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Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals
Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals
Critical Perspectives in an
Era of Political and Economic Uncertainty

CURTIS VENTRISS
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2021 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Name: Ventriss, Curtis, author.

Title: Public affairs and democratic ideals : critical perspectives in an
era of political and economic uncertainty / Curtis Ventriss.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024649 | ISBN 9781438481258 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438481265 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Public administration—Evaluation. | Public administration—Moral
and ethical aspects. | Public administration—Citizen participation. | Government
accountability. | Democracy.
Classification: LCC JF1351 .V46 2021 | DDC 352.7/48—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024649

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to Lisa Ventriss and Alex Ventriss
1
 . . . Where trust in society and its institutions is battered, and where
interests fail to gain the recognition they feel entitled to, there is an
explosive mixture ready to be set off. Individuals cannot stand too
much uncertainty in their lives, and the direct measures of uncertainty
are the rapid and fluctuating loss in value of money people use for
exchange (the aggravating discrepancies between income and what one
has to buy, the erosion of wealth one has painfully accumulated) and
fluctuating unemployment. It is these circumstances that the tradi‑
tional institutions and democratic procedures of a society crack, and
the irrational, emotional angers and desire for a political savior come
to flood tide . . .
—Daniel Bell

And so the question becomes whether the ideals [of democracy] them‑
selves must be given up or drastically revised, or whether there are ways
of rearticulating them that retain their moral force.
—C. Wright Mills

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to
worry about the answers.
—Thomas Pynchon
 Contents

Foreword ix

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

Section 1
The Importance of Publicness and
Critical Democratic Thought

Chapter 2 Conditioning Factors: Neo‑Managerialism and the

Modern State 19

Chapter 3 A Conceptual Foundation: Reinvigorated Publicness 39

Chapter 4 A Substantive Approach: Critical Democratic Thought 53

Chapter 5 Rationality, the Public Sphere, and the State 71

Section 2
Contemporary Challenges

Chapter 6 The Enduring Implications of the Economic Crisis

of 2008 99

Chapter 7 Public Affairs in an Epoch of Space: Challenges to

the Public Sphere 133

Chapter 8 A Critical Analysis of the Role of Citizen Involvement

in Public Affairs: A Reexamination 155
viii Contents

Chapter 9 Conclusion: Reflections of a Sympathetic Critic 175

Notes 197

References 207

Index 251
 Foreword

For me, this book has had a long history. Some of the issues I have examined
in this book, in fact, go back to my undergraduate days. Other issues raised
mirror the era in which I grew up, as I explain in more detail in chapter
9. But it was my two mentors in graduate school, more than anything else,
who had the greatest impact on my thinking, particularly in exploring, as
Theodor Adorno (1967, p. 10) so candidly put it, “the societal play of forces
that operates beneath the surface of political forms.” These two mentors
respectively were John Dyckman (1922–1987) and Alberto Guerreiro Ramos
(1915–1982). John Dyckman, an economist, was one of the leading scholars
in planning and international development who served for many years as
the chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the Univer‑
sity of California, Berkeley. He later became the first James Irvine Chair
of Planning at the University of Southern California. His last appointment
was as a professor of geography, Johns Hopkins University. By contrast,
Guerreiro Ramos was a prominent sociologist and administrative theorist
who wrote seminal works in Brazil before coming to the United States. After
being forced to leave Brazil after the military coup in the 1960s, he resided
briefly at Yale University, but spent the rest of his career at the University
of Southern California. He is best known for his book, The New Science of
Organizations: A Reconceptualization of the Wealth of Nations.
With that said, this book is in response to many of the questions
they posed to me when I studied with them. They believed it was crucial
to ask “foundational questions” that explore the underlying assumptions of
economic, political, social, and cultural norms of the modern polity, espe‑
cially as it related to both public administration/management and public
policy. Moreover, they both strongly encouraged me to examine issues
that went beyond a procedural/managerial perspective—as valuable as this

ix
x Foreword

approach may be in addressing some important societal issues. That is, they
encouraged me to not just limit my inquiry of public affairs to strategies of
collaborative policy networks, participative deliberation, economic efficiency
in service delivery, professionalism, and the like (as important as they are
to the study and practice of public affairs), but to undertake a substantive
exploration of those political and economic presuppositions that have shaped
civic and political life.
Needless to say, I am not claiming in this book to be exhaustive or
contending that my analysis is in anyway definitive concerning the chal‑
lenges that we face in both fields. Rather, I argue here that the issues I have
raised—and their respective theoretical and practical nuances—are largely
neglected in the mainstream literature of public administration/management
and public policy. To cite only one brief example, there has been little, if
any, discussion of how the modern state might confine what constitutes, or
should constitute, legitimate questions and policy approaches in addressing
major social issues of the day. In short, I hope this book ignites an ongoing
debate about certain fundamental issues, assumptions, and approaches that
are often taken as a historical given, or that are regarded as so obvious and
self‑evident that they are seldom scrutinized for their validity and continued
relevance. In this regard, I have raised concerns about the role and pur‑
pose of civic participation, the economic crisis of 2008 and its impact on
governance, the role of the state, the fixation on procedural and utilitarian
rationality to public affairs, and the important centrality of publicness.
I argue that these issues are especially important in this era of political
and economic uncertainty.1 For example, this uncertainty is partially reflected
in the views of many citizens who are frustrated by what they perceive as
an increasingly dysfunctional governing system unable to respond to major
societal problems, an acerbic political discourse that has contributed to a
troubling political polarization and tribalism, and a lack of any serious
collaboration among key policy actors in finding meaningful political con‑
sensus on an array of policy issues. For example, in the United States, this
political unease is presently juxtaposed with a heightened sense of economic
uncertainty of increasing income and wealthy inequality, stagnant wages
for middle‑income families since the 1970s, the impact of globalization on
local and regional communities, uneven economic growth between urban
and rural areas, and limited social mobility. This political and economic
uncertainty has contributed, to some degree, to a distrust of public insti‑
tutions by many Americans and in other countries (Mounk, 2018). What
is key here is the following: as the political environment has become more
 Foreword xi

and more consumed by a growing uncertainty of whether we can effectively

resolve these daunting challenges, it has taken its toll on the body politic
both in the United States and elsewhere. Among other things, it has—at
least to some extent—contributed to the emergence of a pseudo‑democratic
populism that channels such economic and political uncertainty into fears,
anxieties, and a numbing cynicism among certain segments of the citizenry
in the United States (and in other countries). Coupled with voters who feel
neglected by political and economic elites, these citizens will likely become
a permanent and disruptive political fixture on the landscape (Eatwell &
Goodwin, 2018). Given these stark realities, I think that for those in public
management/administration and public policy the time has come to directly
confront the validity of certain basic assumptions and to start asking different
kinds of questions—questions that could in both fields make many rather
uncomfortable and, I suspect, at times defensive.
As I write this, some of the more deleterious implications of widespread
political and economic uncertainty have been vividly displayed during the
COVID‑19 pandemic and the consequential societal and economic distress
that has instilled fear, frustration, and anxiety among the general public.
This widespread uncertainty is especially acute in a time of economic and
political discord—a situation, as previously noted, that can metastasize
into an attitude of declining confidence and trust in public governance. As
public fear and anxiety continued to spread during the Covid-19 pandemic,
again, the most vulnerable in society became the most adversely impacted.
According to Derek Thompson (2020), the COVID‑19 will, unquestionably,
“supercharge” (his term) the prevailing forces of inequality in society.
That said, what I contend in this book is that in addressing political
and economic uncertainty, particularly in this time of societal discord, public
distrust, and political polarization requires, among other things, a critical
examination of not only the embeddedness of market values in political and
economic decision making, but also how this ubiquitous embeddedness has
impacted the broader moral, societal, and institutional fabric of society. The
risk of ignoring or dismissing this kind of examination is to fall prey to what
Karl Polanyi asserted is a misguided view of reality that ultimately results
in “an inability to solve the problems of our civilization” (1944, p. 126).
As I argue in more detail in chapter 6, this distortive view of social
reality can lead to what I refer to as economic and political involution that
impedes our ability to critically scrutinize those underlying societal plays
of forces that have contributed to our most vexing economic and social
problems. We become enamored, in other words, with a steadfast ­conviction
xii Foreword

that it is with market‑centered correctives, when all is said and done, that
offers the most efficacious way to ameliorate society’s most pressing issues.
Simply stated, this involution has a propensity to further exacerbate a
myopic fixation on the centrality and merits of such technocratic market/
managerial perspectives. That is, regardless of how well‑intentioned these
managerial perspectives seem to be, we have a penchant (consciously and
unconsciously) to see contentious societal issues as just another adminis‑
trative problem to be resolved. As a corollary, this fixation runs the risk
of leaving untouched any serious inquiry of those hegemonic assumptions
that legitimize those powerful governing political and economic actors who
strongly influence, if not dictate, the dominant market narrative of key
policy initiatives (Bartels, 2016).
Although the United States has employed both needed public health
measures and aggressive fiscal and monetary policies to abate the deleterious
economic and health fallout of the COVID‑19 pandemic, certain significant
(and controversial) questions merit posing. First, how can we in a market
economy such as the United States, driven largely by finance capital, the
voluminous expansion in the market supply, debt creation, and buttressed
by strong consumer demand, successfully implement a policy that on one
hand would mandate stringent health restrictions for its containment (even
for a short time) without concomitantly causing a precipitous reduction in
consumer demand followed by a steep rise in unemployment—a quagmire
that could potentially trigger even further societal resentment and cynicism
in an era of increasing income and wealth inequality? Second, and on a
related note, how can this COVID‑19 pandemic be sufficiently addressed
in a market‑based health care system that has left the public so ill‑prepared
to deal with the severity of this contagion crisis, especially when the impact
exhibits all the characteristics of sharpening the societal divide between
those who can afford to quarantine and those who cannot (Harvey, 2020)?
Assuming the validity of my central point here, one of the more
troubling realities we may have to face, albeit under conditions of a pro‑
longed pandemic, is the following conundrum: Can government and its
institutions in today’s market society competently govern during any major
public health pandemic that most likely would lead to ubiquitous societal
and market disruptions (and uncertainties) eroding not only the under‑
pinnings of consumerism and economic growth, but perhaps calling into
question the very efficacy and fairness of market‑based correctives in this
era of growing public distrust of government? Of course, medical advances
 Foreword xiii

