Practitioner Envy and Construction of the Other in Public Administration

Abstract

This article focuses on the personal dimension of the identity crisis in public administration and its impact on academic research. Devoid of a socially recognizable secure academic identity, practitioner represents the closest to an authentic identity for the public administration researcher. This identification with the practitioner comes at a price and leads to the treatment of “public” as the Other in public administration research. Drawing insights from Said’s treatment of the concept of the Other, various dimensions of the discourses of power and knowledge in public administration which lead to categorization of the public as the Other are discussed.

Keywords

practitioner the Other public participation identity crisis public administration ontology

They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.

—Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

And they [the strangers] are, indeed, invented, zealously and with gusto—patched together from protruding and salient or minute and inobtrusive distinction marks. They are useful precisely in their capacity as strangers; their strangehood is to be protected and caringly preserved.

Bauman (1995, p. 30)

Orientalism is after all a system for citing works and authors.

Said (1979, p. 23)

The identity crisis¹ of public administration has received a lot of attention from researchers in the discipline in the last few decades (Ostrom, 1989; Raadschelders, 2011; Rutgers, 1998, 2010; Simon, 1947; Waldo, 1948, 1968). This identity crisis has multiple dimensions and some of them have been discussed extensively, especially with regard to the episteme and techne of the discipline. Recently, Raadschelders (2011) has argued persuasively that government can be considered the material object of study in public administration. However, the study of government is dispersed into multiple fields (e.g., Political Science, International Relations, Public Finance, and Economics). Therefore, this object of study cannot be used to carve out discrete boundaries for the field of public administration. This leaves public administration researchers in an uneasy position to search for a distinct academic identity.

Even though many researchers have argued for embracing interdisciplinarity of the field and forgoing clear demarcation of disciplinary boundaries (e.g., Raadschelders, 2011; Rutgers, 2010), the debates on the identity of public administration continue unabated in classrooms, conferences, and informal discussions, indicating the continuing relevance of this topic for public administration researchers.

The reasons for the persistence of this debate over the identity of public administration over the years are more personal than academic and are reminiscent of the discussion of ontological security and existential anxiety by Giddens (1991). This identity crisis of public administration also has a personal dimension for researchers in the discipline, something often ignored in disciplinary discussions on this topic. This is partly because of the persistence of positivist notions of objective research being disassociated from the personality of the scientist. “What is it that you study?” Almost all of us in the field of public administration have faced this question from family, friends, and acquaintances at some point. Although most of us come up with a ready-made answer to this question which is satisfactory for academic settings, it is the “lay” public, the uninformed acquaintance, or an old friend which is the most difficult to deal with. Almost all of us have answered “political science,” “government,” or even “economics” at one point or another to such questions to get out of discussing this topic in detail.

In the face of this ontological insecurity of public administration researchers, it is the practitioner who comes to our rescue. The centrality of the practitioner in public administration research has been pointed out by many researchers (e.g., Catlaw, 2006; Farmer, 2003; Stallings & Ferris, 1988). This unique position of the practitioner is due to many reasons, the foremost of which is the applied aspect of public administration as an academic discipline. Practitioner also represents the main audience for most public administration researchers and the main market for public administration schools. How much the practitioner of public administration research resembles the “real” practitioner—if there is such a category which exists in an ontological or even a functional sense—is questionable (Cunningham & Weschler, 2002; Denhardt, 2001). There is also an unease among some researchers whether a focus on practitioner, as it is framed at present, is even desirable. That is why Farmer (2003) famously called for “the death of the practitioner” (p. 31) in public administration research, an argument which was further elaborated and refined by Catlaw (2006). This call to arms has, however, not found many sympathizers in the discipline. The reasons for that are multiple and have profound implications for the future of public administration research.

