A Case for Particularism in Public Administration

Abstract

The recent entrepreneurial movement represents the latest in a series of attempts to define appropriate principles of public administration. Current entrepreneurial reforms, such as reinvention, aim explicitly to moderate the excesses of bureaucratic organization, but they also carry an implicit mandate to continue the assault on particularism begun by Progressive Era reformers. The authors contend that public administration theory should consider particularism a legitimate ethical principle and explore ways of integrating particularism with ethical principles central to the bureaucratic and entrepreneurial approaches to public administration. The authors analyze the manner in which the bureaucratic and entrepreneurial approaches detract from our understanding of particularism in public administration and explore ways that a better understanding of particularism can enhance public administration theory.