in the search for vaccines, if developed in time, will temper the severity of
any future pandemic. Yet, as the Wall Street Journal so succinctly put it, we
should prepare ourselves for sweeping societal changes that will probably
be long lasting: “As the [health] crisis deepens, it will transform the way
we think about family and business, health care and high tech, politics and
the arts [and how this pandemic] challenges and [offers] opportunities of
our uncertain future” (Wall Street Journal, Review Section, March 28–29,
2020, p. C1).
How we respond to these transformative opportunities and challenges
will undoubtedly shape many of the salient policy deliberations that lie
ahead. But, equally important, it also offers the opportunity to ask new
questions, to discuss new initiatives, and to ponder new ideas in these
deeply challenging and uncertain times. Perhaps even to use this time of
reflection to formulate a renewed sense of publicness, and, in the process,
enrich democratic governance in the citizens’ everyday lives.
In this book, besides the literature of public management/administration
and public policy, my analysis draws from the fields of political and social
theory, economic and urban geography, political science, sociology, economic
history, and social ethics. These varied scholarly fields have helped me coalesce
my thinking on a central theme with a deeper sense of conviction: that
a renewed focus on publicness along with critical democratic thought can
play a crucial role in expanding our intellectual and professional purpose
against those corrosive forces that can undermine the democratic ethos in
public affairs. This expanded role for both fields will require more than
armchair theorizing or more studies to be conducted (as vital as both these
endeavors are to our understanding of the administrative and policy process):
it will instead require concrete action and a reordering of intellectual and
professional priorities in these daunting times.
There are many friends and colleagues I would like to thank who
directly or indirectly have influenced my thinking, even though I assume
some of them would disagree with certain aspects of my major arguments:
Guy Adams, Dan Balfour, Tina Nabatchi, Michelle Dennis, Terry Cooper,
Jeff Chapman, Lou Weschler, Sandra Newman, Robert Bartlett, George
Candler, Jim Perry, Jos Raadschelders, Lester Salamon, Michael Harmon,
late Ralph Hummel, Camilla Stivers, Hugh Miller, Richard Box, Hen‑
drick Wagenaar, Susan Gooden, and Mark Francis (my oldest and dearest
friend). My sincere appreciation also goes to the anonymous reviewers who
provided me with crucial feedback that helped me sharpen my arguments
xiv Foreword

throughout this work. I have been influenced enormously on many subjects

raised in this book with my graduate students and colleagues at the Insti‑
tute of Policy Studies, Johns Hopkins University, University of Southern
California, and the University of Oxford. I particularly extend my deepest
thanks to my colleagues in Brazil who have tried to keep Guerreiro Ramos’s
thinking alive and relevant: Ariston Azevedo, Jose Francisco Salm, Sergio
Luis Boeira, Genauto Caravalho de Franca Filho, and those scholars at
the Federal University of Santa Catarina and the Fundacao Getulio Vargas
(FGV) who have expanded on his theoretical insights. I also would like to
thank Nancy Matthews, dean of The Rubenstein School of Environment
and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, for partial financial support
in completing this book.
My appreciation also goes to four research assistants from the depart‑
ment of political science at the University of Vermont who checked and
rechecked my references: Natalie Lewis‑Vass, Alexander Verret, Caleb Bogin,
Lindsay Freed, and especially to Timothy Nyhus who went beyond the call
of duty. Finally, many of the ideas I developed in this book came from my
participation and discussions at the Minnowbrook Conferences, Syracuse
University. It was at the 1988 Minnowbrook Conference that I first met
Dwight Waldo, who has profoundly influenced so much of my thinking
on certain key policy issues, which is not to say that he would concur with
all of my conclusions here.
It goes without saying that my family provided much support and
patience as I struggled at times to finish this work. My love and thanks to
Donna Ventriss, Richard Ventriss, and Beverly Ventriss as well as my two
stepsons Finn and Ian Davis. I hope one day my grandson, Grayson Davis,
(who is two years old) will read this book and find something of value as he
carves out his own path in trying to make this world a better place to live.
And my special thanks to Michael Rinella, senior acquisitions editor
at the State University of New York Press, who nurtured and supported the
value of this book from its very beginnings. I also would like to thank Eileen
Nizer, senior production editor, and Anne Valentine, executive promotions
manager, for all their help in moving this project forward. And finally, I
was lucky to find a research associate for this project: Joshua Morse. Josh,
a doctoral candidate in the Rubenstein School of Environment and ­Natural
Resources, went line by line with me always questioning how I framed my
arguments, how some of my evidence needed more clarity in support of my
contentions, and how I needed to revise certain parts of this book. Simply
put, he made this book possible and, I believe, a much better book.
 Foreword xv

Finally, I am grateful to the following for giving me permission to

borrow certain themes and ideas from previous published materials that
have been thoroughly revised and rethought for the purposes of this book:

1. “Two critical issues of American public administration” (1987),

Administration& Society, 9(I), 25–47. doi.org/10.117710095
31978701900102.
2. (with W. Kuentzel) “Critical theory and the role of citizen
involvement in environmental decision making: A re‑­
examination” (2005), International Journal of Organization
Theory and Behavior, 8(4), 520–540.doi.org/10.1108/IJ0TB-
08-04-2005 B004.
3. “Public administration and the changing nature of space”
(1994), American Review of Public Administration, 24(1),
1–23. doi 10.1177/027507409402400101.
4. “Radical democratic thought and contemporary public
administration: A substantive perspective” (1998), American
Review of Public Administration, 28(3), 227–245. doi.org11
0.11771027507409802800301.
5. (with E. Geczi) “Rationality, the public sphere, and the
state: The relevance of Alberto Guerreiro Ramos that has
largely forgotten him,” (2006), Administrative Theory &
Praxis, 28(4), 562–583; “The economic crisis of 2008 and
its substantive implications for public affairs,” (2013), Amer-
ican Review of Public Administration, 43(6), 627–655. doi.
org/10.117710275074013499817.
 1

Introduction

Our participatory model of politics, and the ethic of “publicness” that

undergirds it, is at a crossroads. In Strong Democracy, Benjamin Barber calls
for a revised understanding of citizenship in response to this crisis. His
concept “rests on the idea of a self‑governing community of citizens who
are united less by homogeneous interests than by civic education and who
are made capable of common purpose and mutual action by virtue of their
civic attitudes and participatory institutions rather than their altruism or
their good nature” (1984, p. 117). Three decades later, Barber’s call retains
its urgent relevance.
It is particularly interesting that Barber framed this bold assertion
without the slightest hint of self‑doubt concerning its intrinsic political
validity. Barber’s celebratory tone clashes with the tenor of much writing
in contemporary public policy; yet, I find it both welcome and warranted.
As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, there is an uneasy tension in America
between the exaltation of the market ethos (or more broadly, the ideal of
individualism, the more rugged the better), while, at the same time, a gen‑
uine yearning for a sense of community sustained by strong civic‑minded
instincts. In the context of twenty‑first‑century globalization, this tension has
flourished and spread. Following on de Tocqueville’s observations, I suspect
that many, if not most social science scholars and practitioners would find
Barber’s assertion unrealistic in its political objectives, and utopian in its
societal expectations, especially in the rough and ready world of global (and
domestic) politics. These are legitimate reservations, but they ignore what
Irving Howe (1984, p. 138) so eloquently articulated, in a manner both
somber and optimistic, that still resonates with me:

Today, in an age of curdled realism, it is necessary to assert the

utopian image. But this can be done meaningfully only if it

1
2 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

is an image of social striving, tension, conflict; an image of a

problem‑creating and problem‑solving society.

Howe’s 1984 statement identifies a worrying trend—the discouragement

of meaningful critique of political powers and mores by our overarching
structures of governance—prescient on both ends of the political spectrum.
Recently, for example, some have argued that American conservatism itself
has lost its way by focusing on only one overriding concern: “[s]eeking
advantage over our opponents, [which has] poisoned the civic foundation
from which we all drink, with predictable results” (Flake, 2017, p. 94).
At the same time, American liberalism is increasingly criticized for its
unwillingness to tolerate ideological tension within the institutions where
it reigns supreme, particularly university campuses (Stephens, 2017). This
trend is worth pondering in that it is fair to assume that we teach and
conduct research in public affairs (and in the broader social sciences) with
the main purpose to nurture the ideals of a democratic ethos in an effort
to better understand and resolve the major societal issues of the day. This
rationale is predicated on another assumption that often goes unspoken:
that social conflict represents, to large degree, a fundamental failure in
policy design, implementation, and management, rather than the broader
political contradictions and economic tensions condensed in the existing
societal arrangements of political power. Not surprisingly, there has been an
ongoing debate on how best to achieve the goals of managerial effectiveness
and policy efficacy given that it relates directly to the raison d’être of public
policy and public management/administration. However, I argue that too
many scholars of both fields writing since the 1980s, have been content to
take primarily a managerial and analytical perspective, which has undoubt‑
edly advanced our knowledge and practice of public affairs. Likewise, many
others have emphasized the varying normative aspects of public affairs in
teasing out the philosophical implications (and ideals) of policy objectives.
Regardless of the different approaches pursued and their respective validity
in providing crucial insights, the current culture of both fields prompts us
to contend that scholars and practitioners have, for the most part, become
increasingly cautious in choosing the questions we believe are important to
explore. That is, the questions posed have become ever more narrow and
pedestrian, leaving untouched the “domain assumptions,” as Alvin Gouldner
(1970) called them, that underlie the theoretical and pragmatic foundations
of both public policy and public management/administration. This penchant
 Introduction 3

can be seen in the paucity of recent scholarship exploring the relationship

of public management and public policy with the modern state, and the
inherent tensions of such a relationship. This tension, in part, is due to
the theoretical uneasiness of the politics and administration dictotomy that
continues to haunt both fields. After all, many in both fields would con‑
tend that we are at our best only when addressing primarily administrative
questions central to the efficient functioning of the modern state. This book
responds to these emergent norms by asking this crucial question: Are we as
scholars of public management/administration and public policy willing to
question the arrangements of modern power and governance under which
we operate? By deemphasizing this question and its implications, we run
the risk of both fields becoming nothing more than a legalistic, managerial,
economic mode of inquiry with a procedural emphasis. To be sure, some
might insist that this is precisely the role both fields should play in societal
affairs. Generally speaking, I do not entirely disagree with this view. My
contention is that we need to be something more in this time of political
estrangement, polarization, and unequal democracy (Bartels, 2016).
To put this question in more provocative terms, does the relationship
between public policy and public management/administration and the mod‑
ern state inhibit the exploration of certain theoretical issues as politically
infeasible and too controversial to pursue? To continue this same point but
in a somewhat different direction, does the focus on professionalism—as
critical as it is in an era of heightened politicized partisanship—carry with
it potentially deleterious consequences that may erode democratic values
considered pivotal in educating future policy analysts and public managers?
Finally, and perhaps the most controversial point of all, have we in public
policy and public management/administration—regardless of our empirical
sophistication in analyzing complex social problems (and our confidence in
doing this consistently in a rigorous manner)—become an intricate part of
“a disguised normative dimension of the established power configuration”
(Ramos, 1981, p. 4) and, knowingly or unknowingly, a managerial instrument
of what some have referred to as a “good” techno‑governance system (Mouffe,
2005; Dean, 2009; Swyngedouw, 2011; Purcell, 2008)? All of these questions
are a reminder of Robert Lynd’s polemic observation, in the classic work
Knowledge for What (1939, pp. 125–126), that the social scientists should
never be afraid “to be troublesome, to disconcert the habitual arrangements
by which to live along, and to demonstrate the possibilities of change in
more adequate directions.”As cynical as these concerns may seem, and as
4 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

