Reasserting the Refounding

Abstract

What is worth reasserting from the tradition begun by Refounding Public Administration? In this time of reboots and remixes in pop-culture, it may seem trite to suggest reevaluating an established scholarly paradigm. But, in the continued absence of a strong theory of Public Administration and the emergence of new challenges to administrative practice, it is worth revisiting the key concepts of the Refounding tradition to show how this successful normative theory might help solve key problems in contemporary public administration, such as incorporation of algorithmic decision making into public agencies.

Keywords

Blacksburg manifesto Refounding Public Administration public interest Big Data

What is worth reviving in the tradition begun by Refounding Public Administration? In this time of reboots and remixes in pop-culture, it may seem trite to suggest reevaluating an established scholarly paradigm. But, in the continued absence of a strong theory of Public Administration and the emergence of new challenges to administrative practice, it is worth mining the traits of previous, successful, theoretical efforts to identify paths forward.

The foundational premise of this essay is that the normative perspective on public administration advanced by the original authors of the Refounding Public Administration (Wamsley et al., 1990) and, to an extent, Refounding Democratic Public Administration (Wamsley & Wolf, 1996) is a relevant source of contemporary guidance for present Public Administration scholarship and practice. In particular, it is a valuable perspective to revisit as administrators and scholars confront the challenges of algorithmic decision making in the public sphere. This premise rests on three points, the first point is that the authors of the Refounding staked out a distinct position on the central importance of the institution of The Public Administration to American political and social balance and the conditions for such institutional relevance have not changed sufficiently to demand a new theory. The second point is that the combined authors of the Refounding, in the first work particularly, posited a normative theory of public administration that stands up to scrutiny as a productive normative research paradigm (Habermas, 2006; Hasnas, 1998; Palonen, 2002).¹ The third point is that the initial arrangement of Blacksburg theoretical norms and premises suits contemporary scholarship and practice needs without substantial rearrangement of core concepts. To flesh out these points, I will review the theoretical character of the Refounding project, concentrating specifically on the first work (Wamsley et al., 1990), summarize major concepts in the Refounding and discuss their success as a normative theoretical paradigm, and posit how this arrangement of normative theoretical premises can help scholars and practitioners grapple with present governing challenges.

What Kind of Theorizing Is the Refounding Project?

As described by the editors and authors of the texts, Refounding Public Administration (Wamsley et al., 1990) and Refounding Democratic Public Administration (Wamsley & Wolf, 1996) are works of normative political theory. The first refounding volume, begun in 1983 and published in 1990, represents the most solid expression of the paradigm (although themes persisted throughout the second work and into the later works of the many refounding authors). What were these themes, and do they represent a distinct public administration theory?

First, the refounders were not political theorists as such, but they did fill a gap in the political theory literature. The refounding texts were not among the grand narratives of political theorizing associated with the latter years of American 20th-century scholarship. They did not address directly some of the canon debates (e.g., liberalism vs. communitarianism), nor did they explicitly mine the history of political thought for future insights (Ball, Farr, & Hanson, 1989; Pocock, 1976; Rossi & Sleat, 2014; Wolin, 2016; Wright, 2017). Instead, the Refounding texts addressed politics as a set of institutions into which they inscribed a role for Public Administration as the institution which actively and authoritatively allocates public values within the legitimate remit of a Constitution to which the governed might freely consent.

The Refounding texts were not grand or unified theories, but their work filled spaces left within (attempted) unified theories of politics by specifically crafting a theory of political Public Administration. This framework of theories is decidedly a mixed, mid-level, arrangement of the concepts governing the institutions of statecraft and statesmanship. The Refounding texts represent a mixed theoretical approach in two ways. First, the Refounding authors draw loosely upon an Aristotelian notion of polity or a mixed regime.² They eschew an argument for a specific political arrangement as the “one true way” for politics and advance the case that the mixed system of a Constitutional democracy holds out the best conditions for legitimating government through policy experimentation and citizen participation. Second, the Refounding authors collectively borrowed from various points in the theories of institutionalism, structuralism, and communitarianism, bringing together an admixture of approaches to the study of the institution of public administration, peri passu, to create a framework for analysis of the institution. This “many visions in a field” framework invited a community of scholars and practitioners to stake a claim to a piece of the canvas of administrative theory, conceptual development, and elaboration on normative practice as was shown in the second Refounding volume, which was a much more peripatetic elaboration on the themes of the first volume.

As a framework, the Refounding effort in toto lacks a single, overarching, set of prescriptive commitments, or conceptual definitions. Early reviewers of the Refounding paradigm suggested as much (Wamsley et al., 1990, pp. 307-315) and present reviewers rightly point out that the second volume was much less tightly drawn. But, where the Refounders could be accused of lacking singleness of theoretical purpose, another perspective is that they developed a durable framework precisely because of its mixed and mid-range properties (Merton, 1949). A middle range theory places the study of an important institution or phenomena at its center without proposing to explain in a grand, law-like way, how to arrange the concepts or methods to explain the institutional form or phenomena (Coppedge, 1999; Eisenhardt & Bourgeois, 1988). As there was no single prescriptive barrier to theorization, all methods, from psychoanalysis to econometrics, could find a home in the theoretically capacious, but topically bounded, perspective of institutional grounding of public administration. This open posture allows present day scholars and practitioners to find a place for their favored method or approach under this broad, mixed and middle range, tent of defending a role for public interested, Constitutionally driven, public administration.

