de Zwart / PRACTICE&AND

ADMINISTRATION SOCIETY
INQUIRY/ November 2002
This article explores postmodern reasoning in academic public administration. It argues
that the antiscience and proliberation arguments that abound in postmodern writing in pub-
lic administration are informed by a fallacy: conflating administrative practice and the sci-
entific study of that practice. In effect, postmodernists confuse wrongs of bureaucracy with
arguments against modern science and then propagate relativism to clear up the muddle they
created. This article opposes that package deal. It argues that the main objection
postmodern authors have against science and administration—neglect of the variety of sub-
jects’ points of view—has nothing to do with positivism or modern science and cannot be
cured with relativism.

ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE AND

RATIONAL INQUIRY IN POSTMODERN
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION THEORY

FRANK DE ZWART
Leiden University

Postmodern theorists in public administration (PA) champion the case

of marginalized social categories. “A central aim of postmodernism,”
David John Farmer (1999) wrote, “is to demarginalize . . . groups such as
women, minorities, the economically disadvantaged, those with policed
sexualities, the colonized, and others” (p. 313). What has postmodern PA
to offer this marginalized majority? The idea is that the government
marginalizes minorities and others because it privileges scientific dis-
course over other discourses. To demarginalize, therefore, modern sci-
ence needs to be deprivileged.
Postmodernists argue that science, with its respect for facts and its
attempts to find truth, is just one among other equally deserving discourses.
Science deals with facts, but facts, the argument goes, are social

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I thank Bas van Gool, Paul ‘t Hart, Richard Stillman II, Odile Verhaar,
and Jan Wuisman for their stimulating interest and their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 34 No. 5, November 2002 482-498
DOI: 10.1177/009539902237272
© 2002 Sage Publications

482

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 de Zwart / PRACTICE AND INQUIRY 483

constructions made and maintained by discourse. Postmodernism denies

an objective reality about which one can be right or wrong. “The reality we
experience as ‘real,’ ” McSwite (1997) claimed, “is actually a kind of virtual
reality” (p. 248). Postmodern authors stress that we have various dis-
courses that construct various realities—different but equal. They celebrate
multiplicity—of culture, discourse, and knowledge. The latter, multiplic-
ity of knowledge (some authors, indeed, prefer “knowledges”) introduces
cognitive relativism, and cognitive relativism1 deprivileges science.
Why do postmodernists believe that embracing relativism would help
marginalized social categories? Government in the modern era, they say,
relied on the facts and truth claims of science to develop and legitimate its
policies. But because facts are social constructions—not givens—science
cannot be neutral. Government’s support for scientific knowledge privi-
leges one particular social construction to the exclusion or marginali-
zation of others. Illustrations of this basic idea in various postmodern writ-
ings range from simple claims, such as “the patriarchal or masculine
nature that has been described for modernist public administration think-
ing [excludes or marginalizes] the nonpatriarchal perspective” (Farmer,
1999, p. 313), to sophisticated studies arguing that official categoriza-
tions—based on facts produced by the social sciences—fixate the people
who are subjected to them in the marginal or oppressed identities that are
part and parcel of colonial constructions of the social world.2
This article examines the postmodern claim that modern government
neglects, excludes, or marginalizes weaker social sections because it priv-
ileges science over other discourses, and it argues that this claim is the
mistaken result of confusing social engineering and social science. It also
disputes the related claim, common in postmodern studies, that interpreta-
tive social science is going to help return to the “silenced voices” (a syn-
onym for marginalized social groups) the voice that positive or modern
science denied them for so long. This claim rests on the false idea that
modern science has no room for “the native’s point of view” because it
acknowledges only “facts.” The final section of this article argues that
interpretative social science and rational inquiry (a synonym for modern
science, which use I shall shortly explain) are not at all mutually exclusive.
Herbert Simon’s heritage makes PA theory particularly well suited to
show that we do not need relativism to reckon with the native’s point of
view.

