A Science of Public Administration?

Abstract

In a recent article, the venerable Harlan Cleveland proclaims that is time to put behind us the idea that the politics and administration of human endeavors are some kind of science.1 In this, as in most such pronouncements, he is both absolutely correct and fundamentally misguided. Cleveland is completely correct that policy and administrative studies cannot be a science, especially given his characterization of science as the mechanistic world of Sir Isaac Newton (also represented by the positivist label). However, since the so-called hard sciences only adhere to select aspects of this perspective, it is somewhat a straw man. Moreover, the ecological model, which Cleveland suggests as an alternative, is nothing if not a form of science, or at least a system. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if the various applied domains of policy and administrative studies do not continue to aspire to at least rigorous modes of inquiry (both empirical and philosophical), if not science, then they will continue to be relegated to the lower levels of intellectual endeavor. Meanwhile, their less self-deprecating cousins (e.g., economics and psychology) will continue to flourish and further displace them as guides to societal enterprise.