The Refounding as Normative Theory

What is normative theorizing and is the Blacksburg manifesto an example of it? Although the Blacksburg perspective has more features of an ethical normative text, it is not solely ethical normative. Instead, it describes technical normative standards—standards of excellence in an application or professional practice—for the successful operation of a Constitutional democracy, such as expectations for effective citizen engagement (see Bosk, 2003, for more on technical normative theory). What is ethical normative about the Refounding perspective is that the works stipulate an arrangement of concepts which set the terms according to which a person or an institution could be evaluated for their moral credibility. Moral credibility, also called aretaic appraisal or moral evaluation, means assessment of good or evil intentions or conduct in a person or organization (Smith, 2008, 2012). Such an assessment defines what relevant actors ought to be held morally responsible for in the same way that a set of technical norms defies what relevant actors ought to be held professionally accountable for (MacIntyre, 2013).

Within the Refounding perspective, when John Rohr defines good public administration as wedded to regime values, he stipulates that moral goodness of the institution of Public Administration (or individuals in the institution) can be measured according to the commitment to the values enshrined in the regime’s founding document. Rohr’s normative theory of good public administration as Constitutionally grounded did more for the perspective than describe a role for the constitution, it also serves as an example of a successful normative theory built within the framework (see also Harmon, 1971). First, Rohr’s work arranged concepts that together constitute a standard for moral excellence. Second, Rohr’s normative theory articulates an arrangement of concepts which persist as agreeable standards of excellence over time or space (see Dallmayr, 1996, for an elaboration on the importance of generalizability of good normative theories). Third, this successful normative theory has been adopted and adapted to support or extend other’s attempts to theorize (see Jordan & Ip, 2013). Finally, this normative theory was eventually incorporated into intuitive, practical, judgments. Ideally, a successful normative theory begins from an Aristotelian ideal of praxis or practical decision making, which helps decision-makers to organize empirical information and to use that information to achieve instrumental and moral goals. Furthermore, the best of these theories will become part of the cognitive architecture that will become part of our “fast” thinking that informs decisions under conditions of bounded-rationality, or in the case of ethical judgment, bounded ethicality (Chugh, Bazerman, & Banaji, 2005; Kahneman, 2011; Simon, 2013).

When a successful normative theory takes hold in a field, its conceptual architecture, including definitions and conceptual arrangements, becomes incorporated into the practical and scholarly vocabulary useful for addressing common and uncommon problems (Wolin, 2016). I now turn to the topic of the Refounding concepts, particularly as elaborated upon in the first volume, to show how these might guide contemporary public administration theory and practice.

Refounding Concepts

Although they did not position themselves as strictly theorists, the Refounding authors did position themselves as architects of new concepts for the study of Public Administration. For example, Wamsley (1990) addressed problems of conceptual relationships and definitions, particularly with respect to development of the agency perspective (p. 116, for example). The remaining Refounding authors incorporated an array of concepts into the framework according to the demands of their individual arguments.

There is wide conceptual variation in the Refounding, which was a product of two forces. First, the authors sought to develop a work that was sensitive to the needs of both scholarship and practice. Hence, they did not impart a philosophers’ care with conceptualization, using contested concepts in ways that other authors might describe as contributing to conceptual stretching (Gallie, 1955; Sartori, 1970, 1984). Second, the authors’ concern to address Public Administration, an arm of government that did not have a singular conceptual architecture already attached to it, required the authors to bring in useful concepts from various parts of social science to characterize the institution. The key concepts uniquely developed in the Refounding text include Public Administration, the agency perspective, democracy, government, citizenship, service, Constitutions, and the public interest to advance their perspective. In the rest of this section, I briefly review the refounders development of these concepts.

Public Administration

No other concept is so distinct to the Refounding texts than “Public Administration.” The first two chapters of the original “Blacksburg Manifesto” posit a unique place and meaning (and a unique use of capitalization) for The Public Administration (1990, pp. 34-35). Readers were encouraged to think of The Public Administration (1990) foremost as “an institution of government rather than of bureaucracy as an organization form” (p. 34). The refounders reconceptualization of the Public Administration (1990) through an institutional lens, refocused discussions away from its organizational forms and political stereotypes and toward redefinition as an institution with a legitimate, authoritative, governing, and serving role, which is directed by the letter and spirit of the Constitution and realities of democratic constraints (p. 24). They did not argue against the denotation of the concept—it is an institution charged with implementation of political goals—but argued for a change to the connotations of Public Administration to reflect skillfulness, public or social usefulness, public interestedness, and a distinct institutionally specific perspective on politics and management.