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484 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002

CONFLATING SCIENCE AND GOVERNANCE

Postmodernism opposes modern science. Note, however, that “modern

science” is just one of many terms used in postmodern texts to depict what
is opposed. Fox and Miller (1996) criticized “orthodoxy” and “neutral sci-
ence” (p. 79). Farmer (1999) opposed “hegemonic style,” “the rational,”
“modernist style,” and more. Others criticized “positivist policy analysis”
(Danziger, 1995), or “modernist theorists,” that is, those “who continue
their work based on the traditional social science concepts and methods
[and] use the research results for (attempted) objective advise” (Bogason,
1999, p. 508).
Underneath this conceptual multiplicity there is one common oppo-
nent: “metanarratives.” Metanarratives are “grand stories” that legitimize
and give meaning to smaller, local stories and practices (Lyotard, 1984).
For instance, as Steven Seidman (1994) explained Lyotard, “The Enlight-
enment story of human progress driven by the advancement of scientific
knowledge, justifies the practices of the natural and social sciences”
(p. 206). Or, to borrow another example from Seidman, a local union
strike may gain coherence in light of “the Marxist story of the coming of
socialism through class conflict” (p. 206). Postmodernism considers the
legitimating function of metanarratives to be a central trait—and principle
wrong—of modernity. Indeed, Lyotard (1984) defined the postmodern as
“incredulity towards metanarratives.”
Metanarrative, however, is such an inclusive category that the precise
object of postmodern incredulity often remains obscure. As we do when
we discuss hegemony, positivism, the rational, and so on, Noam Chomsky
(1992), in a helpful review of postmodern literature, also struggled with
this problem. Chomsky exclaimed that he probably should have refused to
write the review because he tried but never quite managed to grasp what
the papers in question were about: “I think I understand some of what is
said in the six papers,” he wrote, “and agree with much of it. What I don’t
understand is the topic: the legitimacy of ‘rationality,’ ‘science,’ and
‘logic’ (perhaps modified by ‘Western’)—call the amalgam ‘rational
inquiry,’ for brevity” (p. 52).
Postmodern public administrationists have constructed their own
amalgam, and we also need a shortcut to write about it. Hence, I follow
Chomsky and, for brevity, speak of rational inquiry where possible. A spe-
cific trait of PA complicates matters somewhat, however. As the name of
the discipline suggests, public administrationists traditionally hesitate
to distinguish sharply between the study and the practice of PA. Post-

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 de Zwart / PRACTICE AND INQUIRY 485

modernists are no exception to that, and consequently, their discussion of

rational inquiry in PA deals both with administrative practice and with the
scientific study of that practice.
Many in the discipline follow Dwight Waldo and characterize PA pri-
marily as a profession and not, as Herbert Simon does, as a social science.
In an excellent discussion of this subject, Melvin J. Dubnick (1999, pp.
11-20) showed that Waldo’s idea of PA as a profession has been much
more influential in the discipline than Herbert Simon’s opposing attempts
to make it into a social science. Simon’s work, Dubnick wrote,

has had considerable influence in mainstream Public Administration

research, but more often it has served as a counterpoint to those who have
shaped the intellectual tone of the field. A social science discipline did
emerge from Simon’s work, but it was established as a distinct alternative to
Public Administration. (p. 18)

Dubnick’s view on the influence of Simon and Waldo in PA contrasts

sharply with that of White and McSwain (1990). The latter placed Waldo
with “traditionalists” whose “laudable, appealing, even inspiring model
of the public service” was unfortunately replaced, in the 1950s and 1960s,
with the “rational technicism” embodied by Herbert Simon (White &
McSwain, 1990, pp. 35-37).3 The traditional model, White and McSwain
wrote, was founded on a metaphysical grounding, whereas the new
approach—rational technicism—was based on “empirical data, the fur-
thest thing from metaphysics” (p. 35). “Positivists of the sort with whom
Simon allied himself,” White and McSwain continued, “hold that facts
and values are necessarily and incontrovertibly separate” (p. 35). Indeed,
Simon intends to separate science from administrative practice. He advo-
cates an administrative science based on empirical research, and he hopes
to make that social science useful for administration. White and McSwain
conflate science and administration by equating technicism, which is
clearly administrative practice, with positivism, which is clearly part of
rational inquiry. Moreover, their romantic view of traditionalist adminis-
tration based on wisdom and experience (p. 37), in opposition to today’s
positivist technocrats, thrives on the common dislike of administrative
practice (bureaucracy) and rhetorically uses that dislike to argue against
science.
As we saw, Dubnick (1999) considered Waldo’s influence on PA much
more profound. Waldo, Dubnick wrote, stresses that PA is a profession4 in
order to give it the special status of a “practical field” and thus to allow
intellectual gatekeepers “to maintain their defensive posture against the