understandably disconcerting, they nonetheless represent a cogent reminder

of a point once made by John Dos Passos (1936), the novelist, who asserted
that “the greatest enemy of intelligence is theoretical complacency.”
These assertions (and questions) alone should give us pause to recon‑
sider some fundamental issues that go to the heart of public policy and
public management/administration. However, recent events throughout a
good portion of the developed world have added another level of com‑
plexity to these questions. Some academic critics of modern public affairs
have questioned both whether the focus on policy analysis has caused us
to deemphasize normative questions and whether the incessant emphasize
on empiricist/positivist approaches can lead to naive inductivism (Andreski,
1972). And, as this debate is taking place in academic circles, many societies
face a populist backlash (Moffitt, 2016) with critics from primarily outside
academia questioning whether the detached, professional public analyst/
administrator works for the broader public interest.
These recent complications of the relationship between the social
sciences and the public especially highlight that we call ourselves “public”
policy and “public” management/administration. In fact, until recently the
concept of publicness (and its changing meaning over time) did not attract
much intellectual attention in our theoretical and professional discussions
(Stivers, 2010; Natabachi, 2010; Ventriss, 1987). After all, as argued in the
chapters that follow, those of us who study and practice public affairs put
the word public first not merely for semantic reasons, but rather because
it conveys, or should convey, some salient ethical and societal implications
for what we seek to achieve in the broader social context.
When I first raised this point (Ventriss, 1987), my focus was on
the development of a theory of the public—a reconceptualization of the
meaning of publicness. Yet the notion of the public was—and remains—a
concept fraught with inherent theoretical ambiguity (Ventriss, 1987; Pesch,
2008). I anchored the idea of publicness predominantly in John Dewey’s
terms; that is, as an integral aspect of the citizenry’s capacity and maturity
in understanding the interactive societal consequences of public actions on
others. Since that time there has been an emerging debate on what might
constitute the meaning of “publicness” and what it implies for both public
policy, public management/administration, and public affairs in general (Pesch,
2005, 2008; Bozeman & Bretschneider, 1994; Haque, 2001; Frederickson,
1997; Barnes, Newman, Knops, & Sullivan, 2003; Low & Smith, 2005;
Moulton, 2009; Williams & Shearer, 2011; Nabatchi, 2011). Irrespective
of the varying theoretical perspectives taken on this concept, I maintain
 Introduction 5

(as I will make clear in this book) that publicness denotes something more
than a concept coterminous with the role of the modern state, or a term
so amorphous that it lacks any viable guide to how we should proceed on
important policy matters. Instead, publicness is fundamentally an adherence to
democratic ideals and democratic aspirations epitomizing the following general
characteristics: (1) publicness is inherently a process of civic responsibility,
consistent with Richard Flathman’s (1989) conception of high citizenship,
that is, an inclusive critical learning process involving a network of different
publics sharing crucial information in initiating and debating public action
and, more important, critically examining the substantive impact of policy
actions on others; (2) publicness also directly implies a responsibility for those
in public policy and public management/administration in sorting out and
exposing the misinformation and distortion of crucial data that can obscure
the normative impact of certain policies on the citizenry (Stone, 2012); (3)
publicness acknowledges the central validity of citizen dissent, or other venues
of constructive public contestation, in publicly expressing concerns about
unequal influence and societal impacts in the policy process, especially in
this era of political and economic uncertainty; (4) publicness refers to the
notion that, given there are so many “publics” in society, it is crucial to
experiment with policies that are nonaggregate, that is, publicness requires
the importance of including the unique and particularized knowledge of
different publics into the policy process congruent to public service values;
and finally, (5) in the face of the rise of pseudo‑democratic populism often
indifferent to factual information, a revigorated view of publicness is called
for in confronting, among other things, the perils of interest‑group liberalism
and the growing distrust of governmental institutions.This later point will
be discussed at length in subsequent chapters of this book.
This is hardly an exhaustive list of what could be considered as publicness
and its relevance to those who practice and study public policy and public
management/administration. However, I contend this approach to publicness
can loosen, or at least weaken, the strong grip of an instrumental rationality
and a market mentality that hovers over the theoretical landscape of public
affairs. It is not claimed here that publicness would, or should, replace the
value of other conceptual perspectives on public matters. Rather, a focus
on publicness would demonstrate, and hopefully clarify, the limitations of
these other perspectives. In short, it would have us refocus our role more
attentively to the broader substantive obligations of those powerful resid‑
ual political and economic conditions contributing to what David Harvey
(1996) described as “parochialist politics” and “political passivity.” To many,
6 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

this may sound not only pretentious to our modern pragmatic ears, but
as an invitation to a Sisyphean exercise in intellectual futility. No doubt,
this intellectual endeavor will not be easy. Nevertheless, this new theoretical
and pragmatic trajectory could be crucial in facilitating a “problem‑solving”
approach emphasized earlier by Irving Howe. This book is written to move
us closer to reinvigorating publicness in this era of political and economic
uncerainty with all the inevitable theoretical twists and turns that are bound
to happen in this intellectual journey.
Some might argue that neglect of the theoretical underpinnings of
publicness is hardly surprising given that public policy, and in particular
public management/administration, have little theoretical coherency to speak
of. As Iain Gow puts it, “The field has a hard time getting respect from
academic colleagues in the social sciences” (2010, p. 31). This has especially
been the case relative to political science, which has often criticized the
field for being atheoretical; focused on applied empirical research meant to
improve governance, rather than theory testing about governance. Gow has
dismissed these discussions, accepted that “[l]a science administrative est une
science empirique par excellence” (1993, p. 87), and has termed this “prag‑
matic institutionalism.” The term nicely combines the emphasis on structure
(institutionalism) and technique (pragmatism) in a single paradigm, and
identifies this, for example, as “the default position in public affairs [and
public policy] in Canada” (p. 10). He describes this paradigm as focused
on being “comprehensive and accurate, to ‘get it right’ ” (p. 5).
However, for many scholars in public affairs, this pragmatic, intellectual
mosaic of different disciplines, while commendable in this age of special‑
ization, has especially taken its scholarly toll on the reputation of public
administration/management. But truth be told, both intellectual enterprises
(with a few exceptions who argue for a more critical perspective) suffer from
a conceptual parochialism and intellectual ambivalence that has left theoret‑
ically untouched the Hobbesian/Lockean mentality in modern politics and
the consequential residue of possessive individualism which continues to run
rampant through our political veins (Macpherson, 1973). Public policy and
public management/ administration are, of course, historically and contextu‑
ally specific to the country in which they are practiced and theorized. Even
given this reality, a serious debate needs to emerge—a point I emphasize
in many of these chapters—about the ideological, political, and economic
forces that coalesce into a managerial consensual governing system that
essentially undermines the consideration of different ways of incorporating
 Introduction 7

democratic processes into community life (Ranciere, 1999). Peter Bachrach

(1967, p. 99)correctly emphasized that what we face in modern politics is
an uncomfortable Hobson’s choice: “a theory which is normatively sound but
unrealistic, or a theory which is realistic but heavily skewed toward elitism.”
While this theoretical dichotomy is admittedly overstated, this book echoes
an approach that Foucault (in Simon, 1971, p. 201) emphasized:

What I am trying to do is grasp the implicit systems of thought

which determine our most familiar behavior without our knowing
it. I am trying to find their origins, to show their formation,
the constraint they impose upon us . . .

Inspirations and Areas of Inquiry

This book builds on the ideas of many preeminent scholars, and in this
respect particular attention is owed to Alberto Guerreiro Ramos. At least
three of his works, The New Science of Organizations: A Reconceptualization
of the Wealth of Nations (1981), A Reducao Sociologica (1958), and the essay
Patologia Social do Branco Brasiseiro (1955), serve as a springboard for my
argument. Guerreiro Ramos was one of the earliest scholars to point to the
risks of a social science that took homo economicus as its referent. A solu‑
tion that he offered was to recognize the importance of nonmarket settings
in which people could pursue other, nonmaterialist interests. As a result,
Guerreiro Ramos criticized both mainstream public policy and public man‑
agement/administration (and social science) as reluctant, or more accurately,
intellectually unwilling to comprehend the irreconcilable conflict between
instrumental rationality and substantive rationality, and the consequential
implications of this tension on the body politic.
In light of the increasingly narrow scope of both fields that I have
mentioned earlier in this introduction, it should come as no surprise that
many have responded coldly to Guerreiro Ramos’s thinking, with theoret‑
ical dismay or even “polite” neglect of his scholarship. This reception is
primarily because, in Guerreiro Ramos’s typical sharply edged polemic tone,
he criticized the conventional scholarship in public affairs as indulging in
a theoretical self‑deception camouflaged by a ubiquitous market ideology
which has shaped the manner in which we formulate, define, and design
policy approaches, points also echoed by Crouch (2004, 2011). That these
8 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