That the authors sought to change the connotations of the term Public Administration did not mean that they sought to divorce the concept from its practical characteristics. For example, borrowing from the debates among scholars of management (see Drucker, 1995, compilation for examples), The Public Administration was argued to have a common set of managerial skills appropriate to any managed organization. However, the Public Administration also has “specialized knowledge, historical experience, time-tested wisdom, and most importantly, some degree of consensus as to the public interest relevant to a particular societal function” (p. 37). The institution of the Public Administration (1990,) was given a stronger normative role or stabilizing societal function by the refounding authors who described its role as the “gyroscope” or soul of public organizations. The specific concept attached to the soul of the Public Administration is the “Agency Perspective” (p. 155).

The Agency Perspective

Wamsley (1990) posited that public agencies serve as focal points for a particular community and anchor of shared meaning making among the citizens, whether special as administrators or special as the authors of the Constitutional order and motor of democracy (pp. 117-120). Per Wamsley’s argument, genuine agency—ability to act as purposive actors, or assertion of important values through in policy implementation—is imperative for a fully democratic Public Administration. Public agencies capture the norms that constitute a guide for governing commitments and synthesize them, unwittingly perhaps, into a distinct normative commitment or “civil spirit” that Wamsley called the “agency perspective.” The agency perspective is a demanding informal ethical and technical normative concept which requires public agencies to

Pursu[e] the broadest and longest-range conception of the public interest and the common good in the dialogue within policy subsystems and in operationalization of programs

Creat[e] and nurture legitimate, reason-giving authority by the development of normative dependencies.

Foster[e] active citizenship and communitarian political values

[Fully understand] the Constitution and the polycentric nature of power it entails (i.e., multiple principals), and

[Uphold] and defend the Constitution and Policy processes that conform to the constitution and the regime values reflected in it. (Wamsley, 1990, p. 151)

More importantly, the agency perspective requires administrators to take a long and a wide view—to understand the historical, Constitutionally governed, purpose of the agency, and how it fits with the articulation of a public interest.

Constitutions

The Refounding authors shared their quest for defensible public values with political philosophers both historical and contemporary to their cause. They sought, through varying theoretical lenses, a picture of Public Administration within the limits of Constitutional arguments concerning political legitimacy, democracy, and republicanism. Borrowing from the constitutional legitimation narrative initiated by Aristotle and reformulated by Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and others, refounders like Rohr placed Public Administration in a democratic system grounded in a theory and practice of public consent.

The centrality of the Constitution in the Blacksburg perspective should not be understated. As the source of legitimate authority for all political institutions, the Constitution situates the people—those who consent to form the government—as the foundation of both the polity and as the actions taken for its stability, wealth, and protection. John Rohr’s work describes an explicitly Constitutional theory of public administration which draws on a rich discourse on the Federalist and Anti-Federalist perspectives on the executive, an examination of the administrative powers and roles described for the Senate, and a theory of “administrative statesmanship” that calls on The Public Administration to maintain a public interested approach to the state. At length, Rohr (1990, pp. 81-82) describes the role of the Constitution in the discussion of the public administration as the following:

to encourage administrators and the public to think about administrative behavior in constitutional terms . . . By grounding our thinking about the Public Administration in the Constitution we can transform erstwhile lackeys, leaders, obstructionists and whistleblowers into administrative statesmen. The constitutional approach to Public Administration is suitable for administrators who think we do too little for the poor as well as for those who think we do too much; for those who support a nuclear freeze and those who oppose it; for supply side economists and for advocates of industrial policy. The Constitution is permissive on these issues. Administrators will not be without firm, perhaps passionate, convictions on matters of this sort. They should certainly use their discretion to favor those policies they think are most likely to promote the public interest; but they should assess the public interest against the broad background of constitutional principle . . . The constitutional word becomes flesh in stature, rule, and policy . . . For public administrators the Constitution is the cause above causes.

Rohr was not alone in his emphasis on the Constitution as the source of relevant administrative values. Wamsley reemphasizes the role of the Constitution as the source of public interest based regime values and stipulates that an Agency’s statutory mandate and related actions ought to reflect those values. Starting from another theoretical position entirely, White (1990) describes the constitution as giving to public administrators the “transcendent” or intrinsic meaning which in turn gives administrative citizenship and administrative action a fuller meaning (p. 233).

The Importance of Institutions

The Blacksburg founders describe their overall theoretical perspective as an institutional theory of politics and government (Goodsell, 1981a, 1981b, 2006, 2014; King, Stivers, & Box, 1998; Rohr, 1988; Stivers, 2002a, 2002b; Wamsley, Goodsell, Rohr, White, & Wolf, 1984; Wamsley & Zald, 1973. There is not, however, one “institutionalism” that could be pinned to the whole of the project. March and Olsen, DeMaggio and Powell, Ostrom, Douglas, Selznick, Scott and other contributors to the body of institutional theory all figure in the elaboration on the Refounding attempt to “institutionally ground” and center their normative perspective on government (see Davis & Marquis, 2005). In this project, they were not alone as others from the “Minnowbrook” or New Public Administration school sought to develop institutionalist perspectives on social equity projects as well (see Frederickson, 1980, 1989; O’Leary, Van Slyke, & Kim, 2011).

