Public Administration: Paradigms of Continuity and Change

Public administration has existed on a continuum between traditionalism and inventiveness to respond to emerging developments proactively. Nicholas Henry's book looks at the development and shifts in public administration from Traditional Public Administration to Network Governance. Such transformations of politics are always accompanied by a redefinition of core concepts like the politics-administration dichotomy in a new ambit of an altered society. In public administration, we rarely see new paradigms experienced in history or public policy. Additionally, there are forces in history that imprint upon modern theory and practice. More certainly, there is an ongoing obsession with novelty that pushes to sideline age-old issues.

Historical factors associated with the Progressive Era, like technical rationality, shape modern administrative models. It is argued that instrumental and cultural aspects get integrated into organization theory in the public sector as early rational models have evolved to contemporary governance without more or less any replacement (Christensen et al., 2020). The civil service reform merit system, as the foundation of current practice, provides accountability in webbed complexity. This means that innovation on constitutive principles, known as 'new paradigms', can be self-defeating regarding efficiency and equity.

On the other hand, novelty-seeking can neglect value maintenance, which seeks to make the administration more inclusive. Inclusive recruitment in a virtual environment is vital in redesigning former merit-based systems while dealing with the new digital divides (Van den Berg et al., 2020). The reconstructions suggest that if Progressive reforms continue to ignore age-old issues like social justice, it may be dangerous to chase after superficial innovation, which has no capacity to solve the fundamental issue of reservation policy.

The evolution of public administration is more about interpreting old ideas than creating new ones. The technical rationality and merit systems that have powered evolution are still manifest in our contexts. This requires equilibrium innovation. The upkeep of these fundamentals guarantees that discipline elevates the never-ending demands of a government.