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486 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002

unwarranted intrusion of the (logical positivist and technocratic) barbari-

ans at the gates” (p. 19).5 From Waldo’s influence follow the prescriptive
ambitions of academic PA, and these ambitions dominate the field.
Herbert Simon (1945/1976) also recognized a theoretical and a practi-
cal form of administrative science. To him, however, the practical form is
applied rather than prescriptive (p. 253). Theoretical PA “studies the way
human beings behave in organized groups. This might be called a sociol-
ogy of administration.” Practical PA consists of “propositions as to how
men would behave if they wished their activity to result in the greatest
attainment of administrative objectives with scare means” (p. 253). Note
that Simon did not say how men should behave. There is no place, he said,
for “ethical assertions in the body of a science. . . . [A]n administrative sci-
ence, like any science, is concerned purely with factual statements”
(p. 253).
Not surprisingly, we find postmodern public administrationists to be
Waldo’s rather than Simon’s intellectual heritors. Waldo encourages us to
deal with facts and ethics (presently often called “prescription”) and treats
the discipline as if it were a profession or a “practical science.” This
approach clearly suits the postmodern agenda: If PA is both a positive sci-
ence and a professional activity, it embodies, as no other academic disci-
pline, the connection between epistemology and governance that
postmodernism aims to expose.

SCIENCE AND GOVERNANCE IN POSTMODERN TEXTS

McBeth and Clemons (1999, pp. 161-162) argued that “positivist pol-
icy analysis” is an exercise that emphasizes science and truth while it
serves the interests of powerholders: “Positivism asserts that only
falsifiable and empirical scientific knowledge is valid and therefore tends
to discount the views of citizens” (p. 161).6 Farmer (1999) listed a number
of complaints that add up to about the same point: PA neglects macro and
longer term analysis and privileges a narrow and inflexible style (p. 299).
Moreover, it refuses to address the tendency of bureaucracy to “stifle the
human spirit” (p. 299) and is satisfied, instead, to fulfill a “micro function
in upgrading the efficiency of the governmental machine” (p. 305). Thus,
PA reflects the “power relations and interests of a modernist and capitalist
society,” and educates workers who will “fit into the established machin-
ery” (p. 305; cf. Fisher, 1998, p. 143; Tannenbaum & Schultz, 1998).

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 de Zwart / PRACTICE AND INQUIRY 487

Finally, as we saw above, PA also marginalizes women, the colonized, and

many others (Farmer, 1999, p. 313).
Fox and Miller (1996) stressed the shortcomings of orthodoxy which,
on one hand, they called a “model of governance” and treated as a form of
administrative practice but, on the other hand, associated with rational
inquiry and treated as a social science (p. 49). Orthodoxy, Fox and Miller
wrote, arose as a model of governance under the combined influence of
Woodrow Wilson, Frederick Taylor, and Max Weber (p. 3). It values ratio-
nality, efficiency, hierarchic control, and separation of politics and admin-
istration, but orthodoxy never produced the neutral and democratic gov-
ernment it promised (pp. 5-6, 16-17). Orthodoxy functions as a
legitimizing myth (p. 3) for the “loop model” of democracy—that is, a
political system wherein “individual preferences . . . are aggregated to
popular will, codified by legislation, implemented by the bureaucracy, and
evaluated in turn by attentive voters” (p. 5). This model of democracy,
however, “lacks credibility” (p. 5). The authors think that today’s voters
are unable or unwilling to participate in this kind of politics; orthodoxy
excludes and marginalizes them. Constitutionalist, communitarian, or
other attempts at reform tried to involve citizens in governmental deci-
sions, but these attempts have been “too conservative to serve as the tem-
plate for governance in the postmodern period” (p. 6).
Governance in the postmodern era requires that we understand
postmodern conditions, Fox and Miller (1996) summoned. Readers had
better accommodate to postmodern terms, they continued, because “the
mundane language of modernity won’t work” (p. 6). Then follows a long
exposé about “thinning reality,” “hyperreality,” and “self-referential”
words (pp. 7-10) that indeed challenges one’s ability to accommodate but
in the end seems to contain a simple and not very original message: Ortho-
doxy reckons with abstract citizens to the neglect or denial of concrete
social and cultural fragmentation. As a consequence, most Americans do
not feel represented by the national political culture and institutions,
which makes policy making increasingly difficult and favors those who
benefit from the status quo.
After having argued that traditional critiques and alternatives will not
solve the problem, Fox and Miller (1996) continue to subsume orthodoxy
under “modernity” (p. 44), quoting Lyotard, who uses “the term modern to
designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a
metadiscourse,” comparing orthodoxy to other metanarratives such as
“logical positivism . . . logic . . . materialist dialectic . . . and structural