Part of the reason why the practitioner is so attractive for public administration researchers is because he represents the closest thing to an authentic identity for them. The practitioner represents perhaps the only “object” over which public administration can lay an exclusive claim. The interests, habits, and concerns of the practitioner are not of primary concern for any other academic field. When confronted with the fact that his or her identity as an academic is uncertain, the public administration researcher takes comfort in the applied side of his or her work.² Practitioner is the “consolation prize” which he or she does not want to give up. As there is evidence to suggest that practitioner is not interested in our research and may not even need our wisdom,³ seducing the practitioner is no mean feat either. For many public administration researchers, this practitioner envy⁴ manifests itself at a deeper level with an effort to identify with the practitioner in an ontological sense where his ideals, aspirations, and concerns become their own.

Naturally, this focus on the practitioner is also augmented by the fact that many public administration researchers are also—to borrow Waldo’s constructs—“acapracs (academics who participate in governmental think-tanks and commissions)” or “pracademics (practitioners who adjunct in academe)” (Raadschelders, 2011, p. 144). Therefore, the definition and popular image of the practitioner has historically been related to the self-identity of public administration researchers in a variety of ways. Faced with a persistent identity crisis, public administration research, therefore, has also constructed a particular image, role, and value for the practitioner in the society. This particular image of the practitioner, while influenced by broader social forces,⁵ also represents the collectively idealized identity constructed for themselves by the public administration researchers in their capacity as practitioners. This close identification with the practitioner, however, comes at a price.

Although one dimension of the ontological insecurity of public administration researchers manifests itself in the aspiration to become one with the practitioner, it also influences the relationship between public administration research and the social multiplicity we choose to call the public. As I hope to elucidate in the discussion below, this practitioner envy is part of the reason why public administration researchers take part in the broader social discourse on constructing and maintaining the artificial category of the public in a particular manner. This constructed category of the public, which collapses the heterogeneous plurality in society into a homogeneous mass, becomes the Other for public administration research.

Category of the Other

Identity consists of what we know best about our relations to self, others, and the world, yet it is often constituted by the things we are least able to talk about. (Zembylas, 2005, p. 28)

“The Other” is a concept which has been used in a variety of contexts by researchers in multiple fields. Therefore, it signifies different concepts to different people. However, almost always, it has been used within the context of identity formation. Armstrong (1982) was of the opinion that “groups tend to define themselves not by reference to their own characteristics but by exclusion, that is, by comparison to ‘strangers”’ (p. 5). It is also the more convenient option for creating identities for groups which do not have clear positive definitions (which tell us something about the group itself). That is where the concept of the Other becomes useful as it can be used to construct negative definitions (“we” are what “they” are not) for such groups. Investing intellectual effort in defining the Other, therefore, becomes of paramount importance for the identity of the group using the Other as a reference. This category of the Other is generally reserved for someone (or some group) which may be related to the Self (the one defining and creating the other) but is always—and this is important for our discussion—by definition never a part of it in an epistemological and ontological sense. It is important to emphasize here that this ontological distinction is just a social construction and a necessary by-product of the discourse of Otherness.

To understand how the defining of the Other takes place, the colonial encounter presents valuable insights. Post-colonial theory has highlighted various ways in which asymmetries of power between the colonizers and the colonized led to creation of group definitions which permeate even the contemporary mind. Among the post-colonial theorists, Edward Said is the one who used the concept of the Other most clearly in his exposition of colonialism. In his work, he elaborated the various ways in which the Orient was constructed and maintained as the Other for the Occident to perpetuate the asymmetries of power between the two groups and to cultivate a particular paternalistic identity for the Occident. Said’s (1979, 1985, 2003) discussion of Orientalism provides valuable insights for the multiple ways in which category of the Other has been used in academic research.

