RETRACTED: Postmodern Public Administration Theory: From Simon to the Present and Back Again?

Abstract

This article examines postmodern reasoning in academic Public Administration (PA). It claims that the arguments that abound in postmodern public administration present a fallacy. They conflate administrative practice and/or wrongs of bureaucracy and their study by social science. In effect, postmodernists confuse social engineering and social science (or rational inquiry) and then they appeal to relativism in order to explain this conflation. This article opposes them and argues that the main objection that postmodern academics have against modern science and administration has nothing to do with positivism or modern science and cannot be cured with relativism. It also disputes the related claim, common in postmodern public administration studies, that interpretative social science marginalizes social groups, because has no place for the ‘native’. point of view’ since it acknowledges only empirical evidence. It also argues that interpretative social science and rational inquiry are not at all mutually exclusive. Herbert Simon’. heritage makes public administration theory particularly well suited to show that we do not need relativism to reckon with the ‘natives’ point of view’ or, cruder, the self-interest and/or selfishness of social strata.