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488 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002

functionalism and systems theory” (p. 44) and finally apply the standard
antirational inquiry repertory to the whole amalgam. Thus, Fox and Miller
start an analysis of orthodoxy as model of government and, through
almost free association, end in a critique of social science theory and
method. The result is conflation of governance and science.7
In Farmer (1999), thinking about modernity also inspires conflation of
science and governance. Farmer blamed academic PA for cherishing its
role as the “Jeeves” of government (p. 311). As an efficient servant, PA
does whatever the government wants. Public administrationists strive for
the familiar, do not study “longer term” or “macro” issues, and do “not
read anything [they] do not immediately understand” (p. 311). It seems
that Farmer blames academic PA for practicing administration instead of
social science. He would have a point there, but it soon turns out that this is
not the point Farmer wants to make. On the contrary, Farmer blamed the
Jeeves syndrome, and PA’s contribution to marginalizing weaker social
sections, on the hegemony of “reason,” and “rationality” (pp. 313-314). In
short, he blamed rational inquiry.
The wrongs of PA listed by Farmer, however, result from administra-
tive practice, not from rational inquiry. Farmer himself stressed that PA,
more than the other social sciences, serves short-term bureaucratic inter-
ests rather than social science (pp. 310-311). Blaming rational inquiry for
this makes no sense.

THE FACTUAL NEED FOR RELATIVISM

The postmodern critique of modernism in PA usually entails a plea for

cognitive relativism. Fox and Miller (1996) called modernist thought pre-
tentious and “fundamentally misleading” because it assumes reality out-
side language or discourse (p. 49). Farmer’s (1999) remark that “What
counts as truth in [PA] or any other area of discourse reflects power rela-
tions . . . and interests of a modernist and capitalist society” (p. 305) in
effect discourages rational inquiry.
In a clear exposé that, as the author says, “codifies and fortifies” Ernest
Gellner’s arguments against cultural relativism, Rod Aya (1996) gave a
helpful definition: “Cultural relativism,” he wrote,

is not one argument but two—moral and cognitive. Moral cultural relativ-
ism says there is no morality beyond culture: acts are good that culture
approves—when in Rome do as the Romans do. Cognitive cultural relativ-
ism says there is no knowledge beyond culture: ideas are true that culture

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 de Zwart / PRACTICE AND INQUIRY 489

approves—when in Rome think as the Romans think. Virtue and truth are
relative to culture, but no culture is privileged: beyond own culture, judge-
ment is gratuitous—outside Rome anything goes. (p. 554)

Postmodernists have various reasons for cognitive relativism. As we

saw, many think that relativism helps to liberate marginalized groups.
Some also consider it a basic epistemological principle. Another argu-
ment common in postmodern PA studies, more pragmatic—and paradoxi-
cal—is that today’s social reality demands relativism. Fox and Miller
(1996), for instance, wrote that society at present lacks “agreement about
the ‘real’ ” (p. 42):

There is no stable common reality against which truth claims may be

redeemed. Instead, America today shares across disparate groups and tribes
only a media-infused hyperreality of consciousness. This “reality” is tran-
sient and unstable and mutates rapidly. . . . [T]here is a refracted, more inti-
mate, but perhaps incommensurable series of realities constructed by mul-
tiple subcultural fragments. (p. 43)

Farmer’s (1999) epistemology is also time-bound. He wrote that the

hegemonic style in PA was “spurred by the Enlightenment’s rationalizing
drive,” and thus belongs to the modern era (p. 308). Today, Farmer argued,
we need a new hegemonic style—“a family of hegemonies,” to be precise:

The style of PA discourse (or thinking) should surely fit its con-
text. . . . What might work in a theonomic theocracy . . . might not be so suit-
able in a nonfundamentalist society. The style of PA thinking should fit the
emerging context, especially if it is the case that PA facts are social con-
structs (rather than objective givens) and if it is the case that the character of
the facts is changing as the post-ist context changes. (p. 308)8

A variant of the present-times-require argument for relativism is the

idea that certain objects of study demand it. McBeth and Clemons (1999,
p. 161), for instance, argued that we need postmodernism in applied pol-
icy analysis because politics is a conflict of values, hence “truth is difficult
to determine in the policy arena. In policy politics, there are many possible
interpretations of the ‘truth’ ” (p. 161). In other words, people have differ-
ent interpretations; hence, there is no truth. Or, to speak with Wonders, as
quoted in McBeth and Clemons, “that what passes for objectivity and
truth is really just one possible story about reality” (p. 161).
In addition to the questionale use of an epistemology that varies with
the times, the reasoning exemplified above is paradoxical. The authors
base arguments for relativism on descriptions of society, but why should

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490 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002

we accept such descriptions from scholars who gave up aiming at truth

and deny the existence facts? Cognitive relativism backfires.

SCIENTISM AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Critique of modernity does not have to invoke relativism. In his recent

Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott (1998) studied modernization projects
such as collectivization in the Soviet Union and forced villagization in
Tanzania that were intended, by the states that ran them, to “improve the
human condition,” but that produced disaster instead. These schemes
were being forced—top down—upon local society by powerful state-
bureaucracies, and as such, they are textbook examples of marginalization
and exclusion of weaker social sections. However, Scott’s explanation of
the social, economical, and ecological disasters that these modernization
projects turned out to be opposes postmodernism. Scott shows that it was
not the governments’ use of rational inquiry that caused their schemes to
fail, but their neglect of it.
The modernizing states that Scott (1998) examines were driven by
what he calls high modernist ideology:

High modernism is a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of

the self confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of
production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature
(including human nature), and, above all, the rational design of social order
commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws. (p. 4)

In the hands of a strong state with a well-organized bureaucracy

engaged in social engineering, Scott argued, high modernist ideology eas-
ily produces disaster (pp. 4-5). The reason is that such states impose upon
society the rigid scientific categories and bureaucratic simplifications that
characterize modernization discourse. But doing so, Scott stressed, they
neglect or suppress local knowledge and know-how. The modern state, as
Scott put it, denigrates practical knowledge “in the hegemonic imperium
of scientific knowledge [because] its ‘findings’ are practical, opportune,
and contextual rather than integrated into the conventions of scientific dis-
course” (p. 323). Without practical knowledge, however, state projects
and institutions are untenable and even disastrous.
Scott’s (1998) study would perhaps be supportive of the relativist plea
against science if official, state knowledge could be equated with knowl-
edge obtained in rational inquiry. But this is not the case: Scott repeatedly

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 de Zwart / PRACTICE AND INQUIRY 491

stressed that Seeing Like a State is not an argument against modern sci-
ence. High modernism, he said, is an ideology. It acclaims adherence to
scientific knowledge, but it “must not be confused with scientific practice.
It was fundamentally as the word ‘ideology’implies, a faith that borrowed,
as it were, the legitimacy of science and technology” (p. 4). High modern-
ist ideology celebrates the skills and status of “planners, engineers, archi-
tects, scientists, and technicians,” and not surprisingly, found “its most
fertile soil” among them. It is a faith, however, and it is “accordingly,
uncritical, unskeptical, and thus unscientifically optimistic about the pos-
sibilities for comprehensive planning of human settlement and produc-
tion” (p. 4). The practical knowledge that modernizing social engineers
denigrated or suppressed, on the other hand, is not a faith. It is often well
tested by relevant, local experience. Scott’s best illustrations of this point
stem from agriculture (including scientific forestry). He showed that high
modernist attempts to modernize agriculture have often turned out to be
more expensive and less effective than the indigenous agricultural ways
they haughtily neglected or replaced (pp. 11-22, 306-362).
High modernist neglect of allegedly unscientific local knowledge can
also help explain great failures in social engineering. Scott’s chapters on
top-down urban planning illustrate this well. In my own research I exam-
ined an example in the failed attempt of modern government in India to
prevent caste categories from becoming beneficiaries of affirmative
action (de Zwart, 2000a). The first national government after independ-
ence under Nehru’s leadership invented a new, modern category—the
backward classes—to be made eligible in the constitution. This category,
though still the official beneficiary, has been captured, as it were, by
castes. The reason, I argued, is that the category “backward classes” is a
high-modernist fiction (invented by high-ranking bureaucrats, politicians,
and social scientists) that hardly corresponds to real-life experience and
thus cannot simply overrule or replace the lived-in and tested social dis-
tinctions—in casu castes—that are relevant to local people (pp. 238-240,
244-245).
What Scott called practical knowledge can be clearly distinguished
from high modernist, official knowledge but not from the principles of
rational inquiry. Practical knowledge may be local and unofficial; it is not
necessarily unempirical, untested, or unscientific. Failure to recognize
this causes a common mistake: to confuse social engineering and social
science. Social engineers are mostly well educated. They hold official
diplomas, have official jobs, and use official knowledge to prepare, imple-
ment, and legitimate their schemes. However, Scott clearly showed that