Although establishing an institutional Public Administration was the foremost of the institutionalist concerns that the Blacksburg founders addressed, the central institutionalist idea is that government is a combination of institutions and an institution itself (see Merton, 1949; Selznick, 1949/2011). The many authors of the refounding made it clear that Public Administration could be studied individually and within the study of government as a whole. Importantly, however legitimate government is an activity of all pertinent institutions working together in concert and attempts to cleave off public administration would go against a project of fully legitimating government.

The work of Goodsell (2006), whether in the Refounding texts or his masterful work in The Case for Bureaucracy, elaborates most completely why (a) the Public Administration cannot be ignored as a serious institution of government and (b) why a “whole of government” institutional approach also leads to the conclusion that the institution of government is more than the sum of its institutional components. Goodsell makes the institutionalist case for government in his discursive interpretation of the public interest standard—Public Administration, alongside other political institutions, ensure the implementation of six essential public interest focused values. Each of the values that Goodsell (1990) enumerates—legal-morality, political responsiveness, political consensus, concern for logic, concern for effects, and agenda awareness (pp. 112, 102-111 variously)—unifies the institutions of government into a project of legitimate policy action.

The refounders described a place for citizens that is like that of other institutions. An institutional citizen is a set of active persons—a community of shared meaning and purpose that is more developed than people as voting blocks, interest groups, or an ephemeral social—that changes and challenges values and policies. The authors of the refounding texts considered government by individual people, whether Ronald Reagan (much reviled in the Refounding narratives) or any unnamed administrator, to be a deficient form of government. But, the citizen, whether as an individual or a collective, is described as essential for legitimate government.

Wamsley describes institutional citizens as a community (in the sense of communitarian, not individualistic, political philosophy), but others, such as Stivers, describe the institution of the people in the sense of an agential institution of active citizens. As agents, the institution of the people can make valid claims upon the actions of other institutions, including the public administration. Stivers (1990) describes the institutional relationship as a set of accountability relationships:

Administrative legitimacy requires active accountability to citizens, from who the ends of government derive. Accountability, in turn, requires a shared framework for the interpretation of basic values, one that must be developed jointly by bureaucrats and citizens in real-world situations, rather than assumed. The legitimate administrative state, in other words, is one inhabited by active citizens. (p. 247)

Citizenship

Citizenship is an institution, not merely a set of practices that emerge during elections, declarations of rights, or applications for a passport. Stivers captures the full notion of citizenship in the Refounding perspective through her concept of active citizenship. Stivers describes active citizenship through a reflexive and communitarian perspective: the community is essential for individual interest formation and expression. Blacksburg communitarianism is not pitted against individualism, as is the case with other explicitly political theories of communitarianism. Instead, this strain of active citizenship puts all individuals, whether within the government or within the citizenry, into a communitarian paradigm consisting of agencies working in concert with the other institutions of government, notably an active, dialogical, people:

The agency perspective is consistent with the conceptual requirements of an administrative praxis for active citizenship. The key missing ingredient Is active accountability to citizens, mediated in dialogue and joint action, which sows seeds of trust that are required in order that administrative discretion can be exercised. Bureaucrats must find opportunities and develop frameworks for working with citizens so that citizens will trust them to choose rightly when circumstances preclude citizens’ active participation. The agency is enriched by conversation and action with citizens, which provide a dimension of reality—both benefits and costs—that breathe life (ie, accountability) into codes of professional ethics, constitutional and legislative provision, and technical expertise. (Stivers, 1990, pp. 261-262)

That public administrators ought to encourage and engage with active citizens is an essential component of the theory of communitarian citizenship that is enmeshed into the agency perspective. But, as is noted by early critic Herbert Kaufman (1990, pp. 314-315), replacing, not supplementing, administrator-public interaction for ordinary tasks and institutions of democracy (e.g., voting) poses its own threat to democracy.