Some of the main insights from Said’s work which are relevant to the discussion at hand are as follows: First, the Other holds a certain strangeness, an exotic mystique which makes it something interesting, something worth knowing for the Self. Second, although the Other as a group is given this enticing strangeness, which makes its knowledge desirable, the individuals being lumped inside the category of the Other are generally ascribed all the negative attributes which the Self does not have or wishes to have.⁶ Third, despite the fact that it is a social construction, the category of the Other is given an aura of ontological essentialism. Said (2003) argued that the influence of this discourse was such that gradually the negative attributes of the Other came to be accepted as self-evident truths that were inherent to their being. These truths are constructed by

. . . a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are. (Nietzsche, 1976, pp. 46-47)

When a particular image of the Other becomes entrenched in the society, the only way for those categorized as the Other to be heard, or to be visible to the Self is by conforming to that image. Fourth, as the Other is constructed in a manner which makes it interesting to understand, its knowledge which rests exclusively with the Self also becomes something to cherish and one which further distinguishes the Self from the Other. Also, “to have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for ‘us’ to deny autonomy to ‘it’” (Said, 1979, p. 32).

Finally, in the context of governance, this knowledge of the Other has to be then used to make it “better.” This is done by presenting the Self as an ideal which the Other must aspire for but can never really achieve. The ultimate triumph of the Other, therefore, becomes to approximate the Self in almost a religious sense. To be close to the Self, to be related to it, to be cognizant of its discourses are considered signs of the fact that the Other can govern itself. However, this self-governance only takes place within the rules and regulations created by the Self. In other words, the ultimate success of the “Otherness enterprise” is when the Other governs itself with an aim to become more like the Self.

Public as the Other in Public Administration

In the field of public administration, “public” and “administration” are (and were) not created or treated as equals. This inequality has striking resemblances with the orientalist project. Just like “development” of the “primitive” colonized people was the ultimate White man’s burden,⁷ it seems that administering the “lay” publics is a similar “burden” for the practitioner. As mentioned above, the colonizers had to ensure that the colonized people had the capacity to govern themselves before giving them freedom. Similarly, after reading public administration research (as discussed below), one feels that the practitioners will need to be sure that the “lay” publics have the requisite “expertise” before letting them fully participate in governance.

Public administration researchers seem all too eager to help out the practitioners in this task for a variety of reasons discussed above. If recent public administration research on public participation is any indication, the category of the Other in public administration research is reserved for the public just as it was reserved for the “primitive” races of the colonized people in the orientalist project. Public is not considered an equal participant in administration by either practitioners or public administration researchers. This Otherness of the public is desirable for the public administration researchers as it not only makes them valuable for the practitioner but also reduces their intellectual distance from him.⁸

Said (1979) maintained that although the particular constructions of the Orient were carried out by academics, Orientalism could best be understood as a discourse in a Foucauldian (1972) sense. Thus, the relationship between “us” and “them” is of multiple varieties and manifests itself in multiple discourses. Jenkins (1994) argued in his discussion of group identity that definitions are of two types: internal and external.⁹ A group comes up with its internal definition based on its distinguishing characteristics, its ambitions, or in any other way it deems appropriate. With regard to the notion of public or “the people,” a whole line of research has questioned the existence of such an a priori group of individuals with a unifying internal definition. For example, Catlaw (2007) has described the notion of “the people” as an abstract construction and a fabrication.

Because no internal definition of public exists, an external definition has to be provided for them to be able to serve as the Other. Jenkins (1997) argued that external definition is also a conflict zone between groups where internal and external definitions collide. However, when no prior category or definition of “we” exists, there is no possibility for such a conflict. It is in providing this external definition to the public that the political, intellectual, and moral dimensions of the discourse of the Other become apparent.

It is important to mention here that one of the primary ways in which the category of public is created and maintained in the society is by political discourse. The broader sociopolitical asymmetries in society, especially the “democratic” institutions which fight over the right to represent this imagined public play an important part in the Otherness of the public. However, this political dimension has been discussed elsewhere (e.g., Catlaw, 2007) and is not of primary concern here as public administration research is primarily a part of the moral and intellectual dimension of this discourse.