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492 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002

official knowledge is not necessarily knowledge obtained by rational

inquiry—and vice versa.

SCIENTISM AND INTERPRETATIVE SCIENCE

The relationship between social science and social engineering is a

central issue in F. A. Hayek’s (1952/1979) essays on scientism.9 Hayek
called scientism the “unwarranted and unfortunate extensions [to the
social sciences] of the habits of thought of the physical and biological sci-
ences” (p. 23) and says that in the social sciences, “the engineering type of
mind” is especially prone to scientism (p. 25).10 The technique of engi-
neering, Hayek wrote, involves blueprints based on calculations, control,
and knowledge of all the relevant data. In other words, it “presupposes . . .
complete knowledge of the objective facts” (p. 168). It has recently
become fashionable, Hayek also noted, “to apply engineering technique
to the solution of social problems” (p. 167), and this, he stressed, promotes
scientism. Applying engineering techniques to social facts, social scien-
tists involved in social engineering fail to recognize the essentially subjec-
tive character of facts in the social sciences (pp. 50-53). To illustrate, look
at White and McSwain’s (1990) argument against positivism. Positivists
such as Herbert Simon, they wrote, separate facts and values. Facts can be
studied through the “direct information of the sensory data and can be
delineated more or less certainly. Values, on the other hand can only
reflect visceral, emotional reactions and the preferences based on
such. . . . They cannot be subjected to scientific study” (p. 37). Contrary to
what White and McSwain suggested here, the crux of Simon’s work is
exactly to show the importance of values in social explanation. Simon
urged to study people’s values; his critique of “economic man” is intended
to show that making sense of people’s behavior without knowledge of
their values leads to serious mistakes (I will return to Simon shortly).
We find the same thought in Hayek’s (1952/1979) work. The natural
scientist, Hayek wrote, can simply contrast objective facts and subjective
opinions. This distinction, however,

cannot as readily be applied to the object of the social sciences. The reason
for this is that the object or the “facts” of the social sciences are also opin-
ions—not opinions of the student of the social phenomena, of course, but
opinions of those whose actions produce the object of the social scientist.
(Hayek, 1952/1979, p. 47)

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 de Zwart / PRACTICE AND INQUIRY 493

Interestingly, what Hayek called scientism resembles the orthodoxy,

hegemonic style, positivism, and so on that postmodernists object to.
Indeed, postmodernism strongly resents objectification and celebrates
the interpretative approach that declares “opinions,” (in Hayek’s terms,
but currently most authors call them “interpretations”) as crucial to the
social sciences. Hence, interpretative social science—which by definition
gives voice to the people it studies—suits the postmodern agenda. A
choice example of the blend between interpretative and postmodern social
science is Dvora Yanov’s (1996) approach to policy analysis. Positivist
knowledge, she wrote, does not give us information about the meanings
situations have for actors (p. 6).11 The human actor, Yanov quoted Richard
J. Bernstein,

is constantly interpreting his [or her] own acts and those of others. To under-
stand human action we must not take the position of an outside observer
who “sees” only the physical manifestations of these acts; rather we must
develop categories for understanding what the actor—from his [or her] own
point of view—“means.” . . . In focusing on action, we can and must speak
of its subjective meaning. (p. 6)

