The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration

By Vincent Cstrom and Vincent Ostrom

Book Overview

Rethinking governance: Where democracy meets administration.

This revised and expanded third edition extends Ostrom's analysis to account for the most resent developments in American politics, including those of the Clinton and Bush administrations.

First published in 1973, The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration remains one of the most influential critiques of the administrative state. Vincent Ostrom examines the intellectual roots of American public administration, questioning whether centralized bureaucratic systems align with the constitutional principles of self-governance. Through a rigorous analysis of institutional design, federalism, and public choice theory, Ostrom advocates for polycentric governance--an approach that empowers citizens and decentralizes authority. This seminal work continues to inspire debates on accountability, legitimacy, and the future of democratic administration.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081735462X
• ISBN13: 9780817354626
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Bureaucracy and Democracy Dichotomy

In this book, the public choice theorist V. Ostrom examines the intellectual crisis in American public administration that he believes has turned out following the political scandals such as Watergate. The author dichotomizes the democratic administration and bureaucratic administration. Bureaucratic administration, originated with Weber and Wilson, is associated with a system of "good" administration that is hierarchically ordered in a system of graded ranks subject to political direction by heads of departments at the center of government (p. 24). The bureaucratic administration is assumed to produce efficient results and also makes the government responsible, as opposed to fragmented authority, in that it will be possible to show clearly who is the responsible when failures occurred. Democratic administration, according to Ostrom, is associated with fragmentation of authority and overlapping jurisdictions, and represents the opposite of bureaucratic administration based on unitary command of authority. To Ostrom, democratic administration, indulging fragmented authority and overlapping jurisdictions, is that what founding fathers of the United States deliberately envisioned. Ostrom believes that Wilsonian paradigm of bureaucratic administration has changed the nature of American public administration by leading to numerous reforms that aimed to strengthen the President and by overcoming "fragmented authority and overlapping jurisdictions" with the promise to "make the government more responsible and efficient in solving the problems of the society (i.e., war on poverty). Ostrom explains how the centralization of power in the Executive branch created unfortunate problems that have consumed the trust of citizens in government that divulges itself in the fact that half of the registered voters don't bother to voting any longer. Ostrom attacks bureaucratic administration excellently in a way that I cannot counter-argue. However, I found his Simon interpretation irrelevant and distorted in that Ostrom shows Simon as if he was the first person who challenged bureaucratic administration-although students of Simon know very well Simon did not challenge bureaucratic administration but asserted that when principles (proverbs) of classical administrative theory contradict each other (for example, efficiency and unity of command principles) we are not given any guidelines for priority ranking, that is, Simon proposed a comprehensive administrative theory. However, it was nice to hear a different interpretation of Simon!The point made by Ostrom is that centralization or concentration of power does not always produce "efficient" results, "efficiency" changes from one situation to another. Also, Ostrom attacks the false logic of bureaucratic administration, oriented toward efficiency, with the reason that it is interested only in "supply side" at the expense and ignorance of "demand side". The emphasis, he makes, is that each decision structure has advantage