trends persist despite nearly a half‑century of critique, and do not necessarily

command the respect of public affair scholars and practitioners, illustrates
the intellectual malaise that this book aims to address.
It is, to reemphasize, not my purpose in this book to elucidate all the
various nuances of Guerreiro Ramos’s thinking on political and administra‑
tive matters. Rather, it is to point out that Guerreiro Ramos tried, in his
own way, to awaken us from our intellectual complacency and theoretical
timidity—and, judging from where we are today, he has largely failed. This
raises the question: What additional perspectives can we in public affairs
bring to theory and practice to reinvigorate contemporary governance and
participatory politics? Much like John Stuart Mill, Guerreiro Ramos reiter‑
ated the necessity of continuously scrutinizing the presuppositions of policy
issues, thinking this intellectual posture could foster both a moral alertness
and a more vibrant notion of “publicness.” As an Afro‑Brasileiro scholar and
public official growing up in highly segregated Brazil, he was keenly aware
of those forces of political domination, both subtle and explicit, that can
emerge in society and, just as important, what can occur when such forces
are ignored and/or unchallenged. While I disagree strongly with many aspects
of Ramos’s major arguments and his theoretical contentions (which will be
explored later in the book), he did posit the need for theoretically unpacking,
so to speak, the hegemony of deeply embedded belief systems that are often
glossed over in our theoretical and pragmatic considerations of policy ends.
The intellectual malaise, Ramos tells us, facing specifically public policy and
public management/administration is not the result, as Udo Pesch (2008)
has enumerated, of trying to reconcile various meanings of publicness or
the inevitability of seeing publicness as an intrinsically ambiguous concept.
The real issue, he emphasized, is how the notion of publicness itself has
been eclipsed and distorted by “cognitive politics” (Guerreiro Ramos’s term),
which “consists in a conscious or unconsciousness use of distorted language,
the intent of which is to induce people to interpret reality in terms that
reward it direct and/or indirect agents of such distortion” (1981, p. 76).
In many respects, Ramos’s conception of publicness is foundational to
my own argument. Putting aside this awkward phrasing, Guerreiro Ramos
illuminates a poignant issue missing in most of the literature in public
affairs: that cognitive politics, in a chameleon‑like fashion, has undercut the
intellectual integrity of public policy and public management/administra‑
tion—and much of the social sciences. This has resulted, in large part, in
the legitimization of “the expansion of economizing organizations beyond
their specific contextual boundaries by practicing a misplaced and mistaken
 Introduction 9

humanism” (1981, p. 84). These fields, in other words, have become a mode
of social inquiry peculiarly vulnerable to a utilitarian mind‑set displacing
social conflict and public dissent into new governance systems such as col‑
laborative policy networks, participatory strategies, benchmarking for per‑
formance, or in new and revised managerial and policy strategies. Although
these approaches are initiated for laudable reasons and are praised for their
contributions to public affairs, little attention has gone into what this dis‑
placement means for our theoretical development and intellectual agenda.
This neglect, Guerreiro Ramos would argue, has come, unfortunately, with
a hefty intellectual and ethical price tag.
With that in mind, the first section of this book assesses the asymme‑
try of information and power among policy analysts, administrators, public
officials, and the general public. This, again, is not new: writing in 1984,
Eugene McGregor argued that “an extraordinary knowledge disparity exists
between public service careerists . . . and a civitas that wants problems
solved. The gap is not only large, it appears to be growing and the effects
can only be worrisome. The knowledge gap may well contribute to mistrust
of institutions by citizens to know when things are not working but not able
to say what the possibilities for successful intervention are” (p. 127). Up
until perhaps the last couple of years this claim would have been accepted
by many: some citizens have lost faith with self‑serving professionals and
policy elites (an overwhelmingly elite class). McGregor continued, though:
“The gap may explain some of the measured contempt public analysts have
displayed toward an unknowing and disrespectful public” (ibid.). However,
there is another question worth posing of professionalism: while policy experts
can overlook the grounded information about policy provided by ordinary
citizens, it is crucial to be cognizant of the current upsurge of anti‑intel‑
lectualism, especially in the United States, that undercuts the specialized
knowledge that professionals can bring to bear on important policy issues.
Both this imbalance of power and information, and the impact of
anti‑intellectualism, cannot be mitigated by merely appealing to the scientific
method in exploring policy and administrative issues. While it is true this
approach represents a significant aspect of what is usually done to achieve
the goals of efficiency, expediency, and calculation of policy ends, one of the
questions asked in this book is the following: Can this salient approach alone,
for all its empirical acumen, expose the role of certain key powerful actors
in the policy process without taking into consideration the broader historical
and normative context of this issue, and how such power can marginalize
political challenges to their continued influence on certain policy matters
10 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

(Lustig, 1982; Crouch, 2004; Mayer, 2016; Dean, 2009; Jessop, 2005; Swyn‑
gedouw, 2011)? The most common reaction to such claims is that in public
policy and public management/administration we do not make policy; rather,
we only analyze the viability of policies and appropriately implement (and
manage) them congruent to the rules and regulations dictated by legitimate
political institutions. This viewpoint, particularly by practitioners, is strongly
held because of the danger of undermining the nonpartisan role of public
management/administration and public policy. The reasoning here is explicit
and direct: we do not need, nor should it ever be desired, to do anything
that smacks, or is even suspected by others, of having any other purpose
than what is specifically prescribed by the state. Furthermore, any other
outlook, it is claimed, would expand the meaning of both fields perilously
beyond their traditional role and appropriate societal purpose.
Although the rationale behind these concerns is certainly understand‑
able, I emphasize the implications of publicness as a major challenge to both
fields. This implies, I contend, a reexamination of neo-managerialism and
the relationship of the state to both fields. I also focus in this section on
critical democratic thought and the reinvigoration of publicness as a way
of introducing the kind of questions we should be asking ourselves and the
theoretical perspectives needed in these challenging times. I end this section
with a critical analysis of some of the theoretical shortcomings of Guerreiro
Ramos and others in assessing the substantive aspects of publicness. I argue
that it is crucial in this era of political and economic uncertainty to take
Guerreiro Ramos’s project forward, albeit in a revised manner, when dis‑
cussing the interrelationships of citizenship, the state, and the public sphere.
The second section focuses on those debates that have not received
the appropriate attention in public management/administration, and to a
lesser extent, public policy. For instance, the first chapter in this section
examines the economic crisis of 2008 in reference to not only economic
inequality and limited economic mobility, but to political inequality and
unequal democracy and their enduring, corrosive influence on the policy and
administrative process. On a related theme, the spatial aspects of the market
economy will be discussed and why this warrants critical scrutiny in this
era of capital mobility, economic interdependencies, and a ubiquitous social
media, which have contributed to a growing breeding ground for economic
and political uncertainty (and insecurity) among certain segments of soci‑
ety. And finally, I argue that for all the celebratory arguments in praise of
public participation and deliberative democracy (which I largely applaud), I
wonder whether such discussions are only tiptoeing around other key issues
 Introduction 11

concerning the transformative goals these noble intentions hope to achieve.

This is not to imply for a moment that these participatory goals are unre‑
alistic, but rather that we have succumbed too readily to the rationale that
by continuously tinkering with an endless variety of managerial approaches
and theoretical perspectives, new and old, this somehow will better prepare
us for implementing more effectively the incremental policies that so often
emerge from the legislative process (Layzer, 2015). It is no wonder, given
this view, that there has been minimal debate concerning the underlying
conditions that caused the problem in the first place. This section is guided
by one of Thomas Pynchon’s central characters in Gravity’s Rainbow, who
evocatively declared the following: “If they can get you asking the wrong
questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”
As the chapters in this section try to make clear, the time has come to
put at the forefront of the intellectual agenda the glaring economic tensions
and social conflicts emerging both domestically and internationally, and
whether contemporary political discord can be successfully mediated by a
managerial and empirical outlook without seriously questioning the prevail‑
ing societal and economic arrangements. Concomitantly, I also address the
question of civic responsibility. The “inclusive learning process involving a
network of different publics . . . critically examining the substantive impact
of policy actions on others” that I identify as the first of the five general
characteristics, is not something that can be implemented in a top‑down
fashion. McGregor emphasizes the need for public analysts/administrators
to nurture “a potentially argumentative public . . . a dominant ethic of
public service must be that careerists keep citizens fully informed about the
possibilities for public service. . . . The democratic point is that the public
need is for intelligently organized information presented so that informed
decisions can be made” (1984, p. 128). Yet the provision of this intelligently
organized information will only help if “citizens” can better understand
those political and economic forces that call for more social division and
simplistic solutions.
The final chapter of this book focuses on how those of us devoted
to both fields might proceed in meeting these challenges. I do not claim
that this is an exhaustive compilation of challenges before us or that any of
my suggestions are a panacea to these respective issues. Undoubtedly, some
will view this part of the book as a jeremiad that paints those of us who
study or practice public affairs in an unfavorable light, or, as some of our
colleagues might argue, in an overly pessimistic manner. My intention here
is quite the opposite: it is a call for a renewed sense of what is referred to
12 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

as “elenchic citizenship” (Ventriss, 2007). It is a citizenship of publicness,

Dana Villa (2001, p. 20) explains, that is Socratic in nature in that

it consists in the endless and seemingly circular questioning of

the basic terms of our moral culture, those whose meaning seems
self‑evident and unarguable. Questioning is an end itself . . . [but
it is also a questioning to] maintain a critical distance on all
accepted definitions . . . and ridding the various false beliefs
that promote injustice.

That said, I contend that no amount of empirical studies, nor normative

theorizing, nor new managerial or participatory strategies will ever suffice
in cultivating a democratic ethos if we do not fully comprehend the nor‑
mative implications of an “unexamined citizenship” and how this lack of
understanding might lead us down a path toward intellectual hubris and
theoretical complacency. Montaigne’s (1976) erudite insight is worth ponder‑
ing here: “No wind helps him who does not know to what port he sails.”
This task will be neither easy nor, I suspect, very popular among some of
my colleagues. But the recognition of this crucial task, and the need for it,
is the real challenge that lies before us. This book, hopefully, will explain
this imperative, and so nudge us into taking this intellectual plunge.

