Whither the Neoadministrative State? Toward a Polity-Centered Theory of Administrative Reform

Abstract

The ascendancy in the United States of new governance reforms (NGRs) poses fundamental challenges and opportunities for public administrationists. The argument in this article is threefold. First, the fundamentals driving these reforms as the twentieth century ends appear enduring and paradoxical in creating a neoadministrative state. Second, because it is more consonant with America's exceptionalist values, the neoadministrative state affords an opportunity to develop the normative theory of public bureaucracy that has eluded public administration for so long because of its explicit and implicit penchant for Hamiltonian rather than Madisonian prescriptions for reform. Finally, and partially to advance the resiliency of that normative theory, I will argue that a polity-centered theory of administrative reform is needed. Adapted from the work of scholars studying comparative state building from a neoinstitutionalist perspective, such a theory can help public administrationists play a distinctive role in both understanding and informing the evolution of the neoadministrative state. A polity-centered theory also can help reframe debates in terms of the ways that NCR reforms affect the relationship between society and the state and away from purely managerialist considerations.