The relationship between public administration researchers and public is fundamentally a relationship of power in which the researcher speaks for, and represents a public which is itself a construction of their academic discourse. That is why the primary way in which public is defined in public administration research is a “non-expert” group of people which needs to be rescued, helped, or saved. This suits the public administration researcher for multiple reasons. First, it creates a heroic reason of existence for the practitioner with whom the public administration researcher identifies as discussed above. The increasing obsession of the field with the measurement of public service motivation is symptomatic of this trend. Second, it creates a fundamental asymmetry in the relationship between the “lay” public and the “expert” practitioner. Third, it constrains the ways in which one can write about or even imagine the category of public in academic research. Gradually, a particular image of the public becomes so ingrained in public administration that certain ways of thinking about public are uncritically accepted by most researchers in the field.

This Otherness of the public also operates by the use of abstract language and theoretical frameworks produced within the closed confines of the academia to which the public does not have any access or meaningful relation. This Otherness is also augmented by a focus on instrumental research in public administration even though researchers in the discipline recognize that “the public at large is possibly less interested in the factual and informational side as it is and ought to be in the normative, valuing, side of decision- and policymaking” (Raadschelders, 2011, p. 83).

The moral dimension of this discourse relates to the “ideas about what ‘we’ do and what ‘they’ cannot do or understand as ‘we’ do” (Said, 1979). Thus, the public gets characterized as everything the practitioner (and by extension public administration researchers) do not think they are “non-expert,” and “non-technical.” As discussed below, this is where the discussion on public participation in recent years is particularly illustrative.

The idea that categories like public and practitioner are not ontological but constructed within discourses of inequality and power which, in turn, are nested within broader discourses of positivist reason and modernity has been ignored by most public administration researchers. As I discuss in my review of recent research on public participation below, the category of public is treated as stable and unchanging in an ontological sense in public administration research.¹⁰ Most of the research is premised on the idea that the “qualities” of the public are not changing or capable of being changed in any permanent manner. That is why with the passage of time, the image of public does not change in public administration research. Public was, is, and presumably will remain technically inept, uninterested in administrative issues, and incapable of making technocratic decisions suitable only for expert practitioners. That is part of the reason why, in contemporary discourses on e-governance and the use of social media, the discussion is generally focused only on changes in the infrastructure (cf. Johnston, 2010) and the instrumentalities available to the public. It has not changed the conception of the public as being technically inferior to the experts who actually know how to make use of these new technologies for the “empowerment” of the public. Coupled with an ontological stability, this construction of the public has an important consequence; the public can be helped but they cannot be helped in the sense that they become independent. That is not a discussion public administration researchers are ready to entertain seriously as it problematizes the idealized image of the practitioner.

Public as the Other in Public Participation Research

In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand. (Said, 1979, p. 15)

Public participation represents an important discourse of contemporary governance and has been an active area of research in public administration in the last few decades. In the following discussion, I focus on some of the recent literature on public participation because some of the earlier literature has been analyzed comprehensively by Moynihan (2003); Barnes, Newman, Knops, and Sullivan (2003); and Roberts (2004). The analysis of Barnes et al. is especially relevant as it problematizes the constitution of “public” in public participation governance and ties it with the broader processes of social inclusion and exclusion. However, they do not engage with the overall role of public administration research in this discourse in detail.

Most research on public participation, especially in the recent years, can be characterized¹¹ as what Moynihan (2003) called “instrumental perspectives.” Moynihan primarily included those studies under this category which focused on the administrative costs and instrumental benefits of public participation. Included in this category are also the studies which look at the impact of public participation laws and regulations. Some examples include Neshkova and Guo (2012); Irvin and Stansbury (2004); Wang and Bryer (2013); Herian, Hamm, Tomkins, and Zillig (2012); and Woods (2013). In this line of research, categories of benefit and cost are generally defined from the perspective of the government or the public managers. The general conclusion, unexpectedly, is that cost and benefit considerations should figure importantly in the decision of the practitioner to engage with the public. The question, “is it worth it?” is discussed less often from the perspective of the public.

