Identity Without Boundaries

• DOI: 10.1177/0095399710366215
• Author: Jos C. N. Raadschelders
• Date: 01 April 2010
• Published date: 01 April 2010
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

42(2) 131 –159

© 2010 SAGE Publications

DOI: 10.1177/0095399710366215

http://aas.sagepub.com

Identity Without

Boundaries: Public

Administration’s

Canon(s) of Integration

Jos C. N. Raadschelders1

Abstract

It is often charged that the study of public administration lacks boundaries

and suffers from an identity crisis. This charge is grounded in a positivist

belief in the unity of knowledge. From the perspective of positivists, the

study of public administration lacks the epistemological unity that would

make it a true science. Regarding public administration as an interdisciplinary

study and practice makes it possible, indeed necessary, to include all theories,

models, and concepts in use and not just those that are recommended and

pursued by positivists. A conceptual map of knowledge integration efforts in

public administration illustrates why public administration cannot, and should

not be, a traditional academic discipline but rather must be understood as an

interdisciplinary study and practice.

Keywords

interdisciplinarity, knowledge integration, identity crisis

The backwardness of social knowledge is marked in its division into

independent and insulated branches of learning. Anthropology, history,

sociology, morals, economics, political science, go their own ways

without constant and systematized fruitful interaction.

(Dewey, 1927, p. 171)

1University of Oklahoma, Norman

Corresponding Author:

Jos C. N. Raadschelders, Political Science Department, University of Oklahoma, 455 W. Lindsey

St., DAHT 304, Norman, OK 73019-2002

Email: raadschelders@ou.edu

AAS366215AAS

132 Administration & Society 42(2)

Social Science has accumulated many diverse bodies of knowledge.

Each specific parcel is separate, almost insulated from the others.

(Fiske, 1986, p. 61)

Some believe that public administration is a study without boundaries

(Streib, Slotkin, & Rivera, 2001, p. 522), that it suffers from an identity crisis

(Ostrom, 1974), that its multidisciplinary nature makes it “the Israel of aca-

demic disciplines—always squabbling over the precise (and priceless)

boundary lines that define our identity” (Rodgers & Rodgers, 2000, p. 436),

and that it is “left to feast on the leftovers” of the mono-disciplines (Rodgers

& Rodgers, 2000, p. 441). Use of the word squabbling conjures up an image

of scholars disagreeing on rather petty issues. But there is nothing petty about

the questions that surround the identity of the study and practice of public

administration.1 The often heard criticism that the study is not scientific

because it lacks boundaries only makes sense if public administration is

viewed as a traditional academic discipline that strives for a positivist unity

of knowledge. What is less understood or forgotten is that the study also

offers a “terminal” professional or practitioner’s degree and has an obligation

to serve practicing professionals in a fashion similar to applied fields such as

law, medicine, business administration, and social work. When the breadth,

multidimensionality and multifaceted nature of public administration is taken

into account, traditional positivists’ criticisms about the field’s lack of bound-

aries are meaningless.

The dominant approach to establishing a traditional discipline’s identity,

and thus its boundaries, is to achieve knowledge integration through develop-

ing epistemologically and methodologically consistent models distinct from

other disciplines. Commentaries critical of public administration’s lack of

boundaries and identity are therefore implicitly biased toward, and misled by,

the achievements made by disciplines that enjoy some degree of epistemo-

logical and methodological unity, but these critiques display a fundamental

misunderstanding of the nature of the field.

The study of public administration is characterized by methodological

pluralism (Meier, 2005, pp. 664-665) and lack of boundaries, but achieving

unity of knowledge is more likely for studies that claim a subject matter not

claimed by other disciplines, do not have to be involved in the complicating

demands of serving practitioners, and are either purely logical systems (e.g.,

mathematics) or more empirically grounded (e.g., physics, chemistry). If

viewed realistically as something quite different from natural science, public

administration must have, and indeed should have, empirical and design

components that not only aim at describing what is, but also what ought to be