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"This book analyzes American administrative reform, taking a multidisciplinary approach, challenging existing notions of the nature, scope, and power of the American state and, with these, important aspects of today's conventional wisdom in public administration"--
List of contents
Biography Chapter 1: Fuzzy Pictures in Our Heads? Chapter 2: The Founding Era, the Corporate–Social Science Nexus, and American Administrative Reform, Circa 1730–1824 Chapter 3: Inflexion Politics, the Corporate–Social Science Nexus, and American Administrative Reform, Circa 1824–1880 Chapter 4: Industrial Agonistes, the Corporate–Social Science Nexus, and American Administrative Reform, Circa 1880–1920 Chapter 5: Post-War Boom and Bust, the Corporate–Social Science Nexus, and American Administrative Reform, Circa 1920–1940 Chapter 6: World War II, The Cold War Nexus, and American Administrative Reform, Circa 1940–1980 Chapter 7:Neoliberalism, the Corporate–Social Science Nexus, and American Administrative Reform, Circa 1980–2016 Chapter 8: Seeing with New Eyes? Bibliography Index
About the author
Robert F. Durant is Professor Emeritus, American University. He is the recipient
of several lifetime achievement awards for his research, teaching, and service to
the field.
Summary
This book analyzes American administrative reform, taking a multidisciplinary approach, challenging existing notions of the nature, scope, and power of the American state and, with these, important aspects of today’s conventional wisdom in public administration.
Additional text
This is a book that can only have been written by someone with decades of experience in researching and teaching public administration. With great care, Robert Durant traces the nature of American government since Independence. The author uses an infrastructural perspective where the state includes bureaucratically structured subnational government, private, and nonprofit actors. This is the key to this study: various actors compensate for the conscious decision to limit the visible size and administrative capacity of the federal government. Indeed, it cannot be emphasized enough that the networked state in the USA is nothing new. Students, citizens, and people working in the career civil service and in political office will benefit from reading this book. They will learn that the dominant image of stateless origins is stereotypical, and about the pervasiveness of the compensatory state. People in general have little knowledge about the stuff that Durant addresses so compellingly: namely, that the American self-conception of limited government, economic liberalism, and volunteerism leads to a system of rent-seeking contractors. This book helps anyone to see the importance of protecting democratic processes from self-serving behavior.
Jos C. N. Raadschelders, The Ohio State University, USA
