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TOWARDS RESOURCEFUL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A MANAGEMENT POLEMIC
Author(s) -
Uhr John
Publication year - 1987
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.1467-8500.1987.tb02580.x
Subject(s) - managerialism , public administration , sociology , administration (probate law) , democracy , public service , new public management , politics , law and economics , general partnership , political science , law , public sector
Doctrines of public administration are in ferment. Proponents of the newer public management challenge defenders of the traditional public service. Academic commentators frequently oppose both the newer managerialism and the traditional apolitical professionalism. The net effect is to distort the call for better public management. One useful step out of the mess is backwards—toward a recovery of the fundamentals of democratic political theory, of that original sense of the governing partnership between public servant and politician. In the 1950s, Fritz Morstein Marx called it resourceful public administration. By reviving this older sense of public resources, we tap a fundamental but frequently ignored vein of public administration theory. Through “the other Marx” we rediscover his mentor, John Stuart Mill, from whom we still have much to learn about our greatest administrative resource—our people, both politicians and public servants. Both Marx and Mill give us salutary examples on how to ask the basic questions of principle, which we tend to bypass in our pursuit of pragmatic arrangements.