The instrumental perspective includes another series of academic studies which can broadly be characterized as design studies. These have become increasingly common in the last few years. Such studies prescribe various ways in which public participation can and ought to take place to have the maximum impact. Majority of these studies are focused on design issues from the perspective of the practitioners. A few analyze issues related to managerial decision making or organizational design and their impact on public participation. Some of the major studies in this line of research include Nabatchi (2012); Fung (2006); Feldman and Khademian (2007); Robbins, Simonsen, and Feldman (2008); Bingham, Nabatchi, and O’Leary (2005); Bryson, Quick, Slotterback, and Crosby (2013); and Neshkova (2014).

A third line of research has focused on the attitude of the practitioner toward public participation. In an interesting study by Yang and Callahan (2007), the top three perceived obstacles to meaningful citizen participation by public managers were “citizens don’t have time,” “citizens promote their own agenda,” and “citizens don’t trust government.” Similarly, in a more recent study, Yang and Pandey (2011) measured, among other things, citizen competence in public participation by asking practitioners “whether citizens who participate have the people skills, the expertise or technical knowledge, or the civic knowledge, respectively, to make a value contribution” (p. 885). They find that participant competence is positively correlated with the outcomes of public participation initiatives. In fact, according to them, “it is the most important explanatory variable in the model” (p. 887). One could infer from this finding that the best way to improve the impact of public participation is to “educate” the participants. In a similar study, Yang (2006), again based on the opinions of practitioners, found that affect-based trust in citizens was positively associated with higher trust in participation institutions, which, in turn, led to a higher “likelihood of promoting citizen involvement” (p. 590). Affect based trust in this study was measured by the following two questions: “When regulations are ambiguous, citizens always try to take the advantage of them”; and “You cannot rely on them [citizens] to always tell the truth” (p. 582).

A fourth line of literature is concerned with the analysis of normative issues surrounding public participation. Not many researchers have focused on this line of inquiry in the recent years. Among the notable exceptions are the insightful analyses by Elías and Alkadry (2011) and Mckenna (2011) which highlight the problematic way in which public participation has been defined and designed in practice. Overall, it seems as if the field has mostly embraced Moynihan’s (2003) call for more instrumental perspectives on public participation.

Strategic Location

[I]t behooves the administrator to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the decision-making process when determining the most effective implementation strategy, bearing in mind that talk is not cheap—and may not even be effective. (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004, p. 63, emphasis added)

Who should be directly included, when and to what degree do complex questions and the answers to them, vary from context to context. A variety of tools are available for thinking about such questions, including tools such as stakeholder and SWOT analyses. (Feldman & Khademian, 2007, p. 310, emphasis added)

Managers weigh the costs and benefits of engaging the public within their particular political, fiscal and cultural context. (Neshkova & Guo, 2012, p. 20, emphasis added)

From a cost perspective, participation process designers and budget officials would need to weigh the cost of involving the public versus involving them only somewhat or only symbolically. (Wang & Bryer, 2013, p. 196, emphasis added)

In the following discussion, I will analyze the articles on public participation by what Said (1979) called strategic location which refers to the way the author positions himself in a text with regard to the public. Strategic formation, which refers to the manner in which knowledge is consolidated by the citation pattern of the authors on a topic, was also an important part of Said’s (1979) analysis of literature on Orientalism. Although interesting insights can be derived from analyzing strategic formation of public participation research to which I will allude to in the passing, I will not be focusing on this perspective in detail as it is beyond the purview of a single article.

Image of the Other

The words some of the authors use for public participation are reflective of the preordained assumptions about the technical inferiority of the public as a participant in administration. For example, the categories used by Fung (2006) to discuss various strategies of participant “selection” include “recruitment,” “random,” and “lay stakeholders.” On the contrary, the word reserved for administrators is “expert.” Similarly, in modes of communications, the most intense mode of communication is called “technical expertise,” which, according to Fung, “usually does not involve citizens,” Similarly, Neshkova (2014) considered her findings consistent with previous research that decisions which necessitate a “higher degree of quality” are the ones where “public involvement is less appropriate.”