Democracy

In the conventional sense, the Refounding authors do not articulate a democratic theory. The Refounding commitment to democracy is incorporated as an ethical ideal and a form of political institutional practice and the degree of commitment and elaboration on either is a function of which author is writing. Stivers (1996) gives a full account of mixed democratic practice in her theory of active citizenship, a model wherein citizens “contest or call existing arguments into question” directives that should prompt listening, engagement, and embrace of difference, on the part of administrators (p. 262). Although Stivers argues that a full, rich, notion of citizenship enhances democratic institutions and the ethos of a democracy, White, McSwite, and Dennard see public administration and public administrators serving as a venue and vehicle for the practice of citizenship for democracy. White (1990), and later McSwite (1996), proposes that, in a democracy, public administration entails educational and facilitative work (see also Barth, 1996, p. 170). Facilitative democratic administration moves citizens and the institution of the people toward a more mature form of universal, public, interest expression that is aided by authority and tradition, but not dependent upon or captive to it. White (1990, pp. 231-232) contends that

participation, as effective social process, depends critically on certain preconditions that in turn depend upon a given level of human maturation or development. Maturation and development, in turn, depend upon the existence of stable and effective authoritative institutions and the proper exercise of authority within and from them. The proper exercise of authority, in turn, depends upon the achievement of a kind of openness with subordinates that is characteristic of participation. Effective participation requires authority; effective authority requires participation. Each is the dialectical complementarity of the other, and both form the dialectic that is at the center of the whole, ultimately important, project of human development—the project, I my view, that is the source of meaning in individual social and political life.

Authority figures’ openness to a constant revision of rules, norms, processes, and audience to participation is, at the bottom of it, the crux of the Refounding perspective on democracy. Commitment to dialectically listening to, engaging with, treating, accepting, and assuming responsibility for citizens and for other administrators and the administrative agency is a distinctly Refounding perspective on the ethics of democratic practice (see Dennard, 1996; see also Wamsley, 1996, p. 369).

Public Interest

Both the first and second Refounding texts elaborate extensively on the concept of the public interest. Within the first volume, Goodsell gives the most developed exposition on the public interest and offers an institutionalist approach to its discursive definition. Goodsell offers that the public interest is a standard that citizens and governors, specifically public administrators, develop in conjunction with one another to determine what it is that we want for a standard of our shared good life. This perspective is taken up by the other Refounding authors.

Goodsell (1990) describes the practices of public interest formation as discourses that respect the legal-moral basis of governance, the need for political actors to be logical, attentive, aware, and responsive, to seek consensus, and to be mindful of the effects of administrative action on all parties to a governing choice (pp. 102-110). A truly public interested public administration will function as “a kind of societal conscience, sensitive to underdogs and unrecognized problems” (p. 111). But, that public administrators ought to serve as the conscience of the regime does not imply that they ought to do so from the perspective of “Administrative Platonism” or behaving as philosopher-prophet-kings who replace the people’s and Constitution’s visions of a state with their own individual interpretation (Goodsell, 1990, p. 98). Instead, The Public Administration develops its public interest perspective through value laden dialogue with active citizens, not through assertions of ethical normative (or even technical normative) authority.

Authority

The exercise of administrative authority in a democracy is a challenge that motivates, at least in part, all chapters of the Refounding texts. White (1990) addresses most explicitly the problem of authority through his elaboration on authority as a reflexive relationship (p. 232). As he describes it,

Authority, in the sense of unilaterally asserted, legitimate power-based action, is essential to these conditions and hence to the process of creating and maintaining consciousness. For example, in order for ego development to proceed effectively in children, there must be an authoritative representation of a set of socially legitimate value deals to the child. That is, society must have an ego, and a typical persona, if the socialization process on which ego development depends, is to occur. Legitimacy, of course, entails authority. The values that characterize a particular society must be embodied in institutions, and it is in the nature of institutions that they are invested with authority. (White, 1990, p. 224)

Although White finds an important place for administrative authority in the development of citizens, authority must always be restrained. As he describes it, The Public Administration must hold onto the public interest as a guard against the possibility of authority devolving into “technicism” or where “technical decision will become our dominant social process” rather than participation or democratic collaborative rule. To avoid technocracy, governors must guard against the rational cognitive faculty overwhelming the soul of institutions or the need for interconnectedness of all parts (see also Little, 1996, on interconnectedness and “thinking” governmentally). That is, the brain must not be allowed to overwhelm the soul.

Service

As Wolf and Bacher (1990) describe it, The Public Administration which serves democratic values requires individual administrators and distinct agencies to embrace public service as a vocation an ethic of service. This does not imply that serving the public be a matter of self-effacing behavior or self-sacrifice. Public service requires that administrators are praxis oriented, searching keenly for program and process improvements that enhance the values of the regime and the agency itself. The service orientation is a vocation and commitment to public service requires all that commitment to other vocations ought:

The Public Administration can gain from the mood that accompanies the world of vocation. The calling is embedded in the idea of Wamsley et al. (1983), that the vocation be based on “its fundamental sense of a solemn agreement on obligations between, and that would seem to capture what the Public Administration was, is, and ought to be: a solemn agreement between the citizens he or she serves; an agreement to serve the public with competence directed toward the public interest and the maintenance of democratic process of governance; competence constrained by the vitality of the constitutional heritage, the law and our common history as a people.” Perhaps a more powerful public service vocation anchored in the agency perspective can serve as a crucial link between individual effort and the broader community. The calling to the public service with the agency perspective offers a practical and concrete link among professional competence, individual effort and goals, and public purpose. (Wolf & Bacher, 1990, pp. 179-180)

Section Summary

Each of the concepts reviewed above helped to position the Refounders as expositors of an explicitly normative framework for public administration. The conceptual work was not motivated by scholarly practice alone, though the practice of authority or the exercise of the technical competence is, per Wamsley’s (1996) words, “dangerously incomplete without a normative grounding” (p. 355). How these concepts and this work can be used to address present problems in the exercise of administrative discretion and authority, particularly when administrators use machine learning or artificial intelligence algorithms as adjuncts to their decision making, is the topic for the next section of this article.

