Public Administration and Macroeconomic Issues: Is This the Time for a Marriage Proposal?

DOI10.1177/0095399720915292
AuthorHoward A. Frank,Yanbing Han,Min Xiong
Date01 October 2020
Published date01 October 2020
Subject MatterArticles
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Article
Administration & Society
2020, Vol. 52(9) 1439 –1462
Public Administration
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Issues: Is This the Time
for a Marriage Proposal?
Yanbing Han1 , Min Xiong1,
and Howard A. Frank1
Abstract
A number of Public Administration (PA) scholars have raised concerns
regarding the discipline’s neglect of macroeconomic challenges. Our article
focuses on the link between macroeconomic trends and PA. We submit
that PA needs to address changing economic structure, shrinking workforce,
growing financial leverage, and rising wealth inequity to maintain relevance.
Study of these trends complements PA research on government revenue
reform and economic development. Furthermore, we suggest PA rebalances
its underlying assumptions regarding intellectual boundaries and view of
human nature. Without a paradigm shift, PA may lose any legitimate claim
to be an appropriate administrative science.
Keywords
macroeconomic issue, metaparadigm, public administration
Introduction
A number of scholars contend that Public Administration (PA) has drifted away
from big questions of social and economic policy (e.g., Milward et al., 2016;
Roberts, 2013, 2018). From their perspective, neglect of social forces and their
1Florida International University, Miami, USA
Corresponding Author:
Yanbing Han, Department of Public Policy & Administration, Florida International University,
11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL 33199, USA.
Email: yhan010@fiu.edu

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Administration & Society 52(9)
relation to policy drivers has made PA increasingly irrelevant to public dis-
course. It also adds to the widening gap between practitioners and scholars in
the field (Pollitt, 2017), and ultimately challenges the discipline’s ability to
produce usable knowledge for its ostensible target audience (Perry, 2012).
In response to this challenge, our article focuses on the link between mac-
roeconomic issues and PA. We assert that mainstream PA lacks sufficient
research on macroeconomic issues, despite historically low economic growth
and inflation-adjusted wage gains in post–Great Recession America. The cur-
rent economic blinders are unlike the late 1940s, when many distinguished
PA scholars studied macroeconomic issues left by the Great Depression
(Roberts, 2018). Instead, our current intellectual prism augurs for lack of
intellectual respect from other disciplines (Wright, 2011) that results from an
increasingly narrow intraorganization focus that neglects macro dynamics
such as the economic environment.
This “economic involution” (Ventriss, 2013) in PA is consequential.
Failure to generate usable knowledge is only one component of the disci-
pline’s normative blinders. Another component is failing to recognize the
critical role of robust economic conditions as a precursor to democratic gov-
ernance (Zakaria, 2003). Sputtering economies contributed to the collapse of
the Weimar Republic 80 years ago and have played a role in the rise of illib-
eral democracies (e.g., Turkey, Venezuela) more recently (Levitsky & Ziblatt,
2018). In the United States, 40 years of stagnating real earnings for many
Americans (DeSilver, 2018) and the widening wealth gap (Donovan &
Bradley, 2018) have led to a coarsening of political discourse and increased
political polarization (Cook & Gronke, 2005; Ventriss, 2015). Nonetheless,
one is hard-pressed to find enough in-depth discussion of this linkage in the
PA literature despite our professed commitment to democratic governance
(Durant & Rosenbloom, 2017; Frank, 2009; Milward et al., 2016; Ni et al.,
2017; Raadschelders & Lee, 2011; Roberts, 2013; Ventriss, 2013).
In the next section of this article, we elaborate on the absence of macro-
economics in mainstream PA. Then, we offer two propositions to explain
why PA is reluctant to address “large forces” questions. Subsequently, we
develop a rationale for including macroeconomics from both a theoretical
and practical perspective. Our intent is to provide a roadmap to overcoming
the intellectual myopia that fosters the PA–macroeconomics gap.
Our intellectual “marriage proposal” identifies four significant macroeco-
nomic trends over the past decade that have deeply influenced democratic
governance. These include changing economic structure, shrinking work-
force, growing financial leverage, and rising wealth inequity. We bridge these
macroeconomic issues with PA research and suggest the discipline should
address structural reform of governmental revenue systems and workforce