This highlights how public administration researchers participate in creating a particular image of the public, which, as discussed above, endows the public with qualities which the practitioner (and the researcher) do not wish to have. It makes becoming like “us” the litmus test which the public must pass to be considered worthy of actual meaningful participation or decision making. However, when combined with the underlying ontological separation of the public and the practitioner in this discourse, this remains—by definition—an unrealistic ideal. That is why, if one reads the literature on public participation over the years, despite the changes in rhetoric, the underlying image of the public as “non-expert,” “non-technical” remains remarkably consistent.

Encounter with the Other

The increasing obsession with the physical arrangements and various techniques to attract the public which is symbolic of the recent design studies on participation highlights the underlying fundamental asymmetries of power in the participation discourse. Although these studies present participation as an act of understanding and including the Other, the encounter is framed in such terms which reinforce the essentialist assumptions about the public. Although “we” (practitioner and the researcher) might not know the “exotic” local wisdom of the public, we know everything “scientific” about them; how to sample them statistically, how to engage them like an expert; how to decide which decision-making area are appropriate for their participation based on scientific tools like cost benefit analysis.

It also highlights that encounter with the Other is unlike any other encounter. It has to be articulated and designed in ways which maintain the ontological difference between the Self and the Other. In this sense, public participation as defined at present engages the public within a set of institutions, discourses, symbols, images, and practices in which their participation means that they are actually participating in their own oppression by accepting their particular constructions as the Other.

Location of authority

Most research on public participation is based on identification with the practitioner and Otherness of the public. Hence, practitioner is presented as the ultimate decision maker of all participation endeavors, especially with regard to the appropriateness, design, and degree of participation. For this discourse, participation can—almost by definition—never be an unproblematic ideal because of its attendant costs and no associated guarantees of additional efficiency which are the primary considerations of the practitioner. In other words, public participation in governance is neither a normative ideal nor a self-evident policy. If the sentences cited at the start of this section are any indication, the public administration researchers are all too anxious to emphasize that practitioners are the ultimate arbitrators who decide the “who,” “when,” “how,” and “how much” of public participation. Alternative governance arrangements which are based on a fundamental rethinking of the role of practitioner and are often the foundations of some of the classical normative arguments for public participation are seldom entertained.

Therefore, if one analyzes the public administration research through the lens of strategic location, it becomes clear that most articles on public participation are part of a discourse of separation—not of participation—where exclusion of public from administration is the “normal” and publics have to prove their “worth” to be included in the administrative process. The natural conclusion of such a discourse is that participation requires burdensome change from practitioners to “accommodate” somewhat uninterested public to “empower” them. This is especially true for most instrumental perspectives which are rooted in a discourse of modernity. However, it is equally true for many normative discussions on public participation. Although the argument seems to be normative, the justifications and the rhetoric are based on the same discourse of Otherness.

One cannot help but be reminded of Foucault and Deleuze’s (1977) following quote which seems eerily relevant to the ontological security crisis of public administration researchers:

In the most recent upheaval the intellectual discovered that the masses no longer need him to gain knowledge: they know perfectly well, without illusion; they know far better than he and they are certainly capable of expressing themselves. But there exists a system of power which blocks, prohibits, and invalidates this discourse and this knowledge, a power not only found in the manifest authority of censorship, but one that profoundly and subtly penetrates an entire societal network. Intellectuals are themselves agents of this system of power-the idea of their responsibility for “consciousness” and discourse forms part of the system. (p. 207)

Why Public Participation?

[T]he improved support from the public might create a less divisive, combative populace to govern and regulate. (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004, p. 55, emphasis added)

[T]he inclusion of the public can potentially increase the legitimacy of agency decisions and ensure the support of critical stakeholders. (Neshkova, 2014, p. 72, emphasis added)

At a higher (though not necessarily desirable) level of empowerment, participatory bodies occasionally exercise direct authority over public decisions or resources (Fung, 2006, p. 69, emphasis added)

An obvious counter argument to the above critique is that if public participation is such a problematic option for practitioners, why public administration scholars are so concerned about increasing public participation. This is even more important if we believe Irvin and Stansbury’s (2004) analysis, that, like practitioners, the public is not enthusiastic about participation in the governance process either. This certainly seems at odds with the claim that the public is treated as the Other by public administration researchers.