A Place for the Refounding in Contemporary Public Administration

The Refounding texts, particularly within the first volume, arranged concepts into a framework that persists as a source of theoretical guidance for public administration scholarship and practice. The test of whether the framework built by the refounding authors is successful comes from its adaptability and adoption for scholars and practitioners grappling with later problems unforeseen by the authors themselves (Wolin, 2016). In this section, I posit how concepts from the Refounding framework can be used to address a current challenge to public interested and democratic public administration—application of data-driven analytics (Big Data) to public programs and problems.

The Original Challenges

Although many of the Refounding chapters addressed those challenges that come from political and social institutions, others also addressed challenges from technology. Gary Wamsley listed at least three general challenges: securing effective transitions between presidential administrations, coaching, and teaching career civil servants to be better normative and technical administrators, and fighting against a persistent culture of bureaucrat bashing (Wamsley, 1990). Additional challenges include motivating public service professionals in the face of political and social critique, counteracting a forceful managerialism in the shape of New Public Management and Reinventing government, repositioning normative scholarship alongside of, rather than behind, econometric methods, and finding a stronger voice for a theory of public administration (Wamsley, 1996).

Those who were most concerned about the emergence of technocracy and citizens’ disengagement with the mechanisms of decision making as key problems for Public Administration in years to come were White and Stivers. Neither pointed directly at the arrival of Simon-like artificial intelligence or operations research as a threat, but the work of both is a warning against the challenges that analytics technology brings to the legitimacy of public administration in a democracy. The primary contention of this section is that adopting a Refounding position on the public interest, agency perspective, and Constitutional service might help administrators carve a path toward ethical incorporation of these new technologies that avoids technocratic dominance or fosters citizen disengagement.

Refounding Norms and Big Data Practice

Big Data analytics, machine learning, algorithmic decision making, evidence-based decision making, and many other labels describe the set of data-driven decision-making tools available to public agencies today (Davenport, 2014; Davenport, Barth, & Bean, 2012). Data-driven analytics—a generic heading, I use to characterize each of these tools—is argued to be an improved tool for administrators using citizens’ data to make more informed, error-free, and cost-efficacious decisions. However, these tools have also been alleged to have undermined physical and decisional freedom, to have stolen citizens (and noncitizens) privacy, and to have foreclosed debate through protected use of proprietary algorithms (Bozdag, 2013; Hajian, Bonchi, & Castillo, 2016; IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, 2015, 2017).

Data-driven analytics threatens to rearrange the connection between administrators and the evidence they use to make decisions and the relationship that citizens have to their data and administrator’s use of it. Technological domination obscures access to services, obfuscates decisions about services, and places citizens (and administrators) at a greater distance from the tasks of participation and governing. Driving the public interest toward a statistical normal vision invites public service to fulfill a technocratic mode of governance or, in the words of White and McSwite, toward technicism (White, 1990, pp. 238-240; McSwite, 1996).

With respect to administrative decision making, data-driven analytics challenges public administrators to satisfy the public interest by proxy, that is via satisfaction of statistical parameters and analytic thresholds (for more, see Lavertu, 2015). Algorithmic decision making, particularly that which is purchased “off the shelf” or built outside of agency guidance, obscures the process of administrative choice by removing key elements of discretionary judgment, such as weighting of evidence, selection of the priority of data for decision making, and asserting linear or nonlinear interaction between key variables (Boyd & Crawford, 2012). Construction of algorithms aside, it is imperative that administrators’ perspectives be brought back into public agency decision making, for example, determination of flu forecasts, as such algorithms make use of highly personal data about citizens and communities that is far from determined, static, or inert (Lazer, Kennedy, King, & Vespignani, 2014). Although it is important that a knowledgeable administrative representative be brought into projects that use citizens’ data, it is also important that administrators be embedded in the process of algorithmic design as representatives of communities without substantial voice (Lane, Stodden, Bender, & Nissenbaum, 2014).