Han et al.
1441
development to foster economic development and democratic governance. In
the long term, we assert that PA scholarship has to rebalance its intellectual
portfolio and incorporate economic megatrends to balance its current intraor-
ganizational focus on performance and employee motivation. Furthermore,
to make the marriage work, PA scholarship has to examine its long-standing
aversion to “economic man” and utility maximization, and recognize that
economic well-being is a form of prosocial behavior that fosters democratic
governance. This metaparadigm shift needs attention in PA leading journals
and its pedagogy.
Macroeconomics is Missing in Action
There is little doubt PA has been marginalizing macroeconomic issues for
decades. In the 1990s, Frank (1992) noted “a perverse neglect” of macro-
economic conditions and warned that PA would be irrelevant to practice if
this continued. Zorn (1998) stated that “the discipline may be purposefully
excluding economists from the inner circle” (p. 1126). More recently, Frank
(2009) noted the limited disciplinary discussion of the Great Recession and
its impact and called for including economic and financial literacy in PA
research and education. In the introduction article of a Public Administration
Review
(PAR) symposium on the financial crisis, Khademian (2009) found
that PA “spent little energy focusing on the design, method, management,
and leadership of our financial regulatory system” (p. 595). To examine the
implications of the financial crisis on public affairs, Potter (2012) pointed
out that PA failed to effectively contribute to the debates regarding financial
regulatory policy. Ventriss (2013) identified such ignorance as “economic
involution,” that is “advancing administrative and policy condensation
wherein failing to address the underlying assumptions of the economic fab-
ric itself” (p. 640).
Macroeconomic issues may not be the only “large force” that the disci-
pline has neglected. More broadly, PA tends to ignore overall macrosocietal
issues. As Roberts (2009, 2018) argued, PA has largely abandoned the tradi-
tional study of the macro dynamics suggested by Leonard White. During a
roundtable discussion at the conference of the Public Management Research
Association
(PMRA) in 2016, several leading scholars believed that PA
neglected the changing nature of the state and its macroeconomic contexts
(Milward et al., 2016).
Systematic literature reviews of leading PA journals and textbooks con-
firm this neglect. Lan and Anders (2000) analyzed 431 articles from five PA
journals1 and found only 4.2% articles addressed “social and economic issues”
compared with 31.0% on “organizational management.” Raadschelders and

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Administration & Society 52(9)
Lee (2011) made a qualitative observation from PAR articles from 2000 to
2009 and found that as a core function of the modern administrative state,
“economic management” was one of the “underserved topics.” Ni et al.
(2017) made a bibliometric analysis of PAR from 1940 to 2013 and found the
proportional contribution from economic analysis was declining. An exami-
nation of three important PA textbooks2 by Roberts (2013) revealed no sys-
tematic reference to “large forces” including economic transformation. Frank
et al. (2009) analyzed articles from two major public budget and financial
management journals3 from 1996 to 2006. They found no article related to
macroeconomic issues, central bank policy, or financial literacy (Frank et al.,
2009). The result was surprising because, on the face, this subdiscipline
should address these topics.
The Rationale Behind Economic Blinders
Leading scholars in the discipline acknowledge a serious lack of attention to
economic policy and administration. This is consistent with the “large
forces” (e.g., Roberts, 2013) critique of PA’s focus on the organization and
behavior (with emphasis on motivation structure) to the exclusion of broader
policy issues and their drivers. In this section, we offer plausible rationales
for this neglect under two foci: (a) some PA scholars might intentionally
exclude macroeconomic issues; (b) some PA scholars want to address mac-
roeconomic issues but are precluded from doing so given a predominant
academic culture.
Excluding Macroeconomic Issues Intentionally
Some PA scholars might intentionally exclude macroeconomic issues. Why?
First, in fear of the identity crisis or to establish the boundaries of the field,
PA has filtered economic policy to foster its intellectual identity. Thus, mac-
roeconomic issues are purposely placed on the other side of intellectual
boundaries. Moulton (2018) contended, “we have built a wall that places
policy research on one side . . . and...

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