’s Note:
The contribution of this Disputatio Sine Fine comes from Professor Sara Jordan
at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. Professor Jordan has more than a
few critical things to say about Congressional lack of understanding of political
science research. For better or worse, the far greater number of public
administration programs are located in political science programs, so Professor
Jordan’s remarks certainly have relevance for those of who have been, or are
now, in political science departments. If you would like to join in this discussion,
please feel free to jump in.
Abstract
The charge to link academic research to good ends is one that has, lately, been
linked to federal funding for all types of political science research, to include
public adminsitration research. Public administration researchers are proded
frequently to develop “points for practitioners” or “recommendations for
practice” from their academic research projects. The purpose of these
points is to provide practitioners with tools to improve government services
and, it is hoped, to provide more good in their communities. Should public
administration researchers concern themselves with the good that their
1University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Sara R. Jordan, Department of Political Science, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33133,
USA.
Email: s.jordan1@miami.edu

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Jordan
113
research could produce? In this disputatio, I take up this question to suggest
that the good we provide as public administration researchers is a limited,
community level, good.
Keywords
public administration research, researcher, beneficence, political science,
federal funding
Introduction
Once upon a time that seems to have been forgotten, Paul Appleby argued
that the larger the dimensions of the program and the more powerful the ben-
eficiary public, the heavier was the moral obligation of administrators to seek
flexible dilutions of the majority insistence with a factor of empathy for
minorities and individuals. Or as he put it, “The weaker and less privileged
the clientele, the greater should be the administrator’s concern to realize the
full dimensions of the majority assent (1950, p. 175).” Appleby was asking
that public administrators behave, as Schubert (1957) would classify them, as
“Administrative Platonists,” finding and maximizing the moral good in their
public careers (pp. 349-357). Appleby and Schubert, and many others, ques-
tioned the good that public administrators should do. In this disputatio, I want
to ask, at what level should public administration researchers do good?
The question about the good wrought through public administration
research, still a subset of political science in many universities, is a timely
one. The recent debate over the Coburn Amendment and the Flake
Amendment, both of which proposed to defund political science research
funded via the National Science Foundation (NSF), brought to the fore the
lingering question: What is the public value of political science research?
Considering that public administration researchers, both in the United States
and abroad, use and contribute to NSF-funded data, the defunding of political
science is a matter that should provoke serious concern for public administra-
tion scholars (Jordan & Gray, 2013a).1
Coburn and Flake, unsuccessful and successful, respectively, defended
their proposals to defund political science research, specifying it by name
and asserting that political science contributes little to the technological and
economic advancement of the United States. Both argued that continuing to
fund political science research would do harm to the financial fitness of the
United States (H.AMDT. 1094 to H.R. 5326 and H.R. 933). In the proposal,
passed on March 21, 2013 (as H.R. 5326 by the 2013 Commerce, Justice,
Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act), Senator Tom Coburn (an
MD), challenged the director of the NSF to defund political science on the
grounds that

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Administration & Society 46(1)
Studies of presidential executive power and American’s attitudes toward the
Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American’s life from a threatening
condition or to advance America’s competitiveness in the world . . . Research
institutions and academic associations should support these investigations with
their own resources. Discontinuing funding for these types of studies will
increase our ability to fund research into basic fields of mathematics and
science such as engineering, biology, physics, and technology. (Coburn, March
12, 2013)
One could only hope that Senator Flake’s derision of the study of
“American’s attitudes toward the Senate filibuster” did not come to haunt
him during the recent filibuster efforts regarding implementation of the
Affordable Care Act. Or, perhaps, an astute observer of the history and imple-
mentation of science and technology policy could point out to Senator...