Intellectual Paradigms in Public Administration

Why So Many and How to Bridge Them?

Jiahuan Lu
University of Maryland

Administrative ideas, like the practices themselves, . . . seem to be in

a perpetual whirl without much continuity, history, or consistency.
—Stillman, 1991, p. 71

The notion of paradigm has become ubiquitous since its inception by Thomas
Kuhn as a way to understand the history of science. Paradigms, Kuhn writes,
are “universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide
model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners” (1970b, p. viii).
Within a specific paradigm, Gutting further explains, there is “an acceptance
that is so strong it eliminates the need for further discussion of foundational
questions about the subject-matter and methodology of the disciplined and
enables the discipline to devote most of its energy to puzzle-solving” (1980, p.
13). The history of scientific development, according to Kuhn, is thus largely
characterized by a succession of different paradigms, or paradigm shifts.
Actually, Kuhn used the concept of paradigm mostly within the domain
of natural sciences and was hesitant to expand it to the social sciences, which
he believed were characterized by a “tradition of claims, counterclaims, and
debates over fundamentals” (1970a, p. 6). Indeed, in most social sciences,
paradigm shift is rare. Rather more frequent is “paradigm parallel,” the
coexistence of several competing paradigms. Public administration is no
exception.1 After the collapse of the orthodoxy, a consensus on big questions
in public administration has never been achieved (e.g., Box, 1992; Waldo,
1968; White, 1986), such as what public administration is, how to acquire
knowledge, what type of knowledge (scientific or interpretative) to pursue, and
the relationships between public administration and other disciplines, such as
political science and business management. As a result, competing paradigms
have emerged to provide their own answers about the nature and assumptions
of public administration, with no one of them ever able to dominate. Henry
(2010) argues that public administration theory has, since its inception, gone
through a succession of six paradigms: the politics/administration dichotomy
(1900–1926), principles of public administration (1927–1937), public adminis-
tration as political science (1950–1970), public administration as management
(1950–1970), public administration as public administration (1970–present),

Administrative Theory & Praxis / June 2013, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 308–313.
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308 DOI: 10.2753/ATP1084-1806350208
Lu 309

and governance (1990–present). Frederickson and Smith also delineate the

pluralism in public administration theory, which might include theories of
political control of bureaucracy, theories of bureaucratic politics, theories of
public management, rational choice theory, theories of governance, and so
on. They admit that “no theory standing alone is capable of accounting for
the complexity of the field” (2003, p. 4).
Why does the public administration field already have so many paradigms
in spite of the short history since its self-consciousness? This is actually an
intellectual product of the political heritage (Durant, 2010). In Federalist No.
51, James Madison argued that the fundamental way to ensure the appropri-
ate use of public power was a separation of power into different government
branches that would allow checks and balances between them. This antistatism
tradition later became the prologue of what Edward Corwin (1940) called
“an invitation to struggle” among the three branches of government. Through
“tides of reform” (Light, 1998), there has been an enduring struggle over
how to divide power within the government system. This unending conflict is
also reflected within the administration system. As Kettl argues, “the public
administration system reflects broad constellations of power, and as power
has become more diffuse, so, too, have the administrative interconnections”
(1996, p. 16).
As early as the 1950s, Kaufman (1956) found that the rapid growth of
public administration since its self-consciousness had exhibited the pursuit of
three competing values: representativeness, neutral competence, and executive
leadership. “The story [of public administration],” wrote Kaufman, “is thus
one of a changing balance among the values, not of total displacement” (p.
1067). Kettl (2002) further suggests that the study and the practice of public
administration have to be differentiated in order to respond to four conflict-
ing American political traditions, Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian, and
Madisonian. Each political philosophy prescribes its own distinct adminis-
trative ideas, values, and rationales, together making the gaps between them
hard to bridge.
Stillman (1991), holding a historical institutionalism perspective, describes
how the “stateless” origin of the American public administration system gave
rise to the fragmentation in public administration theory. At the founding of
the United States, a systematic design of public administration was absent.
Because of this, American public administration building was actually an in-
cremental “chinking-in” process, pragmatically bringing in various temporary
administrative solutions to solve challenges, but none in a systematic way.
Taken together, these temporary and sometimes competing administrative
components constituted the American public administration system. This
temporary and inconsistent nature, on the one hand, enabled the administra-
tive system to adapt to external demands, but on the other hand, “created an
administrative state and a bureaucratic administrative model without a single