Clifford Geertz (1973) called this interpretative method “thick descrip-

tion ” and traces it to Max Weber’s verstehende method. The great merit of
this method is its stress on the native’s point of view as the basis of social
explanation. Without thorough study of people’s knowledge, motives,
wants, and habits, social explanation, and with it administrative action and
policy based upon that explanation, easily fail. Yanov takes us one step
further, however. She favors thick description, but she also argued that
“interpretive approaches contest the possibility of neutral, unbiased
observation” (p. 6). And rigorously applying this idea to her own work,
she continued to argue that, though presented as truth, her study is “noth-
ing more (nor less) than one voice [that] speaks from her experience and
education . . . other voices may interpret these same matters differently”
(pp. 27-28). Yanov thus muddled up interpretative science with cognitive
relativism. The former stresses the need to base social explanation on the
views of the people whose behavior we attempt to explain; the latter
denies the existence of facts and thus makes explanation futile. Yanov dis-
likes what she called positivism (and Hayek called scientism) because it
denies the subjective character of facts. Turning to relativism does not
help, however. True, it encourages subjectivity, but it also denies the exis-
tence of facts. Neither scientism nor relativism, it seems, is going to help
social explanation.

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494 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002

INTERPRETATION WITHOUT RELATIVISM

What if we do recognize the subjective character of facts in the social

sciences but still refrain from relativism? Interestingly, this alternative has
a solid tradition in PA theory because of Herbert Simon’s heritage. In
Simon’s (1945/1976) idea of an administrative science—in which
bounded rationality is a key concept—explanation of administrative phe-
nomena is based on opinion, meaning interpretation—let us call it the
natives’ point of view: “If there is a fundamental difference between the
social and the natural sciences,” Simon wrote, “it derives from the fact that
the social sciences deal with conscious human beings whose behavior is
influenced by knowledge, memory, and expectation” (p. 251). Later
Simon added belief to this list (p. 252). Knowledge, memory, expectation,
and belief may not cover all of the native point of view, but they are a good
start. Today most social scientists would replace the terms Simon used
with meaning, values, norms, or culture. These are probably more encom-
passing than the terms in Simon’s short list, but they are also notoriously
imprecise.
There is no relativism in Simon’s theory. He incorporates into adminis-
trative science the idea, later so well phrased by Hayek, that facts in the
social sciences are subjective in character. As said, Simon used this idea to
criticize the theory of economic man, whose ability to maximize makes
him a fictional figure. Simon suggested we replace him with the much
more real “administrative man”—who satisfices. “Administrative Behav-
ior,” Simon (1945/1976) wrote in the introduction to the third edition,
“was first published to construct a model of rational choice that incorpo-
rates the actual properties of human beings” (p. xxviii).
This is not the place to get into details on bounded rationality—aca-
demic public administrationists are familiar with that. The point I wish to
make is that Simon’s Administrative Behavior is an interpretative program
avant la lettre. In Simon’s idea of administrative man with his bounded
rationality, the boundaries are not given. That is, Simon urged us not to
assume the natives’ point of view but to research it and to base our expla-
nation of social behavior upon it.12 Today we call this the interpretative
method. In social engineering the term “interpretative method” translates
as bottom-up approach, which, many have argued, is the best way to avoid
planning and policy disasters of the type James C. Scott (1998) discussed
(see also Bovens & ‘t Hart, 1996, pp. 153-156).
The question remains how an interpretative science of PA should relate
to postmodernism. I argue that there need not be any relation at all.

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 de Zwart / PRACTICE AND INQUIRY 495

Postmodern PA opposes scientism or high modernist ideology, but it

denies objective reality and therefore ignores the (subjective) character of
facts. Consequently, postmodernism can only answer the shortcomings of
scientism with relativism. Cognitive relativism, therefore, is a false pro-
tection against the risk of scientism. Simon’s program for PA, however, is
a tailor-made alternative. It combines interpretative and explanatory
social science and thus avoids scientism without leading us into relativism
or solipsism.
Finally, researching the natives’ point of view in order to explain social
or administrative phenomena would lead academic PA away from admin-
istrative practice into the study of that practice. Interestingly, that would
make the discipline a less easy target for the critiques of postmodern col-
leagues, because assertions on the conflation of science and governance,
characteristic for these critiques, will be harder to maintain. It would also,
however, leave administration to the craft, wisdom, and experience of
practitioners for whom, one hopes, a science of administration is useful.

