Reviving the Progressive Spirit of Public Administration

• Author: Alasdair Roberts
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12695
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

Book Review Editors’ Introduction 135

Reviving the Progressive Spirit of Public Administration

Alasdair Roberts is professor of public

affairs at the Harry S Truman School of

Public Affairs at the University of Missouri.

His most recent book is

Four Crises of

Democracy: Representation, Mastery,

Discipline, Anticipation

(New York: Oxford

University Press, 2016).

E-mail: robertsas@missouri.edu

Book Reviews

Danny L. Balfour and Stephanie P. Newbold , Editors

Alasdair Roberts

University of Missouri

Donald Kettl , Escaping Jurassic Government

(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2016).

200 pp. $25.00 (paper), ISBN: 9780815728016 .

scholars and professionals to develop a new “strategy

of governance,” just as Progressive reformers did a

century ago. The book also appeals to Progressive-era

thinking in a second and less obvious way. It revives a

long-neglected way of talking about the big challenges

confronting the American government.

Kettl begins with a warning: Most of today ’ s political

debate is focused on the wrong question. Politicians

and voters are absorbed by questions of policy—that

D onald Kettl ’ s new book is a lucid and

compelling warning about the growing

gap between what Americans expect from

their federal government and its capacity to respond

intelligently to those expectations. It is a call for