Bureaucracy and Self-Government: Reconsidering the Role of Public Administration in American Politics / Edition 2

by Brian J. Cook

Overview

A thorough update to this well-regarded political history of American public administration.

In this new edition of his provocative book Bureaucracy and Self-Government, Brian J. Cook reconsiders his thesis regarding the inescapable tension between the ideal of self-government and the reality of administratively centered governance. Revisiting his historical exploration of competing conceptions of politics, government, and public administration, Cook offers a novel way of thinking constitutionally about public administration that transcends debates about “big government.”

Cook enriches his historical analysis with new scholarship and extends that analysis to the present, taking account of significant developments since the mid-1990s. Each chapter has been updated, and two new chapters sharpen Cook’s argument for recognizing a constitutive dimension in normative theorizing about public administration. The second edition also includes reviews of Jeffersonian impacts on administrative theory and practice and Jacksonian developments in national administrative structures and functions, a look at the administrative theorizing that presaged progressive reforms in civil service, and insight into the confounding complexities that characterize public thinking about administration in a postmodern political order.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421415529
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2014
Series:	Interpreting American Politics
Edition description:	second edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Brian J. Cook is a professor of government and director of the Master of Public Administration Program at Clark University. He is the author of Bureaucratic Politics and Regulatory Reform: The EPA and Emission Trading and Bureaucracy and Self-Government: Reconsidering the Role of Public Administration in American Politics, also published by Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition ix

Series Editor's Foreword xv

Preface to the First Edition xvii

Acknowledgments to the First Edition xxiii

1 Public Administration as Instrument and Institution 1

2 Preserving the Chain of Dependence: The Ideas of the Founding and Early Republic 32

3 Restoring Republican Virtue: The Impact of Jacksonian Ideals 63

4 Perfecting the Neutral Instrument: Transformations of the Second State and Progressive Reforms 86

5 Serving the Liberal State: Administration and the Rise of the New Deal Political Order 129

6 Politics and Administration after the New Deal: Liberal Orthodoxy and Its Challenges 160

7 The Constitutive Dimension of Public Administration: Appreciating Consequences 187

8 Bureaucracy and the Future of American Self-Government 218

References 239

Index 261

Editorial Reviews

Useful for advanced students and faculty . . . Recommended.
—Choice

Cook points out the significant salutary consequences for policy development that can arise from recognizing public administration's distinct constitutive role in our regime.
—Public Administration Review

Traces, often quite nicely and originally, the tension between what the author calls 'instrumental' and 'constitutive' conceptions of public administration through American history . . . a provocative argument . . . [that] provides extensive evidence of the potency of the instrumental conception of the bureaucracy for American politicians.
—Political Science Quarterly

Represents a valuable addition to the literature on bureaucratic discretion in our democratic system. It should certainly become mandatory reading in public administration programs and political science departments and, it is hoped, among public officials as well. I profited greatly from it and expect that all those who read it will share similar convictions.
—American Political Science Review

From the Publisher

Represents a valuable addition to the literature on bureaucratic discretion in our democratic system. It should certainly become mandatory reading in public administration programs and political science departments and, it is hoped, among public officials as well. I profited greatly from it and expect that all those who read it will share similar convictions.

American Political Science Review

Traces, often quite nicely and originally, the tension between what the author calls 'instrumental' and 'constitutive' conceptions of public administration through American history . . . a provocative argument . . . [that] provides extensive evidence of the potency of the instrumental conception of the bureaucracy for American politicians.

Political Science Quarterly

Cook points out the significant salutary consequences for policy development that can arise from recognizing public administration's distinct constitutive role in our regime.

Public Administration Review

Useful for advanced students and faculty . . . Recommended.

Choice

Cook points out the significant salutary consequences for policy development that can arise from recognizing public administration's distinct constitutive role in our regime.

Public Administration Review - Douglas F. Morgan

[Bureaucracy and Self-Government] represents a valuable addition to the literature on bureaucratic discretion in our democratic system. It should certainly become mandatory reading in public administration programs and political science departments and, it is hoped, among public officials as well. I profited greatly from it and expect that all those who read it will share similar convictions.

American Political Science Review - Richard T. Green

Traces, often quite nicely and originally, the tension between what the author calls 'instrumental' and 'constitutive' conceptions of public administration through American history... a provocative argument... [that] provides extensive evidence of the potency of the instrumental conception of the bureaucracy for American politicians.

Political Science Quarterly - Robert C. Lieberman