NOTES

1. Allan Hanson (1985) explained cognitive relativism as an untenable part of cultural

relativism:

the core proposition informing cultural relativism is that the standards which back
human cognition are neither absolute nor identical in all societies. . . . The relativist
premise that cognitive standards are culturally variable includes standards of truth
and knowledge. Hence, the relativist . . . certify[s] as true a vast collection of proposi-
tions, including [for instance] that witches can kill at a distance [and] there is no such
thing a witchcraft (p. 697).

2. Elsewhere, I discussed this idea as it figures in literature on the role of colonial and
postcolonial administration in the making of India’s caste system (de Zwart 2000a, 2000b).
A characteristic example is David Ludden (1993), who argued that India’s caste system is a
colonial fiction, informed by imperial utility, not by truth. Scholarly and official writing ever
since the 19th century, Ludden argued, merely helped “factualize” imperial fiction. And this
succeeded to such an extent that “today . . . people in India and elsewhere believe [this] fic-
tion to represent the truth about themselves” (p. 270).
3. White and McSwain (1990) explained this change as part of greater events: In the
1950s and 1960s world societies underwent “a pervasive shift . . . toward . . . the technicists
episteme” (p. 23). That is, “human consciousness began to shift to a technicists frame” (p.
36), and consequently, ’emphasis began to shift away from social philosophy to social the-
ory, and from wisdom and experience to empirical data” (p. 37).
4. Dubnick’s (1999) account makes Waldo’s (1968) position seem less ambivalent than it
was. Waldo actually said, “What I suppose is that we try to act as a profession without actually

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496 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002

being one and perhaps without the hope or intention of ever becoming one in the strict sense”
(p. 10).
5. See also Stillman (1998, pp. 123-132) for an overview of the ideas of Simon and Waldo
concerning the status of public administration.
6. The implication of this argument—that citizens do not hold falsifiable and empirical
knowledge—is probably unintended. It is not coincidental, however. Rod Aya (1999) uses
Gellner’s work to point out a pattern here: “Relativism offends the cultures it defers to” (p.
560). Ludden’s (1993) argument (see Note 2) about the people in India who, even now, five
decades after independence, believe a harmful colonial fiction to be the truth about them-
selves, is a perfect illustration of this pattern.
7. This conflation is justified, in postmodern thinking, because both orthodoxy and social
science belong to modernity and thus legitimate themselves with metanarratives—ortho-
doxy with that of the abstract citizen, social science with that of truth and objective reality.
8. Assertions about the spirit of the time can also be used instead of argument to disqual-
ify others. McSwite (1997), for instance, postulated the current “wearing away of the
epistemological foundations of the ideology of reason” (p. 271) and used that assertion to
invalidate new institutionalism as “a reactionary . . . defensive holding action” against the
flow (p. 271).
9. William H. Whyte (1956) used the same idea in The Organizational Man. He dis-
cussed the “overpowering good will of social engineers, and the overwhelming belief, com-
mon among them, in science as not merely a tool but as the only ‘path to salvation’ ” (p. 30).
Whyte considered the claims made by some social engineers in the name of social science an
embarrassment to social scientists who do not believe in social engineering. One should not
fall into the scientistic fallacy of “equating social engineering with social science,” he cau-
tioned (p. 30).
10. As Scott distinguished high-modernist faith from science, Hayek (1952/1979)
argued that “the scientistic as distinguished from the scientific view is not an unprejudiced
but a very prejudiced approach which, before it has considered its subject, claims to know
what is the most appropriate way of investigating it” (p. 24).
11. What Yanov called “positivist knowledge” here Hayek would call “scientism.”
12. Critiques of the structural functionalism of Talcott Parsons and Radcliffe Brown
argue that explanations on the basis of the natives’ point of view avoid teleology (see, for
instance, Elster, 1982; Emmet, 1958; de Zwart, 1994). On the fallacy of assuming instead of
researching what drives people’s actions, see Rod Aya (1990).

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Frank de Zwart teaches in the Department of Public Administration at Leiden Uni-

versity, the Netherlands. He has published on the theory of bureaucracy and on
bureaucracy and politics in India. At present he conducts a comparative study on
affirmative action and group formation.

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