Taking Public Administration Seriously

• DOI: 10.1177/0095399704272402
• Published date: 01 March 2005
• Date: 01 March 2005
• Author: O. C. McSwite
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0095399704272402ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2005McSwite / HUMANISM AND BUREAUCRAT BASHING

TAKING PUBLIC

ADMINISTRATION SERIOUSLY

Beyond Humanism and Bureaucrat Bashing

O. C. MCSWITE

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and

The George Washington University

I accepted the invitation to participate in this Disputatio Sine Fine forum

because when I read the manuscript “Theorizing the Authentic: Identity,

Engagement, and Public Space” and the two reviews it evoked,it occurred

to me that the intersection of the lines of thought represented in these writ-

ings offers an opportunity perhaps to resolve a core misunderstanding and

confusion besetting the project of creating a theory of civic discourse for

public administration.

First, let me state what I understand to be the essence of the argument

that each author advances. In her article, Kelly Campbell (2005) approves

of the emphasis that the field of public administration has been placing on

civic engagement as a legitimate part of democratic governance. How-

ever, she chides the field for pursuing an overly limited and insufficiently

inclusive approach to such engagement. She argues that, in addition to the

social benefits of participation, which are currently “heavily weighted

towards formal policy processes, ” civicengagement has enormous, unre-

alized potential for personal transformation or development of the citizen

as a human being. Although this potential is widely recognized by writers

in the field, she notes, little is done to promote or encourage it. The practi-

cal or action issues that this expanded concern entails, the author con-

cludes, are those of identifying what authentic engagement looks like and

structuring and operating safe civic spaces where such transformational

engagements can occur.In other words, this is a problem of public admin-

istrators’learning to provide “opportunities for exchange and a safe place

for these occasions to take place while guarding them from any attempts

to unduly influence, direct, or control the outcomes” (p. 700).

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ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 37 No. 1, March 2005 116-125

DOI: 10.1177/0095399704272402

© 2005 Sage Publications