Theoretical Grounding

Like any other work of this sort, the themes discussed in this book have been
strongly influenced by certain contemporary seminal thinkers. These thinkers
include (besides Guerreiro Ramos) the following: Albert Camus, Donald A.
Schon, Deborah Stone, Harold Lasswell, Nancy Fraser, Karl Polanyi, Han‑
nah Arendt, Jeffrey Isaac, Dana Villa, Albert Hirschman, Sheldon Wolin,
Michael Walzer, Robert Nisbet, Dwight Waldo, John K. Galbraith, Bonnie
Honig, Fred Hirsch, Daniel Bell, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Alvin
Gouldner. Each of these thinkers, in varying degrees, has argued that it is
problematic whether democracy can come into full development if we do
not first carefully analyze the concrete behavior, motives, desires, and ideals
that make up moral life. Moreover, these thinkers, putting aside their differ‑
ent conceptual venues in addressing these issues, are united in their refusal
to view public life solely in instrumental and utilitarian terms. A common
purpose cannot exist in the interstices of a liberal culture, they indicate,
 Introduction 13

if the existing moral instincts of society become increasingly antipublic, or

contribute to “the retreat of the political.” The intellectual thread that ties all
these thinkers together is their emphasis on the quality of political relation‑
ships and public commitments, which can never be reduced to mere private
acquisitive behavior; that any viable public purpose finds its meaning in a
reflective citizenship, not in the thoughtless conformity of Arendt’s (1973)
“behaving citizens” or the related disenfranchisement of Margaret Somers’s
(2008) market‑driven postcitizenship. In the end, the luminaries in this
field identify that the civic ethos can be easily atrophied or overridden by
the exultation of a market mentality and by what has been referred to as
the “economization of politics” (Brown, 2015) that lacks a coherent public
discourse adequate to the complexities of social and political life, trends we
see playing out today.
These thinkers have also provided us in public affairs a rich theoretical
tapestry of ideas that is both cautious and, surprisingly enough, optimistic in
what can be accomplished in our modern polity. This optimism is founded
on the premise that we who study and serve in public affairs can reverse our
myopic underpinnings with a more concerted focus on civitas—a civitas that
stresses publicness as a bulwark against the unrestrained pursuit of private
interest and as a way to legitimize public spaces for displaying conflict and
public struggle in the pursuit of public purposes. It is an optimism borne
of the reality, as William Sullivan (1986, p. 158) avers, that “the citizen
comes to know who he [or she] is by understanding the social relationships
surrounding him [or her] . . . [an] awareness of the interdependency of
citizens . . . [and that it is] basic to the civic vision because it enlightens
and challenges . . . disparate parties about their mutual relations.” This will
require the formulation of a renewed emphasize on “public language,” the
ability to become a “public social science,” and finally a renewed sense of
publicness that puts human dignity, critical inquiry, public responsibility,
public accessibility, and public learning at the center of what we aspire to
be in societal affairs (Ventriss, 1987; Sullivan, 1986; Ku, 2000).
Yet, ironically, a degree of caution is called for in this endeavor. This
caution is due primarily to the reality of a growing public disdain for
politics, a fragmented public with a tenuous sense of social cohesion, a
growing distrust for government in general (Will, 1983; Nye, Zelikow, &
King, 1997; Thompson, 2010) and more recently, the full emergence of a
heretofore underlying phenomenon that has contributed to these other real‑
ities: anti‑intellectualism. No doubt, it is difficult to be persuasive in such a
polarizing political environment when stereotypes of “faceless” administrators
14 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

and policy analysts are continuously misrepresented in the minds of the

citizenry (Goodsell, 2014). Indeed, Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totali-
tarianism (1973) warns explicitly that the emergence of anti‑intellectualism
is one factor among others that can stifle productive dialogue and political
critique. Thus, there is a need to walk cautiously, so to speak, knowing
that we have intrinsic limitations of what can be actually achieved given
the vicissitudes of public opinion, public attitudes, and public expectations
about government itself.
This caution, moreover, also comes with a theoretical awkwardness and
intellectual solicitude. It leaves us, who teach or practice in public affairs,
essentially on an intellectual (and pragmatic) tightrope. This balancing act
requires maintaining the intellectual conviction to present the world as
it is, and then of asking critical (and probing) questions of political and
institutional life. Furthermore, this balancing act further requires coming
up with ideas to effectively manage and better understand the labyrinthine
policies of the state, as well as certain political movements and powerful
institutional actors that seek to present a self‑serving perspective of the
world, not least to obviate the need for the sort of critical (and probing)
questions mentioned above. We operate, in effect, in a continuous state of
in‑betweenness among those competing forces of political and intellectual
gravity that constantly tug at us and which subsequently makes our bal‑
ancing act especially arduous, frustrating, exhausting, and, exasperating. It
is important to note that these dynamic and powerful political movements
are not just unique to the United States; they have been documented in
such countries as Australia, Brazil, and to a lesser extent Canada, to name
a few (Candler, 2014).
In sum, the questions I ask and the suggestions I offer in this book
have been deeply influenced by these seminal thinkers, whose foundations
give us much needed perspective on the depth and scope of the issues facing
us in public affairs today. These thinkers are crucial because they understand
just how unsettling it can be as we try to maintain our delicate balance
between dedication to democratic progress and deference to convention,
especially given the absence of any theoretical banisters to hold us steady.
This terminal condition, one could argue, may be the new and stark reality
of modern democratic policymaking. But, on the other hand, this state of
affairs can be regarded as a long overdue opportunity to step back and “to
retrace our cultural steps, and rethink what we think” (Will, 1983, p. 163).
The need for such rethinking comes at a time when, beginning in the
1970s, trust in key governmental institutions, public officials, professionals,
and the media has plummeted, leading to a heightened political and eco‑
 Introduction 15

nomic uncertainty of how we can resolve in the future—with any sense of

confidence—such key societal issues and daunting public challenges as income
and wealth inequality, economic insecurity, climate change, wage stagnation,
political polarization, and immigration. This book is in response to these
formidable trends and the perception of many citizens in the United States
and elsewhere that believe government can no longer effectively ameliorate or
resolve the uncertainities by conventional administrative and policy approaches.
The overall theme of this book is straightforward: those of us who do research
in public management/administration and public policy (and who work in
the public and nonprofit sector) need to reassess some fundamental assump‑
tions of whether the questions we have been asking—and the intellectual and
professional heritage we have taken as a given—are expanding or restricting
the centrality of publicness. Such “rethinking what we think” and how we
confront the exigency of the challenges before us has a lot to say about the
direction of our intellectual future and the substantive purpose we aspire to
in this time of policy complexity, social discord, and uncertainty.

Conclusion

In this introduction, I have focused on the two fundamental tensions in the

study and practice of public affairs that this book undertakes to address.
First, I outlined the conflict between normative and utilitarian influences
on public management/administration and public policy. And second, I
underscored the pressing need for a revitalized view of publicness to equip
those dedicated to public affairs to engage with the political and economic
uncertainties that will pose significant challenges in politics, economy, and
public life in the twenty‑first century.
In painting a picture of the conflict between normative and utilitarian
forces in contemporary public affairs, I drew on thinkers including Guer‑
reiro Ramos, Barber, and Gouldner, to highlight the crossroads at which we
now find ourselves. These authors, in particular, identified the increasingly
market‑centered and quantitative nature of scholarship in both fields. More
importantly, they collectively suggest that, unfortunately, scholarly inquiry
in both fields has become increasingly narrow and pedestrian in nature.
Given their theoretical insights, I argue that in both fields we seem reluc‑
tant to recognize and interrogate the domain assumptions (those underlying
assumptions that are rarely questioned or examined) under which we operate.
Following on this argument, I suggested that a different conceptu‑
alization of publicness will be required if we want to realize both fields’
16 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

potential—and mandate—that bridges civic life, professional practice, and

academic scholarship. I outlined five crucial elements of such an approach,
which are: (1) an emphasis on reflective civic responsibility and critical public
learning; (2) a mandate for scholars and professionals alike to identify and
clarify misinformation and distortion of data to enhance civic engagement;
(3) improved capacity for debate and constructive citizen dissent; (4) rec‑
ognition of the existence of plural publics, and the designing of policies
congruent to their respective and distinct public needs; and (5) a clarified
and strengthened relationship between the public and professionals. I
grounded this theoretical sketch in the works of diverse seminal thinkers,
especially Ramos, all of whom have in some way called for an expanded role
for a fundamental rethinking of what we do in both public management/
administration and public policy.
In the coming sections of this book, I develop two related lines of
inquiry. In the following four chapters (2–5, Section 1), I investigate the
factors conditioning current tensions and theoretical needs in public affairs.
Readers with a predominantly theoretical interest in the challenges facing
public affairs today should focus their attention here. In the final three chapters
(6–8, Section 2), I examine how these factors and theoretical needs play out
in important contemporary issues/cases. Readers primarily interested in the
more pragmatic aspects of contemporary public affairs may want to spend
the bulk of their time with these chapters. Finally, in my closing chapter
(9), I offer my personal reflections on steps to be taken at the individual
and institutional levels to strengthen the normative dimensions of theory
and practice in public affairs, based on insights developed over the course of
my career. I hope that these insights will be especially relevant to graduate
students and other professionals, who may be able to take advantage of them
over their course of the study and practice of public affairs.
 Section 1

The Importance of Publicness and

Critical Democratic Thought
 2

Conditioning Factors
Neo‑Managerialism and the Modern State

Modern society is faced by myriad major economic and political issues, and
mired in contentious debates concerning how best to resolve them (Arendt,
1958, 1961; Benn & Gaus, 1983; Warner, 2002; Calhoun, 2002, 2011;
Sheller & Urry, 2003; Castoriadis, 1997). Given this state of affairs, why
should there be any serious interest among social scientists—or the general
public, for that matter—to address such subjects as the societal role of
those who study and practice public affairs and the inherently ambiguous
meaning of publicness in the contemporary human enterprise? Indeed, what
purpose would this examination serve and who would really care beyond
those directly engaged, or somewhat interested, in public affairs? The simple
answer to this question is this: the study of public affairs is of importance
because, perhaps more than any other mode of social inquiry, it is dedi‑
cated to analyzing and managing approaches that directly contribute to the
resolution of the economic and political challenges facing society. However,
the ability of public policy and public management/administration to fulfill
this essential function is increasingly challenged by the conditioning factors
under which they both operate.
Any field—professional or academic—exists in the context of an
increasingly complex and changing society. Hence, in order to remain rele‑
vant in this context there is a penchant to develop a core identity that can
inform and guide its direction and influence. In particular, scholars of public
affairs face particular challenges in this respect not only because the work
it undertakes is more intimately intertwined with the dynamic worlds of
governance and public life, but especially because of its continued aspiration
for theoretical and societal relevance.

