Critical Social Theory in Public Administration by Box Richard C.;

Author:Box, Richard C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2005-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Often we think of administrators involved in discourse with the public as being those at the top of organizational hierarchies, those who interact with citizen policy makers to shape the content of public policy. Public organizations contain a variety of boundary-spanning positions in which public employees interact frequently or constantly with the public, but not all of these positions are involved in discourse that communicates information that could alter policies. Examples would include a motor vehicles clerk or welfare department intake worker, positions in which communication with the public is routine, limited in scope, and only infrequently causes change beyond the immediate worksite.

However, many middle- and lower-level administrators have meaningful discourse with the public. Examples would include a planner or engineer who works with citizen advisory committees or a police community affairs officer who works to improve relations between police and citizens. Such people have the opportunity to communicate their agency’s mission and vision of the future to citizens. They also have the opportunity to interject professional knowledge and opinions that may not correspond to the agency view, information that may allow citizens greater understanding and opportunity for action that changes the agency-citizen relationship. By definition, then, the question of discourse relates to those administrators high enough in the hierarchy to be at or near the politics-administration interface and also to those whose boundary-spanning jobs take them beyond the language of technical interchange with the public into discussion of alternative policies.

In addition to public administrators who are involved in discourse with the public, many are not directly involved with citizens but contribute significantly to constructive change in public administration. Though critical theory focuses on discourse as a means of altering the distribution of political power, there are other ways to contribute to the pool of knowledge available to professional and citizen decision makers and to increase the rationality of decisions. In concentrating on discourse with citizens as an instrument of social change, we narrow the pool of affected public administrators, but administrators may bring about meaningful change while working in positions that do not include public contact.

The critical theory model envisions discourse as a technique of opening the public agenda to a broad group of citizens to counter governing elites’ self-interested control. However, governing bodies may reflect diverse and broadly representative views rather than those of a monolithic elite so that the professional offers the benefits of full and free discussion to the governing body in addition to the general public. In the example given below, discourse with citizens gradually produced a more representative policymaking process, and in some places (like the “arbiter” city described previously) the public agenda may be characterized by open debate. The professional role as facilitator of discourse is different in arbiter cities than in the elite-dominated community, but the value of rational professionalism remains considerable because a public dialogue based solely on the struggle for power can lapse easily enough into factional dominance. Professional provision of information and creation of open discourse remain valuable across

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