[Tps] TPS/ECPR Policy Network - Book Announcement - Postmodern Public Administration - Hugh Miller and Charles J Fox Revised Edition

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New In Paperback

Postmodern Public Administration Revised Edition

Hugh T. Miller, Florida Atlantic University, and Charles J. Fox

This widely acclaimed work provides a lively counterbalance to the 
standard assessment-measurement-accountability prescriptions that have 
made showing you did your job more important than actually doing it. Now 
extensively revised, it articulates a postmodern theory of public 
administration that challenges the field to redirect its attention away 
from narrow, technique-oriented scientism, and toward democratic 
openness and ethics. The authors incorporate insights from thinkers like 
Rorty, Giddens, Derrida, and Foucault to recast public administration as 
an arena of decentered practices. In their framework, ideographic 
collisions and everyday impasses bring about political events that 
challenge the status quo, creating possibilities for social change. 
Postmodern Public Administration is an outstanding intellectual 
achievement that has rewritten the political theory of public 
administration. This new edition will encourage everyone who reads it to 
think quite differently about democratic governance.

“Postmodern Public Administration has emerged as a landmark in the 
critical literature of the field. Offering a fundamental critique of the 
basic assumptions underlying the theory and practice of public 
organization and administration, it presents a new perspective on old 
and outmoded concepts, as well as a research program devoted to the 
administrative practices of a more equitable, democratic society. Even 
those unwilling to make the postmodern turn will benefit from testing 
their own understandings of the field against the critical challenge 
posed by this book.” —Frank Fischer, Rutgers University

“In this revision of Fox and Miller’s now classic book, Hugh Miller 
provides not just an update of the original text, but an original and 
thought-provoking sequel that will enliven public administration 
research and education for some years to come. Drawing on a dazzling 
array of literature, Miller offers a forceful critique of the trendy, 
but dangerous, neo-liberalism and obsession with scientific technique 
that are increasingly dominating our field. When it comes to combining 
sheer intellectual rigor with a postmodern irreverence for established 
ideas and practices in public administration, nobody does it better than 
Hugh Miller.” —Michael Spicer, Cleveland State University

“This book is just what the field of public administration needs at the 
present moment in its history. The critique it offers is definitive and 
its project—to redefine and strengthen the idea of reason—opens the way 
for developing a model of governance appropriate to the global 21st 
century.” —O.C. McSwite, Emeritus, Virginia Tech and George Washington 
University

(Contents on back)
Selected Contents: Preface 1. The Representative Democratic 
Accountability Feedback Loop Orthodoxy • Positivism in Public 
Administration • Deconstructing the Loop Model 2. Alternatives to 
Orthodoxy Neoliberalism • The Constitutionalist Alternative • 
Communitarian/Citizen Alternative 3. Hyperreality Instability and 
Incommensurability • Unstable Signs Leading to a Virtual Reality • 
Neotribalism and the Decentered Self • Symbolic Politics • Hyperreality 
Versus the Alternatives 4. The Social Construction of Government 
Constructivist Social Theory • Governmentality 5. Ideographic Discourse 
Symbols as Ordering Devices • Ideography • Relief from Dissonance • The 
Archives • Ideographic Events 6. Conclusion Orthodoxy and Its 
Alternatives • Media Infused Hyperreality • Constructivism and 
Governmentality • A Field of Political Contestation • The Changing Game 
• Decoherence • Implications References • About the Authors Name Index • 
Subject Index

HARDCOVER INFORMATION PAPERBACK INFORMATION ISBN: 0-7656-1704-8 ISBN: 
0-7656-1705-6 Price: $79.95 Price: $29.95 Pages: 192 Includes: 
References, name index, subject index Pub. Date: October 2006 M.E. 
Sharpe INC., 80 Business Park Drive, Armonk, NY 10504, USA Tel: (800) 
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