A Conservative Critique of Blacksburg
| DOI | 10.1177/0095399718764327 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Author | Sara Mattingly-Jordan,Phillip W. Gray |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2018
Article
Administration & Society
2018, Vol. 50(5) 725 –747
A Conservative Critique
© The Author(s) 2018
https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399718764327
DOI: 10.1177/0095399718764327
of Blacksburg
journals.sagepub.com/home/aas
Phillip W. Gray1 and Sara Mattingly-Jordan2
Abstract
This article presents a conservative rejoinder to the Blacksburg perspective
inviting a more discursive elaboration on the overlaps between key
conservative thinkers, such as those from Michael Oakeshott, and portions
of the Blacksburg view, specifically from the works of John Rohr and Charles
T. Goodsell. We posit a conservative perspective that would contest
three points in the Refounding texts. The article concludes by elaborating
on the generative role that a discussion between the Refounders and key
conservatives plays in positing new avenues for administrative theory and
addressing challenges to the discretionary power of civil servants in a
constitutional democracy.
Keywords
conservatism, administrative state, Blacksburg
Statement of Ontological Disclosure and
Motivation
In the closing pages of Refounding Democratic Public Administration,
Wamsley asks for authors to engage in a practice of ontological disclosure,
whereby they clarify their positions and motivations for their writing. In this
vein, we offer our position on the purpose of this article: We are seeking to
1Texas A&M University at Qatar, Doha, Qatar
2Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Alexandria, VA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Phillip W. Gray, Assistant Professor, Liberal Arts Program, Texas A&M University at Qatar,
Texas A&M Engineering Building, Education City, P.O. Box 23874, Doha, Qatar.
Email: phillip.gray@qatar.tamu.edu
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Administration & Society 50(5)
close the perceived distance between conservatism and public administration
by pointing out areas of similarity and difference. We believe that the need
for such a project arises from concerns of practical relevance and theoretical
completeness in the Blacksburg Manifesto or Refounding Public
Administration project. With respect to practice, the resurgence of conserva-
tism in the U.S. executive calls up some of the concerns expressed by the
Refounding authors which will likely motivate the inheritors of the
Refounding position to again address political conservative critiques of
American public administration. With respect to theory, the capacious
approach to adaptation of themes from social and political theory shown
through the first two Refounding texts did not, somewhat curiously, lead to
the authors to address the theoretical discussions that motivated the practical
political concerns they did discuss. With these two points in mind, we posit
that the next iteration of development of the Refounding perspective might
benefit from addressing conservative theory.
Introduction
In the two previous iterations of the Blacksburg Refounding project (Wamsley
et al., 1990; Wamsley & Wolf, 1996), the contributors engaged with and inte-
grated various methodological, institutional, and normative viewpoints. In
both texts, however, there was a constellation of perspectives that were
noticeably missing, which we call, in summary, the conservative viewpoint.
Practically speaking, the absence of an explicitly conservative position on the
role of bureaucracy could be expected as part of the Manifesto’s motivation
was against right-leaning antibureaucratic sentiment. But, theoretically, the
inattention to conservative political and social thought is unfortunate.
The lack of an explicitly conservative voice is lamentable given two fea-
tures of the Refounding texts. First, leaving aside the conservative position
left to the side a sizable population of citizens in the United States who are
participants to the dialogue on the public interest and the Constitution.
Second, the Refounding texts were remarkably capacious in their approach to
social and political philosophy. That such an otherwise ecumenical and con-
scientious work which brought together perspectives as varied as constitu-
tional law and Freudian psychoanalysis would not have included the
perspective of conservative scholars, whether historical or contemporary to
the Refounding moment, seems an unfortunate oversight (see, for example,
Arkes, 1990, pp. 220-223). This article aims to address these points by open-
ing a dialogue between the Refounding authors and conservative political
philosophers with the intention of advancing new theoretical avenues for a
revivified Refounding Public Administration project.
