Date of Award
4-1996
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Public Affairs and Administration
First Advisor
Dr. Ralph C. Chandler
Second Advisor
Dr. David S. DeShon
Third Advisor
Dr. Barbara Adams
Abstract
This study discusses the discipline of Public Administration and the Public Administrationist in relation to policy frames of reference and social character. The relationship of policy frames of reference and social character is the basis for public trust As the American political system becomes more and more fragmented, public administrationists, sometimes by default, become the trustees for safeguarding the public trust.
The concept of policy frames of reference, as it evolves in this discussion, refers to the ability of the public administrationist to understand the interactions of changing issues impacting on the interactions of changing issues, or quantum thinking. Social character, as it evolves in this discussion, refers to the nexus in which personalities meet culture and social structure.
The public administrationist is an individual who becomes, and in becoming develops a mediating understanding that the public runs in two directions. One is based on the Aristotelian idea of citizenship founded in the notion of the human person as a cognitive, active, moral, intellectual, and political being who is somehow searching for equality. The other direction, as ascribed by Gaius, is in terms of the universe being divisible into persons, actions, and things, with the major emphasis directed toward things. This study suggests that the public administration equation’s legitimacy emerges from an understanding and involvement in the U.S. Constitution, the Constitutional Administrative State, and the Public Administrationist.
This study suggests that for the discipline of public administration and affairs to become, it must come to grips with Dwight Waldo’s contention that the field of public administration "has never satisfactorily accommodated the theoretical implications of involvement in politics and policy making." Perhaps an accommodation cannot be achieved because of the inherent zero-sum mentality of power arrangements. This study attempts to develop the something else as being embedded in the educative processes and in the understanding of human nature, allowing for new or different "knowledges" to surface in furthering our understanding of human relations.
Access Setting
Dissertation-Open Access
Recommended Citation
Brown, Phillip A., "The Public Administrations as Civic Shaman: The Self-Reflective Integrator of Policy Frames of Reference and Social Character" (1996). Dissertations. 1696.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1696