19
20 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

The study of both public management/administration and public pol‑

icy has often been described as mere amalgamations of the many different
areas of inquiry that it represents. For example, Dwight Waldo (1968, p.
2) once somberly described public administration as “a subject in search
of a discipline.” Waldo reminds us that in public affairs there will always
be a certain amount of conceptual uneasiness and confusion when any
interdisciplinary field is conceptually scattered so widely over the theoreti‑
cal and intellectual landscape. For this reason, it probably makes sense to
acknowledge that such intellectual and professional enterprises are inherently,
for better or worse, intellectually muddled; that as scholars of public affairs
we are inexorably caught in the vexing pull between the different demands
of the world of theory and the realities of practice; and, finally, that such
modes of inquiry can become too often nothing more than a collection of
contrapuntal theoretical voices that rarely combine into anything harmonic
in conceptual terms. As one scholar so aptly put it, most of the professional
and theoretical literature in the study of public management/administration
and public policy resembles nothing more than a “hodgepodge of theoretical
ramblings” (Ramos, 1981, p. 61).
This has led to a long and tortuous discussion in both fields about
how this lack of theoretical consistency has conditioned the interaction of
public affairs with the broader academic and professional environments in
which it functions. For example, some would argue that in the absence of
any organizing theory, public policy has wrapped itself comfortably in the
conceptual garb of microeconomics, game theory, operations research, and
an array of quantitative methods, while public management/administration
has veered toward demonstrating its steadfast adherence to the merits of
economy and efficiency in managing public affairs. Elaborating on this
theme, Gerald Caiden pulled no punches in contending that the crisis of
legitimacy, specifically confronting public administration, is inexorably related
to its inability to formulate a viable and cogent theoretical base from which
to defend itself. In the next breath, he concluded that public administra‑
tion has consequently been unable to mount any effective reply against its
critics who accuse it of being “parasitic, unproductive, inefficient, wasteful,
incompetent, corrupt, and above all unnecessary” (1983, p. 1).
To understand how a field such as public management/administra‑
tion concerned with public well‑being has found itself vulnerable to such
critique, this chapter investigates the context within which both fields of
inquiry presently search for their respective theoretical foundations. In part,
Swyngedouw (2010) writes, this situation is best understood within the
 Conditioning Factors 21

context of a “post‑politics” of neoliberalism that has largely eviscerated the

publicness of social conflict, public contestation and civic dialogue. That is,
social conflict, contestation, and dialogue are now comfortably ensconced
in collaborative, polycentric networks and horizontal associations of private,
public, and state actors. Such governing arrangements, he emphasizes, give the
impression that they represent a major step forward in wedding progressive
state power with policy innovations for the common good. Swyngedouw
maintains that this proclivity for rechanneling and displacing conflict rep‑
resents, in effect, the partitioning of publicness from its political nature in
that any sense of publicness is legitimized only when it is predicated on
reaching a cooperative arrangement among interested parties congruent to
the political logic of neoliberal managerialism (Dahl & Soss, 2014; Wolin,
2008). I argue that this diagnosis is mainly accurate, and I will investigate its
implications in the following sections: the rise of neo‑managerialism norms
and their impact on public affairs, and the role of the modern state within
which both fields are practiced and intellectually engaged.

Neo‑managerialism and the

Economization of Political Inquiry

“From the late 19th century on,” David Hart and William Scott (1982,
p. 240) have observed, “public administration [specifically] has been challenged
to emulate the presumed efficiencies of business administration.” Hart and
Scott go on to argue that “public administration responded to that challenge
so enthusiastically that it lost its unique identity in the process. By now
it has become nothing more than an undistinguished cousin of business
administration [and economics].” Subsequently, public affairs, they lament,
has become increasingly captive of a belief, albeit understandable in a market
society, in the singular focus on efficiency and productivity as exemplified
in the contemporary managerial, market approach to public affairs (Pollitt,
1993; Clarke, 2005; Dryzek, 2008). More broadly, this tendency represents
the peril of stripping any resemblance of a democratic ethos from its political
dimension grounded on the basis of public dissensus. Hart and Scott echo
a similar concern that the theoretical residue of this perspective has resulted
in an intellectual default whereby neo‑managerialism becomes an ideological
and empirical filter significantly biasing the direction of decision making
congruent to instrumental rather than substantive ends (Adams & Balfour,
2012; Scott & Hart, 1979).1
22 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

This emphasis on neo-managerialism (Terry, 1998; Denhardt & Denhardt,

2015), as it is referred to in the literature, amounts to an epistemological and
philosophical belief system. It specifies that because public management/admin‑
istration and public policy are primarily utilitarian and pragmatic fields, their
greatest contribution is in the application of managerial and empirically based
strategies to solve public problems, thus underscoring what Ranciere (1995,
2010) referred to as a “managerial consensual governing.” It is, moreover, a
governing process that inevitably depoliticizes social conflict and dissent (Muller
& Ventriss, 1985; Box, 2008, 2014; Mouffe, 2005; Wolin, 2008; Pateman,
2012; Peck & Tickell, 2002). Admittedly, this perspective is closely reminiscent
of premises associated with the New Public Management movement and its
focus on a technical and economic (read: market) rationality to public affairs
(Barzelay, 2001; Lynn, 2006).
Of course, it can be argued that this managerial and economic pre‑
disposition is due to the growth of government in dealing with growing
public expectations and public needs. For example, many public programs
are run like businesses (for example, railroads, pension funds, power plants,
and the like) that are almost indistinguishable from their entrepreneurial,
private sector counterparts. The central premises of neo‑managerialism,
broadly speaking, incorporate these basic elements: (1) “a less than direct
and conscious promotion of ethical values (Lynch, 2014); (2) inclusion of
all even remotely relevant disciplines into the field due to an inability to
define normative positions; (3) consideration of the needed social technology
to achieve managerial and market efficiency; (4) a focus on an empirically
minded policy orientation; and (5) the need for planning and managerial
control absent a strong presumptive normative foundation” (Wald, 1973,
376; Latour, 2005; Fox, 1996; Clarke & Newman, 1997; Terry, 1998;
Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015).
Assuming the validity of these characteristics, it is no wonder that
many in public affairs have argued that those being educated for the pub‑
lic and nonprofit sectors need to master the requisite business, economic,
and analytical skills because we are, after all, dealing more and more with
classical problems of business and economic management (McCurdy, 1978;
Osborne & Gaebler, 1992; Osborne & Plastrik, 1997). Understandably, many
may find this characterization overdrawn and misleading, but there is no
denying that for many scholars of public affairs this empirically grounded
managerial and economic approach was generally greeted with enthusiasm
as a long overdue and welcome development (Dubnick, 2000). However,
if one follows this logic, the theoretical purpose of public management/
 Conditioning Factors 23

administration and public policy becomes on balance nothing more than

the application of different managerial and technical approaches that can
sustain both fields’ pragmatic and nonpartisan appeal. According to Adams
and Balfour (2012, p. 326), while there is nothing wrong per se with this
view, this kind of reasoning leads “to a narrow concept of [the] public that
limits public practices . . . [and] severely restricts what activities are available
with regard to public values and ethics.” A similar assumption made with
this line of thinking also merits serious attention: that better government,
for the most part, is synonymous with more efficient public organization.
Within limits, this rationale is both understandable and commendable (Waldo,
1971; Lynn, 2006). However, the danger comes, John Schaar (1970, p.
306) cautions, when we believe “that finding the right solution is [always]
a matter of finding the right technique.” This is not to negate the crucial
importance of obtaining and applying analytical and appropriate manage‑
rial strategies in order to increase efficiency in government. That point few
would ever dispute. Alternatively, however, neo‑managerialism may be no
accident at all—it is part and parcel of the public organization’s inclination
to control how public problems are framed and defined, thus enhancing its
own survival, growth, and power (Brown & Erie, 1979; Adams & Balfour,
2014; Hummel, 2007; Ramos, 1981; Perrow, 1986). Following on that same
theme, Brown and Erie (1979) contend that a critical analysis of the original
source of public problems could—and potentially would—call into question
the very viability and direction of public organizations. Not surprisingly,
some scholars have vehemently objected to the validity of such broad and
sweeping generalizations (Goodsell, 2014; Neiman, 2000; Terry, 2003; Meier
& O’Toole, 2006). Then again, as disparaging as this may sound, Richard
Goodwin (1975, p. 330), who coined the term “The Great Society” while
a policy aide to President Lyndon Johnson, interestingly made a compelling
argument that government and its public agencies “cannot act effectively if
the source of discontent is fundamental, residing in the design of society.”
Notwithstanding the troubling theoretical and practical implications of this
argument, this contention has been rarely acknowledged, or even seriously
debated, in the literature of public administration (Forester, 1993; Dunn
& Miller, 2007; Denhardt, 1981; Hummel, 2007).
These polemic perspectives are hardly new. For, as Gary Wills (1969)
explains, the managerial approach to social and political issues may be
more serious than originally thought: we displace political problems into
managerial and technical issues because we are an integral part of a “mod‑
ern rationalist liberalism, an ideology of structures [that] has nothing to
24 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

offer if structural or procedural reforms do not avail” (Ghelardi, 1976, p.

257; Mannheim, 1956; Polanyi, 1944). That is, we cling tenaciously to the
strategy of revising administrative procedures, of arranging (and rearrang‑
ing) various parts of the administrative state, of applying newer and more
efficacious managerial and policy approaches, and of putting increasingly
more of our faith in what economic reasoning (and markets) can offer.
We do this without considering that political and economic inequalities,
political discontent, and social conflicts within the modern polity might
require a critical examination of the underlying assumptions of what we
believe constitutes democratic accountability and substantive inclusion of
citizens in the policy process. Bevir (2011, p. 17) argues that, in the long
run, this will ultimately mean exploring new opportunities for a role that
includes “more plural and participatory concepts of democracy” (Ventriss,
1985; Nabatchi & Leighninger, 2015; Pateman, 2012; Natatchi & Amsler,
2014; Dryzek, 2000; Fung & Wright,2003). Whether this actually happens,
of course, remains to be seen.
But the intellectual influence of neo‑managerialism is not just an
issue of the economization of political inquiry; it also depicts a pragmatic
outlook concerning the ubiquitous influence of the market mentality on
modern society itself (Sandel, 2014; Polanyi, 1944). This marketplace men‑
tality is an outlook that inevitably facilitates a ritualistic democracy on the
shaky foundation of incessant political bargaining and competition (Sandel,
2014; Wolin, 1960, 2008; Kariel, 1977; Macpherson, 1962, 1973; Barber,
1984). Given that the political gamesmanship of constant bargaining and
competition is here to stay as an integral part of how policy is made, it
is not surprising that administrators and policy analysts find themselves
too often acting, so to speak, like technocratic Hamlets trying to provide
some managerial order to this messy, unruly process. We are to be forgiven,
however. We are—like everyone else—just following the rules of the game.
But following the rules of the game carries a certain intellectual price tag
(Arendt, 1978). It is a cost reflected in a lack of diligence in addressing
certain important and controversial subjects, namely: Does this propensity
toward neo‑managerialism of political inquiry not only result in taking a
myopic perspective on social issues, but, equally important, in privatizing
social conflict? For example, have neo‑managerialism and the economization
of political inquiry ignored the interdependency of political problems as
inextricably interwoven within the economic and political fabric of society
itself? And, in fact, do these approaches divert our intellectual scrutiny away
from the issues concerning the structure of power (and the distribution
 Conditioning Factors 25

of that power), who is attempting to control the policy agenda, and for
what political or economic purposes? While the reaction is to be somewhat
defensive (and dismissive) about even posing such inquiries, should we not
ponder why “power represents a derivative rather than a primary category
of analysis, defined by the value orientations reflected in the notions of
organization and of science” rather than substantive meaning of “political”
(Erie, 1978, p. 1; Wolin, 1960; Perrow, 1986)? This orientation, as Peter
Nettl (1969, p. 2) warned, results in “the hard edges of power dissolving
in a cloud of problems of choice, strategies, information channels, inter‑
ests, and organizations—toothless neutral concepts all.” The intellectual
baggage that both these perspectives carry with them—particularly in the
rough‑and‑ready world of the political marketplace—should make us wonder
whether we need such an exclusive focus as we originally thought (Dryzek,
2012; Fischer, 2003; Wagenaar, 2011).
A related and significant aspect of this tendency also emerges in how
best we prepare students for the challenges they will ultimately face in
public affairs. Needless to say, the trend for MPAs and MPPs has always
been to focus on how to make these degrees more marketable and profes‑
sionally relevant. Presently, this implies underscoring skills such as policy
analysis, systems analysis, computer science, operations research, accounting,
management science, and budgeting, to name the most obvious examples.
Undoubtedly, there are many pedagogical merits to this viewpoint inasmuch
as students unquestionably need to master certain skills and the requisite
technical knowledge to effectively address complex problems. Yet, this edu‑
cational focus raises a critical issue that cannot be so easily brushed under
the theoretical rug:

Are we promoting an academic and professional field structured

to put out socially acquiescent public managers [and policy
analysts]? This question implies a tension which has always
been present: is the purpose of public affairs to train students
to be managerially competent professionals or to educate them
as citizens able to recognize the multiplicity of social problems
and their underlying causes? Most educators would argue that
one approach should not negate the other. There is presently,
however, a definite propensity toward amanagerial and economic
approach to social affairs. Citizenship, once the key word in most
public [affairs] schools, is being relegated to a secondary role.
(Ventriss, 1982, p. 139; Piereson & Riley, 2013)
26 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

This educational focus is probably unavoidable as Max Weber (1946,

240) presciently warned: with the rise of bureaucracy, it is the “expert not
the cultivated [individual] who is the educational ideal of the bureaucratic
age.” While this educational development is hardly unique to just public
administration and public policy, it does pose a somber dilemma: again, as
reiterated by Hart and Scott (1982) and others, if this trend is left unabated
it could circumvent the broader normative purposes of a public affairs educa‑
tion, thus mirroring the instrumental goals of the “organizational imperative”
(Ramos, 1981; Hummel, 2007). This organizational imperative, Hart and
Scott (1982, p. 152) aver, serves as an ideological veil because “the most
effective way to guarantee appropriate behavioral responses to organizational
[and instrumental] needs is to build a [managerial] educational system that
indoctrinates people in [these] requisite beliefs.”
Recent research has suggested that while the public is without question
concerned with increasing efficiency in government, the citizenry is equally
interested in increasing public accountability in governmental, nonprofit,
and private sectors (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015; King & Stivers, 1998;
Frederickson & Hart, 1985; Gawthrope, 1998; Harmon, 1995).Whereas,
it is true, these issues are often discussed and debated at a variety of
academic and professional venues, Perrow (1986, p. 6) offered an insight
that, surprisingly, has not received the attention it quite rightfully deserves:
“Organizations mobilize social resources for ends that are often essential
and even desirable. But organizations also concentrate those resources in
the hands of a few who are prone to use them for ends we do not approve
of, for ends we may not even be aware of, and, more frightening still, for
ends we are led to accept because we are not in a position to conceive
alternative ones.” Whether one can be taught to be responsible or ethical
by merely taking certain classes is certainly debatable. On the other hand,
even more questionable is whether more empirically oriented managerial
and policy courses will appropriately prepare students to understand the
responsibilities associated with the public purpose, irrespective of the recent
emphasis by NASPAA (Network of School of Public Policy, Affairs, and
Administration) (2009, p. 4) on “[demonstrating] that its students learn
the tools and competencies to apply and take these [public service] values
into consideration in their professional activities.”
Another way of looking at this is to consider how we usually treat
such policy issues as political and economic inequality. Assuming the
literature on this subject is indicative of how it is taught, economic and
 Conditioning Factors 27

social inequality is customary regarded as just another managerial problem

of implementing certain tax reforms, of initiating better approaches to
increase governmental efficiency, or of contending with what Martin Lipset
and William Schneider (1983) once called the “confidence gap” (Ventriss,
2015; Oldfield, Candler, Johnson, 2006). These policy remedies are, of
course, worth pursuing, but wealth and income inequality also involve the
far more serious and contentious deliberation of the present distribution of
wealth (goods and services) and how that distribution is legitimized to the
public, particularly in containing any potential societal discord (Ventriss,
2015). Put simply, should it not puzzle us that we in the administrative
and policy literature have remained, for the most part, relatively silent on
the deleterious implications of the distribution of wealth and income in a
society of unequal classes (Oldfield, 2001, 2003; Ventriss, 1991, 2015)? It
is difficult to respond to this issue, and other related matters, when, in the
literature of public management/administration in particular, such issues,
if addressed at all, are regarded chiefly as administrative questions or best
left to other disciplines
Unfortunately, relatively few who teach or conduct research, particularly
in public management/administration, have spoken clearly about the meaning
of social justice in an era of growing political and economic inequality and
uncertainty (Box, Marshall, Reed, & Reed, 2001; Oldfield & Conant, 2001;
Gooden, 2014; Ventriss. 2015). We obviously have the ability to do so, and
a moral obligation as well, with respect not only to the social justice issues
at stake but also to the intellectual relevance of both fields. The intellectual
limitations of our present theoretical trajectory in public affairs have been
conditioned by neo‑managerialism and the economization of public affairs;
how we mitigate this trend rests on the ability of scholars and teachers to
make explicit the consequences of this trajectory and the institutional and
professional impact that it will have on the next generation of public affairs
scholars and practitioners.
Nurturing critical discourse that enables students to question the
limits of neo‑managerialism and the market mentality as their goal will be
challenging. Even including those who see us moving more in the direction
of a “new public service” (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015), old habits may
be hard to break (Piereson & Riley, 2013). Indeed, finding new ways to
expand the conception of the role of the policy analyst/public manager,
rather than affirming the boundaries imposed upon such roles by the increas‑
ingly market‑driven, positivist nature of academia and government will be
28 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

undoubtedly a vexing undertaking. Cynically, one might even argue that

the majority of public affairs scholars do not see this issue as a problem at
all or dismiss as mostly irrelevant.
If there is a path forward to a bolder perspective, I suggest that it
exists through a fuller integration of our respective fields in public affairs
confronting directly such topics as economic inequality, racial inequality,
gender inequality, and unequal democracy (and other related macrosocial
issues), which can only be addressed by researchers and practitioners who
are unafraid of questioning domain assumption. Part of that unfettered
critical inquiry will have to entail the questioning of the relationship of the
state and the role and purpose concerning those who reside in and theorize
about the governance process.

The Modern State and Public Affairs

The neo-managerialism so prevalent in public affairs has not occurred in

isolation. The conditioning factors shaping the norms of academic inquiry
and professional practice emerge from the evolution of that foremost insti‑
tution of public life: the state. Many authors have described the emergence
of a modern state characterized by supplanting tcommitment to public
service with the union of bureaucratic means and corporate—which is
to say, private—ends. Sheldon Wolin (2008, 135) captures this troubling
condition this way:

Politics and elections as well as the operation of governmental

departments and agencies now are routinely considered a man‑
agerial rather than a political skill. Management is not a neutral
notion, however. Its roots are in the business culture, its values
shaped by the pressures of a competitive economy that persistently
pushes the limits of legal and ethical norms . . . The consequences
are registered in the decline of a public ethic.

To highlight Wolin’s provocative observation, I will focus on Poulantzas’s

analysis of the modern state, because he shows us, albeit within a polemic
perspective drawn from Marx, Gramsci, and Althusser, how a hegemony
of beliefs can be disseminated throughout society and how powerful forces
come together to forge what he referred to as a power bloc. And while I
disagree with the Marxist overtones of his analysis on many key points,
 Conditioning Factors 29

he is important in drawing our attention to such issues as what he called

authoritarian statism and the recent emergence of authoritarian populism.
Concomitantly, the French Regulation School is also worth discussing in that
it shows us how the modern state must be understood within the context of
a post‑Fordist economy. Although these theoretical vantage points are hardly
representative of the varied theories of the state, jointly they do provide a
better understanding of the issues Wolin describes, and offer a perspective
rarely discussed in the policy and administrative literature.
The changing role of the state in the modern era, especially with
respect to globalization, is best characterized in terms of its relationship with
two forces: the public/private nexus and the primacy of the market (Fraser,
2014; Block & Somers, 2014). Given these realities, I will briefly discuss
first some of the ideas articulated by Poulantzas followed by the French
Regulation School. Poulantzas (1975, 1978), in his provocative discussions
dealing with the role of the state, posits that the modern state is not some
monolithic bloc or group that serves as an instrument for the domination
of society, nor is it the relationship of a particular class and its influence
over powerful institutions. Rather, the state is best understood as an arena
for political and social conflict (what he has called the “condensation of
a balance of forces”)2 and as a social relation between citizens mediated
through their relation to state apparatuses and capacities. Poulantzas further
contends that bureaucratic power is the exercise of the state’s function and is
“relatively autonomous” from the different interests and factions in society.
This relative autonomy, insists Poulantzas, is how the state can protect (and
enhance) the market economy, “even if it means severe conflict with some
segments of society” (Held, 1989, p. 69). Yet, the state also plays an active
role in “creating, transforming, and making reality” (Poulantzas, 1978, p. 30).
Part of the effectiveness of the state is in how knowledge and information
is used within the governmental apparatus.3 In other words, “[T]he state
helps define expertise by financing and employing intellectuals, then uses
this expertise in particular ways . . . legitimizing its role as the center of
power and decision‑making” (Carnoy, 1984, pp. 113–114).
For Poulantzas, the salient aspects of this situation are obvious. The
pivotal problem confronting democratic public affairs in the modern state
is how citizens can engage the state without being co‑opted and how to
deepen the political institutions of democracy “in the name of current
liberties and those yet to be won” (Isaac, 1992, p. 247). He also alerted us
to how a market society might exist with relative stability and gain needed
public consent by appealing to nationalism, making it difficult for various
30 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