Many scholars have pointed to the receding legitimacy of government and trust in bureaucracy in Western societies in general, and in United States in particular, in recent years (Moynihan & Ingraham, 2010). This increase in distrust of government at multiple nodes in the Western nations appears to be uncorrelated with government performance (Nye, Zelikow, & King, 1997) which indicated the unease of contemporary publics with the underlying asymmetries of power in present governance regimes. That is why the efforts to ensure increased public participation in public administration research are mostly directed toward increasing legitimacy of governing arrangements and not toward any real democratic ideals. Therefore, the primary concern of participation is to accommodate or fit the public into this project at a minimal cost. From a conflict perspective of society, this means that participation, as it is framed at present with its instrumental focus, is just another example of a disciplinary practice where participation implies giving legitimacy to the contemporary governance regimes.

It is really interesting to note that most public administration researchers on public participation who are all too eager to weigh the costs and benefits of participation initiatives from the perspective of the government do not give the same consideration to the costs and benefits of participation for the public. It reinforces the image of the public as the passive Other as it assumes a priori that participation is what the public craves and its emancipatory value for it. This perspective has been problematized in the recent years. For example, Swyngedouw (2011) argued that “through allegedly participatory deliberative procedures, within a given hierarchical distribution of places and functions” (p. 78), the debate around important policy issues is necessarily depoliticized. This is done through pre-identified issue, stakeholders, and the “very technical and scientific ways in which ‘problems’ are framed both dis-empowers people and de-politicizes issues of concern” (Tsouvalis & Waterton, 2012, p. 8). Thus, the symbolic rhetoric of public participation by emphasizing empowerment of the imagined public distracts the multiple ways in which the public is considered and constructed as the Other in contemporary governance regimes. Public participation, as it is framed at present, is, therefore, a rigged game.

An important caveat to mention here is that this process of identity formation or “becoming” is neither linear nor deterministic. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) correctly pointed out, “[b]ecoming is a verb with a consistency all its own; it does not reduce to, or lead back to, ‘appearing,’ ‘being,’ ‘equaling,’ or ‘producing’” (p. 239). The process of identity formation is complex and dynamic, which is certainly not deterministic. This is of importance for this discussion because no matter how much ontological distinction one might want to give to one’s artificial constructions, they are never perfect, especially when they presume passive docility on the part of the Other. This seems especially true for the imagined category called public. Instead, these interactions, no matter how orchestrated because of their recursive nature, may provide avenues to those being lumped inside the category of the Other to see through the farce and challenge the whole discourse of fabrications which creates the possibilities for their oppression. Here, one is reminded of Sartre’s (1956) famous passage:

Only at the very moment when I believe that I possess it, behold by a curious reversal, it possesses me . . . If an object which I hold in my hands is solid, I can let go when I please; its inertia symbolizes for me my total power . . . Yet here is the slimy reversing the terms: [myself] is suddenly compromised, I open my hands, I want to let go of the slimy and it sticks to me, it draws me, it sucks at me . . . I am no longer the master . . . (as cited in Bauman, 1995, p. 9)

A Few Words on Strategic Formation of Public Administration

A review of recent research on public participation does make one wonder as to why public administration researchers have analyzed this issue only from a particular lens and have failed to meaningfully engage with publics on this topic of critical importance for contemporary society. The idea here is not to advocate for the generic citizen surveys or interviews which ask the people about various participation initiatives or modalities. The results of such research projects become limited once the researcher chooses to frame the topic of public participation in a particular manner which forecloses the possibility of any “real” participation. It is akin to providing the publics a survey where the questions and all the options are given by the researcher. The only task considered appropriate for the publics is to check the correct answer. The possibilities for alternative ways of living together which can only come from the wisdom of the publics are essentially foreclosed.

