Before there was public management, there was political theory: what should government do? What actions by the state are to be considered legitimate? What is justice? What is public virtue? As Thomas Barth reminded us in this journal last October , those of us who teach public management too frequently neglect these seminal questions for the necessary but inevitably more mundane skills of the profession?budgeting, planning, human resources management, policy analysis. But these practical subjects did not emerge from a void; they are inextricably bound up with our constitutional system, and that system in turn is the outgrowth of great philosophical debates about the proper ordering of human communities. It can be extremely rewarding for students to visit those debates. (One would love to say ?revisit? but that would be inaccurate; virtually none of them have any familiarity with this intellectual history.)
Continue reading “By the Book: Public Administration Meets Legal Theory”
The Elephant in the E-Living Room
The third annual Bulen Symposium on American Politics, held last Monday at IUPUI, was devoted to “epolitics.” The discussion was lively. Depending upon the speaker, we learned that the Internet has lessened (or increased) political participation, is used more by Republicans (or libertarians), circulates devastating (or puerile) political humor, and will replace “butterfly ballots” with reliable electronics (or will enable fraud of hitherto unknown magnitude).
Continue reading “The Elephant in the E-Living Room”
The Nanny State
The powers that be have recently decreed that Indiana motorists can be stopped and ticketed solely for failure to use their seatbelts. Prior to the new rule, a traffic cop who had stopped you for another violation -speeding, or a missing taillight — could issue a secondary citation if he also found you without proper restraints, but he…
Continue reading “The Nanny State”
Defending Parental Rights
Among the most precious rights of parenthood is our right to raise our children in accordance with our own religious beliefs, free of government interference. Clergy are usually among the fiercest defenders of that right. Ministers and rabbis are more…
Continue reading “Defending Parental Rights”
With a Whimper
T.S. Eliot wrote “This is the way the world ends….Not with a bang, but a whimper.” I thought of that line from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” when I read the headline in the City State section of the Indianapolis Star on November 10th, detailing events that will probably lead to the demise of AIDServe, Indiana.
Continue reading “With a Whimper”