Abstract
Abraham Maslow once remarked, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything as if it were a nail.” This saying serves as a well-known warning to those who exhibit excessive, if not arrogant, confidence in their chosen epistemology. In recent decades, as the risks of tunnel vision, polarized public rhetoric, and radical populism have garnered increasing global concern, the value of open-mindedness, critical thinking, and comprehensive analysis in public administration has become widely acknowledged. However, even with awareness of these dangers, the underlying problem persists: constrained by what we know, how can we be sure that the “nails” we identify are not merely artifacts of the “hammer” we wield? In other words, even with a willingness to embrace diverse perspectives, how can individuals recognize the limits of their own cognition? This conundrum often leads to both cynicism and unwarranted assertion.
In this context, Dr. Edoardo Ongaro’s new book, Connecting Philosophy and Public Administration, offers an inspiring and, more importantly, useful guide to mobilizing foundational and theoretical thought within the field of public administration. The book is reader-friendly, catering both to specialists in the philosophy of public administration and to those unacquainted with philosophical jargon, thanks to three notable strengths.
First, the book presents an integrated approach to reviewing philosophical theories and public administration. Since few philosophical theories, particularly classical ones, focus on applied fields such as public administration, philosophical discussions have often been detached from tangible administrative practices. As a result, philosophy is sometimes treated as dispensable or merely ornamental in the field of public administration, thereby widening the gap between the two disciplines. Ongaro’s work, by contrast, builds a logical and coherent bridge between philosophy and public administration. As the title suggests, the book neither merely focus on abstract or metaphysical philosophical discourse nor apply a purely value-free, empirical approach to administration. It acknowledges that every administrative theory rests on an implicit philosophical foundation, which helps simplify the complexity of real-world administration into intelligible ideas. By mapping these underlying philosophical assumptions within existing theories, the book illuminates the intrinsic philosophy of public administration rather than treating philosophy as a separate component abruptly implanted from another discipline to public administration. This method establishes a solid foundation for connecting the two fields.
Second, the book’s approach to mobilizing philosophical thinking helps elucidate the ideational foundations of public administration in a way that transcends traditional dilemmas. Public administration is inherently complex in practice, yet its theories are usually expected to be simplified and generalized to identify reproducible causal mechanisms across contexts. A persistent challenge, however, is ensuring that such simplifications do not become oversimplifications that lead to logical inconsistencies in theory application.
This dilemma between complexity and simplification has troubled the intellectual foundations of public administration for decades. During the heyday of classical public administration, scholars believed in universal and stable principles applicable to any context, which is later criticized as “administrative proverbs” due to its logical inconsistency. However, the solution suggested by logical positivism leads to another problem: the shift toward fact-value dichotomy and a narrow focus on observable data and cases left the knowledge system of the discipline without a clear ontological anchor. As a result, if people imply universal principles exist, logical consistency may be doubtful. However, if diverse empirical cases have no underlying connection, the necessary ontology for Public Administration being a discipline will lose its foundation. Then, the extent to which disparate administrative practices constitute a coherent discipline remains unclear.
In this regard, Ongaro’s notions of “ideational public governance configuration” and “administrative doctrines” offer an inspiring path forward. Unlike administrative principles, administrative doctrines encompass normative prescriptions about how public administration ought to be organized, rather than fixed causations. By shifting the focus from searching for one universally valid model to identifying contextually appropriate intellectual theories across domains, this new approach balances the intellectual need for logical coherence with practical demands for contingency. In so doing, a public administration theory may be both valid and invalid at the same time: it is valid when its components are philosophically consistent, but invalid when its arguments are treated as absolute or combined with theories rooted in incompatible philosophical foundations.
Third, the philosophy of public administration is more relevant today than ever. Its importance stems not only from academic demands for theoretical advancement, such as addressing intellectual crises, but also from the need to develop a philosophy of public administration, rather than merely for it. In addition to mobilizing existing philosophical theories in public administration studies, Public Administration has its own philosophical natures. The philosophy of public administration is to articulate philosophically grounded research questions within administrative practice. Since public administration is not a physical entity but a social reality shaped by human cognition, its philosophy does not merely interpret the administrative world, but also helps constitute it. In this sense, philosophy permeates all administrative activity. Overlooking the philosophical dimensions of public administration problems will inevitably distance scholars from the reality of the field, even when masked by superficial, fact-oriented empiricism.
Returning to the initial question: how can we determine whether the “nails” we confront are genuine problems, rather than cognitive traps shaped by the “hammers” we hold? One key insight from Ongaro’s book is the importance of scrutinizing the reasoning process when applying foundational philosophical perspectives to administrative issues. Rather than taking this process for granted, we must carefully examine whether the philosophical assumptions align with the administrative problems at hand. Building on the philosophy of public administration, further research could continue to advance this field. For example, Stephen Toulmin’s work on practical reasoning beyond formal logic may offer a valuable intellectual resource for such endeavors in future studies.
Thanks to rapid advances in administrative technology, there is growing interest in what public administration theories can achieve. Systematic reviews and quantitative citation analyses have proliferated. However, it is often overlooked that multiple knowledge sources addressing the same issue may not be mutually consistent. By examining the philosophical nature of both the questions and the knowledge produced, our understanding of self-consistency may be fundamentally reshaped. In that case, even if our only tool is a hammer, its multiple potential uses can be discovered. Hitting nails may then become a deliberate choice, not the only use possible.