The aim of this analysis is also not to cast a stone at research projects based on instrumental perspectives or to paint all the public administration research with the same brush. Instead, the focus is on introspection and to highlight the fact that practitioners are considered the primary audience of our research (despite lack of evidence of their interest in it). Resultantly, engagement with the publics becomes (consciously or unconsciously) a secondary priority. There are indeed some researchers who have done insightful analyses to highlight the limitations of contemporary research on social issues including public participation, some of whom were mentioned above. However, the strategic formation of public administration as an academic discipline is such that those researchers are generally not treated seriously, and consciously or subconsciously, most of us end up reproducing the same unchanging hegemonic image of the public. Any modern researcher today has to cite and be cited by others in the discipline to be taken seriously as an academic (at least in the eyes of the gatekeepers of the discipline). The easiest way to get cited and get published is to place one’s research within previous discourses published in the most prestigious journals in the discipline. Those few who write differently (especially on normative issues) are either not published in the major journals or are simply ignored by their peers by not making them part of the strategic formation of the discipline.

Furthermore, due to the way in which publics are engaged or distracted with this artificial trope of participation, some more fundamental questions remain unaddressed. For example, it is seldom discussed that if public participation is important for legitimacy, why the public does not have any degree of control or direct participation in the decision-making process of private organizations which are increasingly doing the business of government.

Although we might disagree on the disciplinary identity or the significance of various issues for public administration researchers, one thing we can all agree upon is that the discourse of public administration is shaped by the collective choices of public administration researchers. Only by entertaining alternative lines of inquiry and having a constructive dialogue over them, we can hope to alter the present practitioner envy in the field. In this endeavor, Said’s (2003) following comments can serve as a useful reminder:

[T]here is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of co-existence and enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control.

Conclusion

This discussion makes it clear that increased public participation has a specific role in the perpetuation of a particular image and role of the public in the society which is tied in multiple ways with the identity crisis of the discipline of public administration. The fundamental dilemma for public administration researchers is that if “non-expert,” “non-technical,” “lay” persons can participate at equal terms in administration, the “utility” of becoming an “expert” disappears. There has to be a categorization, a hierarchy of individuals based on their “technical expertise” for the practitioner to remain a viable identity for the public administration researcher.

Another way in which Said’s discussion of orientalism is helpful in the contemporary governance context is that it warns us against the lure of ascribing too much importance to the visible, formal aspects of governance. The remarkable resilience of the image of the Orient in the contemporary (Said, 2003) points to the influence of discourses of power and knowledge. That is why one should not have too much hope in the public participation initiatives, even the ones which aim at greater share of decision making for the publics. The disinterestedness and dissatisfaction of the publics in participation as it is presently defined means that, in all likelihood, it is not going to be able to reverse the legitimacy crisis of the practitioner.

Therefore, there is a need to think about public participation based on different ontological and/or epistemological assumptions. The first step in this reformulation of public participation has to be cognizance of the fundamental assumptions of contemporary administrative paradigm so that no one can pretend to be “objective” and “scientific” while talking about costs of public participation. Instead, public administration research must highlight alternative normative foundations to think about public participation in governance which are not dependent upon constructing a particular identity for the practitioner or the public. Some of the ideas of postmodernism like alterity, deconstruction, imagination, and deterritorialization (Farmer, 1995) which problematize such generalized constructions of groups of people can help us in thinking not only about participation in a fundamentally different manner but also about new articulations for the identity of public administration.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Thomas Catlaw for his guidance and thoughtful comments in writing of this article. I would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments by Ayesha Masood on the earlier drafts of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Muhammad A. Nisar is a a doctoral student at School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. He holds master’s degrees in public policy, economics, and international area studies. As a practitioner, he is member of the Pakistan Administrative Service where his previous assignments include district coordination officer (city manager), program manager of a primary health care project, and deputy secretary, finance, among others. His research interests include social role of public administration in society, identity formation in institutions; power in organizations; social theory and complexity theory. Previously, his research has been published in higher education.

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