Elements (fragments) for the philosophical foundations of a theory of public administration

Abstract

This book has reviewed (Western) philosophical thought in Chapters 2 and 3 and proposed a range of applications to the study and practice of PA, with an emphasis on ontological issues in Chapter 4 and on the political philosophy of PA, around the key issue of legitimacy, in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 revisited epistemological issues from a philosophical standpoint, while in Chapter 7 a number of key themes in PA have been delved into through an intellectual tour of three authors – Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas More – and their masterpieces, that elicit an enduring intellectual fascination and provide an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Chapter 8 then went on to discuss the usage of a range of conceptual tools – from ‘good enough’ practices to utopias, paradigms, ideal types and models – for PA. As we noticed in Chapter 1, this book has taken the opposite perspective than other reviews of the field of PA interested in a philosophical approach: rather than starting from the organisation of the field of PA and then pointing to how different philosophical streams might be employed to discuss one or the other sub-areas of the field, this book has taken as starting point the history of philosophical thought and the ‘big’ authors and schools in philosophy, to then revisit how these philosophical schools of thought might be applied to shed a different light on PA debates and streams of inquiry. In this chapter, we initially revert to a more conventional approach and we start from a mapping of the field of PA along four intellectual traditions, to then discuss how broad philosophical perspectives may be employed to further our understanding of these intellectual traditions in PA. In doing so, we work out a set of tentative propositions for sketching an initial draft of a ‘theory of PA change’, a reflection – inchoate and open to contributions and integrations from different intellectual standpoints – on the ideational basis of PA, on how revisiting the intellectual foundations of PA might lead to approaches on how to change public governance. Finally, in the next chapter we will pull the threads and