In what ways can the guidance from the Refounding texts, specifically their elaborations on key concepts, help present day scholars and practitioners to address the challenges of fair, equitable, and effective algorithmic design and use in public agencies? The concept of the public interest is an example of normative guidance to address two well-known problems in this area: data heterogeneity and algorithmic bias. Multiple types of data are included under the heading of “Big Data,” including public records from local, state, and federal sources, which can be brought together with geographic information systems (GIS) data, data purchased from proprietary providers and scraped from social media platforms, such as purchases from online retailers and tweets, and other consumer platform based data (Benz, Hofmann, Willhauck, Lingenfelder, & Heynen, 2004). Each of these points of data likely represents an individuals’ statement of preferences and can, taken together, give a refined picture of individuals’ values (Tene & Polonetsky, 2012). However, this mosaic of interests may not fully reveal the person’s publicly expressed persona. Likewise, when coupled with public records, it may reveal irrationalities and/or inconsistencies that are emanations of culture and community (e.g., membership in a political organization that votes against siting a favored retailer). Although individual types of data are, potentially, innocuous, in combination they become powerful tools for evaluation of the life patterns and plans of others (Mergel, Rethemeyer, & Isett, 2016; Oboler, Welsh, & Cruz, 2012). When multiple data sources are combined, a person’s life may be on display for officials they have not yet met and to whom they have not given consent for program inclusion or surveillance (Cate & Mayer-Schönberger, 2013; O’Neil, 2017).

Although problems of consent to data use and quality of data-producing interactions pose problems for Big Data in government, a further, perhaps more insidious problem is that of algorithmic bias (Baeza-Yates, 2016; Bozdag, 2013). Algorithmic bias is the development of data models (algorithms) that intentionally or unintentionally instantiates modelers’ biases (Hajian et al., 2016). As scholars like O’Neil (2017) point out, biased algorithms become “instruments of mathematical destruction” that might enforce private, racist, sexist, or ableist perspectives, through analytical tools such as predictive policing or programs intended to make decisions pertinent to national security or educational allocations. Algorithmic bias threatens the possibility of equal consideration and representation as some individual’s life experiences (that is, those that are highly complex) may not be included in predictive modeling designs that strive to normalize individuals’ data representations against a preestablished normal. Alternatively, because some citizens may live lives with a high degree of contact with governing agencies (e.g., disabled foster children), they may have highly refined, and potentially oversampled, data personae, but suffer under fragmented service delivery schemes. Increasing representation in the engineering and computer science fields might help with the “front end” of algorithmic bias but increasing administrator’s appreciation of the public interest implications of algorithmic decision making will help on the “sharp end.”

The public interest is only one of the normative ethical standards held up as paramount by the Blacksburg authors. Others include an institutional focus and the agency perspective. Greenwood et al. (2014) point out that protecting individuals from the potential harms of big data will have to come through a system of institutional controls of “safeguards and protections implemented through legal, policy, governance, and other measures that are not solely technical, engineering, or mechanical” (p. 201). One potential institutional control is the insertion of an agency, service vocation, perspective. As Wamsley describes it, the agency perspective reinforces the technical and ethical normative knowledge of an agency, its history, purpose, and esprit de corps, through which the agency asserts its mission against demands for unthinking efficiency. The agency perspective might serve as a corrective against “technological somnambulism” or the tendency of political leaders and executives to sleepwalk into problems brought about by technology, lulled to sleep by a perception that technology and its consequences are benign (Winner, 2014). What the agency perspective might do is to guide practicing administrators toward caution against the continuous pressure from the presidents and citizens to import more technology into their practice without being awake to its consequences, as Winner reminds us: “It is still a prerequisite that the person running for public office swear his or her unflinching confidence in a positive link between technical development and human well-being and affirm that the next wave of innovations will surely be our salvation” (Winner, 2014, p. 104).

With respect to politicians’ or businesspersons’ assertion that data-driven analytics approaches will achieve the “better” services promised by political leaders, Refounders like Wamsley, Rohr, White, and Wolf (and ally Rosenbloom) would scoff at such a suggestion. Wamsley might remind that administrators would be the ones to review the tools for purchase by public agencies, White would remind that starry-eyed technologists have tried this all before, Rohr would remind that the courts and the Constitution almost always have a say on the role of technology as it is incorporated—slowly—into public agencies, and Wolf would remind that leaders are obligated to explain themselves and their choices of tools and that merely pointing to an algorithms’ output is unsatisfactory (Wamsley et al., 1990). All would remind that citizens are able to participate effectively in their own self-governance only when the decisions are made under terms they can comprehend and participation is structured in a way that meaningful voices are heard. For example, more fruitfully engaging the full public in public interest development discussions might require going well beyond the comfort of data modeling and data gathering as computer-enabled participatory mechanisms also raise questions about the quality of participation (Jordan & Watson, under review; Zavestoski, Shulman, & Schlosberg, 2006). Although data analytics does create opportunities for development for extensive and fair evaluation of program potential, these cannot be realized without first addressing problems of data heterogeneity, known problems of algorithmic bias, and digital inequality (Lambrecht & Tucker, 2016; Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013).