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overarching model or well-structured paradigm” (p. 56). Reflected in theory

development, this paradox “added a high degree of ambiguity to public admin-
istration theory and opened the topic to enormous opportunities for continual
interpretations and reinterpretations” (p. 37).
In combining these arguments, it is reasonable to admit that the differen-
tiation in public administration theory and the rise of multiparadigms were
inevitable. But how would the multiparadigm nature of contemporary public
administration literature affect the advancement of public administration
knowledge? Ostrom (1973) argues that the multiparadigm characteristic of the
public administration field, the proliferation of competing theories, perspec-
tives, and research methods, blurs its identity as a unified discipline and finally
leads to an intellectual crisis. “The loss of theoretical hegemony,” Frederickson
and Smith note, “gave public administration an identity crisis and made it
vulnerable to colonization from other disciplines” (2003, p. 246).
Given the perils, how are we to promote the future development of our
knowledge of public administration? Three paths have been proposed. The first
one emphasizes the necessarity of forming a dominant paradigm in scientific
advancement. According to Cole, “accumulation of knowledge can occur …
only when scientists are committed to a paradigm and take it as the starting
point for additional research that progress can be made. Without agreement on
fundamentals, scientists will not be able to build on the work of others and will
spend all their time debating assumptions and first principles” (1983, p. 135).
Pfeffer (1993) emphasizes the formation of a dominant paradigm as a critical
prerequisite to scientific advancement. He argues that competing paradigms
in a field obstruct the scientific development of the field, as demonstrated by
longer time to publication, higher journal rejection rates, fewer cross-citations
among fields, fewer collaborations among scholars, and so on. Building on
these observations, Pfeffer further calls on the scholars who control the field
to develop a set of standards and then maintain theoretical and methodological
conformity. In this way, an agreement about the fundamental problems in a
specific field and the way to solve them could be achieved.
Quite different from Pfeffer’s claim for developing one dominant para-
digm, Qiu, Donaldson, and Luo (2012) argue that in social science research,
a more feasible way might be to start advancing theory by working within
one established paradigm, “paradigm persistence.” They also develop a route
of paradigm persistence, from paradigm continuity, paradigm elaboration,
to paradigm extension, each implying a different level of theory develop-
ment under one paradigm. At the beginning, paradigm continuity refines and
synthesizes existing theories. Paradigm elaboration then digs deeper into the
core of those theories, develops variants, and makes them more complex. At
the highest paradigm-extension stage, researchers extend the paradigm to
different contexts and develop new theories.
A third approach goes beyond the discussion of the necessarity and pos-

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sibility of having one dominant paradigm. It holds a pluralistic, metaparadigm

perspective that simultaneously considers sets of theoretical lenses under
different paradigms. This metaparadigm view, according to Gioia and Pitre,
“is not a demand for integration of theories or resolution of disagreements or
paradoxes that inevitably emerge from theoretical comparison,” but “an attempt
to account for many representations related to an area of study by linking
theories through their common transition zones” and “constitute a multidimen-
sional representation of the topic area” (1990, p. 596). Therefore, it actually
follows a replication logic: If a certain knowledge on public administration is
supported by a number of theories and paradigms, we have more confidence
in the robustness of such understanding. Putting together, by “triangulating”
across theories and paradigms, a comprehensive understanding of public
administration activities could be embraced with more confidence. Indeed,
in view of the multiparadigm nature of contemporary public administration
literature, I argue this approach might be more preferred.
More than 50 years ago, Frederick Mosher examined the status of public
administration research and expressed his anxiety that “the field has not
channeled its research efforts; its scope of interest seems unlimited; it has not
developed a rigorous methodology; it has been pretty blasé about definitions;
it has not agreed on any paradigms or theorems or theoretical systems” (1956,
p. 176). If Mosher were alive today, he would find that his observation still
troubles contemporary public administration research. Nowadays, few fields
in the social sciences could be messier than public administration. However,
at the same time, few fields could be more exciting than public administration
in serving the public interest and democratic governance. It is the mission of
public administration students of the present generation to develop a unified
and beautiful understanding of public administration.

Note

1. In my judgment, there are two kinds of paradigms in public administration,

theoretical paradigms and research (methodological) paradigms. Theoretical para-
digms, which I refer to as “intellectual paradigms,” are the focus of this article.

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Jiahuan Lu (jhlu@umd.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate in public administration

and policy at the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland in
College Park. His research focuses on public and nonprofit management,
government contracting, and performance management.

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