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FASHIONS AND FANTASIES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION*
Author(s) -
Spann R. N.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8500.1981.tb00481.x
Subject(s) - scholasticism , blame , reading (process) , feeling , administration (probate law) , resentment , sociology , intelligentsia , law , aesthetics , literature , philosophy , political science , politics , psychology , epistemology , social psychology , art
The title of this address results in part from discontent with much of the literature of Public Administration and Public Policy. It is mild discontent, and I do not want unduly to depreciate our writings. But I stop reading many books and articles disappointed, at finding old or obvious ideas restated in new words; at seeing a useful idea refined by scholasticism into complex and empirically untestable propositions; feeling that I am being “got at”; worst of all, with a sense that the work casts only a fitful or elusive light on the important problems it claims to deal with. Schuyler Wallace said years ago when I was starting my academic career that administrative study had been mainly built on the basis of half‐truths and fictions, 1 and I believe this is still true. If I had remembered this phrase earlier, I might have called the paper “Half‐Truths and Fictions in Public Administration”. If it reflects some real discontents, it is also intended to be a bit jokey. Should the jokes fall flat or degenerate into vulgar abuse, blame the author.