What the Refounding perspective offers to this topic is to remind administrators and politicians that this tool, like all tools, are augments to administrative decision making and their performance should be as rigorously assessed as are the administrators’ whose discretionary authority they are supposed to replace (Žliobaitė, 2017). Data analytics do not replace or human thought and feeling as they are made by humans and, in the case of public administration, imported by human hands. Recombination of data does replace conversations with citizens; paperwork in the bureau does not replace the hard work of talking about settlement (Stivers, 2002a). The Refounding authors’ narratives counter against technologically determinist perspectives that argue that technology is inevitable. They stress that the human factors are those that create “better” conditions and improved services, not the technology as such. A revived Refounding perspective brings to the table in the data-driven analytics discussion a faith in the constancy of institutions, not tools, and interaction between people and people, not strictly human–computer interaction.

Refounding Norms and Public Administration Theory in an Algorithmic Decade

Confronting the arrival of algorithms as a serious threat to administrative decision making and discretion requires attention to the practice of public administration under an algorithmic worldview. Answering the algorithmic challenge to public administration fully will also require addressing a fundamental theoretical question: Is decision making by human administrators, with all the flaws implied, normatively and technically preferable to decision making by algorithms? Addressing this challenge means confronting what Wamsley (1996), in the concluding chapter to Refounding Democratic Public Administration, describes as a central problem: There is little by way of progress (still!) in the construction of a theory of public administration.

There are meta-theoretical issues that stand in the way of development of a strong public administration theory, such as a lack of clear standards, particularly for normative theories, but also the tendency to substitute taste for theory, method and evidence for assessments of the quality of either (Jewell & Bero, 2008; Wamsley, 1996; Wolin, 2016, pp. 35-37). What the Blacksburg perspective did offer, and what ought to be revived to meet the challenge of algorithmic administration, is an arrangement of concepts into a theory that takes seriously public administration as an institution designed to mitigate explicitly human fallibility, while harnessing the quintessentially human task of constructing values, goals, and meaning. That the Blacksburg perspective takes seriously the importance of configuring organizations in a world of goal oriented, social, persons interacting with purposeful designs places it squarely in the frame of defining a human-centered science (see also Simon, 1996, pp. 152-156). The Blacksburg perspective outlined the goals (to serve the public interest), the arrangement of actors (a Constitution) within organizations (agencies) designed to serve those goals and set the terms of engagement for public administration within the nexus of Constitutions, citizens, and politicians.

Curiously, the original refounding text was criticized as possibly establishing a technocracy. But, the technocracy feared was not an algorithmic one. What was feared was the rule by (human) experts whose knowledge, and thus power, created zones of exclusion for lay citizens perspectives on government. Separately and together, the authors countered this criticism in the second volume by reemphasizing the importance of democratic citizen engagement. The general theory of citizen engagement posited emphasized the importance of collaboration, listening, and interaction as correctives to cost-benefit analysis, impact statements, and board-room decisions. In the next wave of algorithmic governance, such a theory of citizen engagement can be used to counter the assertion of algorithmic decision making as the source of competent administration in two ways. First, administrators themselves must be an engaged part of determining the design of algorithms for public decisions. As Goodsell (2003) points out in his work, local administrators know their clients and know how to effectively represent and advocated for their needs to others. Second citizens must be incorporated meaningfully into programmers’ designs just as they are argued to need to be brought into program design. As historically situated transmission belts for citizens’ perspectives, public administrators are well poised to serve as hinges between citizens and computers. This much is certainly a critical function of public administration infused with an agency perspective (see Wamsley, 1990, pp. 117-120).

Conclusion

What the Refounders did was bold. So was the early scholarship by Frederickson and the early public management scholars. The Refounding authors were unafraid of accusations of espousing a technocracy or worse, and unashamed of advocating a distinct perspective on the importance of administration as such. The project to reassert the Refounding perspective invites other scholars to reimagine their projects with a similarly strong vision of the questions to be answered and the problems solved, coupled with a sincere belief in the validity of their purpose.

Substantively speaking, building a theory of human-centered administrative governance that counters the hype of big data hubris will require a bold commitment to some of the norms and concepts captured by the refounding perspective. Identifying the appropriate place for technology in a Constitutional democracy is a lasting challenge that must be addressed with ardor given the encroachment of algorithms into administrative discretion. Finding the appropriate balance of technological and social interests that satisfy the standard of public interested decision making will also continue to be a salient matter for discussion by both scholars and practitioners (for example, see Cook, 2014, pp. 192-194). However complex the problems of identifying the democratic public interest in a Constitutional and technologically enabled government might be, the emphasis of the refounding authors to craft a perspective that is genial to practicing public administrators should not be lost. Crafting theory and practice will require cleaving to the middle road, carving out mixed spaces for bureaucrats and scholars alike to shape the next ways of making Public Administration legitimate, constitutional, democratic, and technologically sophisticated.

Footnotes

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

Sara Mattingly-Jordan is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. Her current work addresses ethics for high-consequence systems, such as automatic vehicles, empirical evaluations of ethical language, and characteristics of participation in Internet governance venues. Her work appears in World Medical Policy, Public Management Review, and International Review of Administrative Sciences.

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