Gray and Jordan
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While the present climate of political polarization might suggest that a
conservative critique must be strident or purposely denigrate other perspec-
tives, the purpose of this article is to, in its own limited sphere, provide a
friendly and constructive conservative rejoinder to the Blacksburg viewpoint.
As a rejoinder, our starting point is to flesh out the areas in which American
conservatives’ view and the Blacksburg view might be similar and where
they might differ with respect to expansion of the power of civil service and
government. We strive to point out why such expansion is viewed negatively
in conservative thinkers’ viewpoints. The article also discusses the overlap in
the American conservative view with elements of Rohr’s focus on regime
values, and points out that the difference between them lies in what counts as
a “regime value.” We also consider the manner in which Goodsell’s defense
of bureaucracy aligns in with the arguments of conservative philosopher
Michael Oakeshott. After examining these points of similarity between the
Blacksburg perspective and the conservative disposition, we will then expand
more fully on the conservative “mood” as it pertains to public administration
and its expansion.
For our purposes, “conservative” in this article refers to American con-
servatism as it has developed over the past 60 years. The history of
American conservatism is a task beyond this article, but a narrative, as
usually told, helps to explain our meaning (Kirk, 1953, 1982). American
conservatism starts with the founding of the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute (ISI; originally “Intercollegiate Society of Individualists”) in
1953, the publication of National Review in 1955, the founding of the
“Young Americans for Freedom” group (YAF) in 1960 and through its
founding “Sharon Statement,” and the 1964 presidential campaign of
Barry Goldwater (for an overview, see Edwards, 2003; Nash, 1996;
Robin, 2011. On Goldwater’s “constitutive rhetoric” in constructing mod-
ern American conservatism, see Taylor, 2016). These organizations and
thinkers did not all speak with a single voice, however. The disparate ele-
ments of American conservatism were amalgamated through their shared
goal of promoting a strong anti-Communism during the Cold War period.
This also provided a foundational idea for alliance, or “fusionism” which
is a combination of libertarian, natural law, and religious conservatism
(Meyer, 1996). As such, American conservatism is not so much a unified
political program or ideology, but rather is a mixture of sometimes com-
plimentary, sometimes conflicting worldviews—similar to American pro-
gressivism. When discussing conservatism in comparison with Blacksburg,
therefore, we will aim to keep to the broad “mainstream” of conservatism
rather than attempting to provide an extensive elaboration on each sepa-
rate perspective.
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Administration & Society 50(5)
What Is American Conservatism?
Providing a concise definition of the “conservative position” is not a simple
task. While Kekes (2001) made an extended attempt at definition and
Kunzendorf, Ejaife, and Petrychova (2015) and Permaloff and Grafton (2003)
attempted to operationalize conservatism in their work on measuring ideol-
ogy, clarity on conservatism remains elusive. Conservatism is difficult to
define for two main reasons.1 First, conservatism is distinct from a purely
reactionary position. A strictly reactionary view seeks the reassertion and
solidification of a past state of affairs. Reactionaries would prefer to maintain
this situation permanently and unchangingly. While conservatives do seek to
retrench traditions and maintain certain institutions and mores, they do so
without the reactionaries’ expectation or desire to “freeze” a society at a par-
ticular, nostalgic, point.
Second, conservatism is less ideologically coherent than is liberalism or
progressivism and this leads to a multitude of policy and institutional prefer-
ences that could be described under the big-tent label of conservatism. James
Alexander (2016) describes this state of plurality in conservatism well: “we
cannot simply have a model of some sort of timeless conservatism,” as “it
leaves out the very consciousness of historical situation which seems to have
been responsible for consciousness of conservatism in the first place” (p.
220). Whether a particular policy proposal is conservative or merely right-
liberal is open for discussion and often depends upon the national and tempo-
ral context. For instance, while an American conservative would desire strong
limitations on public administration at the national level, it is likely that a
French conservative would be quite comfortable with expansion—Indeed,
the French conservative may strongly advocate for expansion of the public
administrative...
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