Toward a New Administrative Doctrine: Governance and Management for the 1990's

Abstract

Three successive terms of market-oriented presidents raise difficulties for federal bureaucrats in legitimating past administrative doctrine and practices, which were government-centered. The present article responds to Charles Levine's call for a new administrative doctrine that is more fully descriptive of the needs and routines of today's federal civil servants than a doctrine based on either a liberal or neo-conservative ideology. The author introduces the concept of doctrine into public administration discourse in order to clarify the differences in ideology, doctrine, and practices between an era of top-down liberal progressivism and the era of bottom-up neo-conservative progressivism that dawned with the first Reagan administration. The purpose is to take a first step in describing emerging administrative realities that both traditional bureaucrats and free-marketeers must recognize.