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

Cook argues that viewing public administration as an instrumental extension of the American political system is not only harmful for shaping policy, but disrupts the relationship between the public and regime. Interpreting and categorizing public agencies as an instrument, or a means to an end, has been the prevailing theme across the course of American political development. As a result of this understanding, and the lack of citizen control over public agencies, the public has developed ambivalent views about their relationship with this extension of government (xiv). This defies the philosophical foundation on which American government, in the liberal tradition of self-government, rests. It is because public administration has constitutive qualities, Cook asserts, that the instrumental view of public agencies can be harmful. If public agencies are an extension of self-government, then the myopic instrumental rational is amiss when considering how policies influence public perceptions about its role in governance, as well as its affect on the principles of society as a whole. Thus when this relationship between government agents and the public are considered, it is important to not only focus upon executing policy, but to try to make sense of the values under girding policy -or as Cook defines it - its constitutive rational (5). In this view, Cook calls for a reconsideration of the role of public administration. In this book, Cook makes an excellent case for using different methods to explaining the development of Public Administration in American Politics. The critical eras Cook evaluates are the founding, Jacksonian, progressive, new deal, and post new-deal politics. This approach raises the bar in the study of Public Administration.