publics to organize themselves. And, perhaps more critically, he contended

that the state provides the institutional space for different powerful factions
in society to form alliances in what he called a power‑bloc, while at the
same time, seeing the state more as a social relation in a contested struggle
between different interests in society (1978). According to Poulantzas, the
state therefore is always more or less in flux and contestation. Granted this
is only a brief and selective overview of Poulantzas’s thinking on the nature
of the state, he does chronicle certain tendencies that are difficult to ignore
on many contentious themes involving the modern market economy, civil
society, and the distribution of power—themes developed in dialogue with
the works of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci. To be sure, this concep‑
tualization differs in fundamental (and radical) ways from the conventional
view of liberals and conservatives alike who see problems of the state as due
to inadequate procedures of democratic accountability, mismanagement, and/
or unrealistic citizen expectations (Jessop, 1985; 1990). While Poulantzas
has been correctly criticized, among other reasons, for ignoring such issues
as the separation of “public” and “private” and problems associated with
representative democracy, he does focus needed attention—putting aside
his critical view of the state—that a market society based on possessive
individualism and skewed political influence will be inherently riddled with
uncertainties, contradictions, and dilemmas.
The French Regulation School, despite criticisms with respect to its
conception of the state (Boyer, 1990; Lipietz, 1985; Swyngedouw, 1996;
Jessop, 1994, 2014),4 calls attention to the development of the modern
state in tandem with the emergence of a post‑Fordist economy. The French
Regulation school, while controversial in its implications, adheres to the
perspective that a new form of production largely replaced the Fordist sys‑
tem (a system characterized by Tayloristic management practices and state
intervention to maintain a balance between consumption and production
to secure economic growth), which started to break down in the 1970s.
A new era emerged, post‑Fordism, that emphasized flexible production,
specialization, and accumulation. This post‑Fordist strategy is characterized
by a fragmented mode of production that has led to a spatial reconcentra‑
tion of production in the form of clusters of small firms in new industrial
districts. That is, under the weight of vertical disintegration a new flexible
specialization occurred that created agglomeration tendencies at the regional
level. Equally important, this school of thought has provided insights into
the integration of what is referred to as the mode of regulation (state action,
political practices, and behavioral norms) to what is termed a regime of
 Conditioning Factors 31

accumulation. In particular, the Regulation School spells out these modes in

terms of social relations that are reproduced through different historical periods
irrespective of their contradictory and conflicting character (Swyngedouw,
1996). Moreover, according to Jessop (2014) this school of thought provides
us a deeper conceptual understanding of the economic linkages between the
international and local levels, whereby the nation‑state’s discretionary powers
become somewhat eroded. What is actually occurring is what Swyngedouw
(1996, p. 1503) called the re‑scaling of the state:

The re-scaling of the state, therefore, does not suggest a dimin‑

ishing role of the state apparatus. In fact, these new global/local
institutions, in close cooperation with private capital, launch
the development largely on the basis of public capital and state
capital. In short, the production of post‑Fordist [economic]
spaces is paralleled by disturbing political transformations and
a redefined citizenship.

All that said, what the regulation theory has us explore is the position
of the nation‑state in a global economy and how localities within those
nation‑states must attempt to produce globally competitive spaces in compe‑
tition with other localities. This new post‑Fordist reality, in turn, intensifies
the struggle for capital, thus reinforcing political and economic fragmentation
in civil society (Cox & Mair, 1991; Jessop, 1993, 1994, 2002, 2007). The
deleterious trajectory of this trend is that the concept of citizenship itself
is transformed into a redefined “citizen entrepreneur” who now advocates
only for the creation of competitive market regions to maximize jobs and
economic growth (Swyngedouw, 1996; Ventriss, 2000; Terry, 1998). In sum,
citizenship is stripped (both theoretically and pragmatically) of its normative
character to conform to the cognitive patterns inherent in a market‑centered
society (Polanyi, 1944; Somers, 2008; Block and Somers, 2014). To a large
degree, this is the present context in which the neo‑managerialization of
public affairs has occurred in this neoliberal milieu. I contend that it is
crucial to challenge this situation with reinvigorated theory and practice of
publicness. A better understanding of the nature of the modern state will
be foundational to this task.
As Max Weber indicated, the modern state could not exist without
an elaborate administrative system. Because public management/administra‑
tion is usually regarded primarily as a state function and because the state
does possess “a legal monopoly of coercive power,” (Weber, 1948),5 we are
32 Public Affairs and Democratic Ideals

confronted with some interesting questions that strike at the very core of
this relationship. Interestingly, the issues addressed by these questions have
generated only a modicum of, if any, significant reflection by either prac‑
titioners or public affairs scholars. And what are some of these questions?
First, are the respective fields of public management/administration
and public policy particularly vulnerable to being intellectually hobbled by
what the state defines as legitimate policy considerations and alternatives,
thereby undermining any attempt to develop an independent and critical
intellectual foundation upon which to raise certain controversial issues
(Offe, 1972; Mills, 1951; Harvey, 2007; Carnoy, 1984)? Second, does the
analytical and managerial acumen we employ, even though it may take
place within a constitutional/democratic framework, inevitably sanction “the
legitimation of the state through the application of its technical expertise”
(Beauregard, 1978, p. 236; Block, 1980; Carnoy, 1984)? Or, to put it in
slightly different terms, do both disciplines inadvertently displace issues from
the political and economic fabric of society, thus elevating an administrative
process over substantive purpose? Finally, are there other societal roles for
public affairs beyond the parameters of what the state delegates or expects
both disciplines to do, especially public management/administration? Are
the customary public roles and purposes for both fields too restrictive (in
relationship to the state) or do we have broader responsibilities for leadership
in the community?
These questions at first glance seem rather disconcerting in their
implications (Ventriss, 2015). Many will claim, and rightly so, that the
role of those in public management/administration and public policy—at
least involving democratically elected governments—is fundamentally both
managerial and normative: to serve the public interest in the most efficient
and equitable manner, and perhaps, most important of all, in a nonpartisan
manner (Goodsell, 2014). Yet, as Luther Gulick (1983) has pointed out,
the instinctive drive for group action under the “banner of the state” (as he
called it) is one of the greatest shortfalls concerning our approach to public
affairs—a poignant observation that has largely fallen on deaf ears. At heart,
the questions posed above raise not only the perennial issue of the politics/
administration dichotomy, but the more troubling issue of the relationship
of our intellectual role and purpose to modern power and how we define
both fields primarily in governmental or quasi‑governmental terms.
From a different theoretical angle, Robert Nisbet (1953) has claimed
that the modern state has tried to fill a social vacuum created by the decline
of local associative groups; that is, kinship, religious, and other locality groups.
 Conditioning Factors 33

The state has tried to create, Nisbet concludes, what is essentially a “pseudo
community” that is unable to meet the psychological and social needs of the
community. Emile Durkheim (1964, p. 28), who deeply influenced Nisbet’s
thinking on this issue, wrote that

the state is too remote from the individuals; its relations with
them too external and intermittent to penetrate deeply into
individual consciences and socialize them within where the state
is the only environment in which we can live communal lives,
they inevitably lose contact, become detached.

Nisbet (1953, p. 7), extending Durkheim’s idea, reiterated that the

decline of “community has made ours an age of frustration, anxiety, dis‑
integration, instability, breakdown, and collapse.” Even if this postulation
is dismissed as merely hyperbole, Nisbet raises a point seldom discussed in
public management/administration and public policy. As conceptually and
pragmatically aligned with the modern state as both fields tend to be, when
stripped of their normative and pragmatic clothing, do they ultimately find
themselves embedded in a politically awkward position inasmuch as they
must always act more or less in concert with the powers of an authoritative
political structure? In other words, does this state of affairs come at the cost
of managing a potentially unsatisfying social harmony in a market society
of contradictory social interests, varied public needs/expectations, and vast
differences in the exercise of political power? Asking this particular question,
I suspect, will prompt an immediate negative reaction by most in the fields
of public policy and public management/administration. Still, it is a ques‑
tion that will not go so easily away and will eventually require a response
(Rosenbloom, 1986, 2005; Box, 2014, Hummel, 2007; Poulantzas, 1978;
Carnoy, 1984; Harvey, 2007). Carole Pateman (2012) was correct when she
pointed out that our various ideas in attempting to achieve a democratic
ethos in public affairs will have little effect if we do not first question the
“conventional institutional structures” (her term) and their relationship in
promoting democratic public purposes.
Assuming the validity of both Gulick’s and Nisbet’s theoretical views,
their usage of the term state demands some clarification. However, according
to David Easton (1953, p. 108), “the word [state] should be abandoned
entirely.” The reason for Easton’s uneasiness is that the concept of the state
is difficult to separate empirically from such notions as society, political
organizations, and government. We tend to trip over political definitions
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
the Brown and disaster—none ever knew how he had managed to
get back to the five yards—and for a heart-beat it seemed that the
runner was doomed. But Brodhead’s tackle only spun the red-legged
runner about and sent him across the final white line like a top in its
last gyrations.
A well-kicked goal added another point to the six, and the teams
went back to the centre of the field once more. To Myron it seemed
then that Parkinson realised defeat, for there was that in the
attitudes and movements of the players that had not been there
before. It was not dejection, but it might have been called the ghost
of it. And yet for the remainder of the period Parkinson took and
held the upper hand and the half ended with the ball in her
possession on her forty-eight yards.
Myron wanted to talk over the game very badly, but the youth
with spectacles was doing what appeared to be an intricate problem
in algebra on the back of his score-card, while as for the stout boy
on his other side, he had heard enough of his conversation already.
Just now he was knowingly informing his companion that the trouble
with Parkinson was that she needed a decent coach. His brief
glimpse of Millard—if it really was Millard—distracted him for a
moment or two, and after that he listened to the joyful sounds from
the Musket Hill side and felt rather disappointed and lonesome.
 CHAPTER XVIII
MYRON GETS HIS CHANCE

I should like to tell how Parkinson found herself in the last half of
the game and won the contest. But nothing of that sort happened.
Coach Driscoll started the third period with all his regulars in the
line, and, in consequence, Musket Hill found slower going. Gains in
the line were far less frequent, and only outside of tackles was the
Maroon likely to win territory. But the home team clearly out-punted
the visitors, although, in the final period, Garrison was pulled back
from the line to swing his toe for Parkinson. Musket Hill made but
one long advance in the last twenty minutes, and, as before, a
forward pass was the method chosen. Keene, who had taken
Stearns’ place at left end, was caught napping badly, and Meldrum,
the left half, who should have seen the signs and been on guard,
found himself tied up with the enemy. The result was a fine thirty-
seven yard gain that placed the pigskin on Parkinson’s nine yards.
From a Parkinson point of view, the most encouraging feature of
the day developed then when the Brown line, forced back to its six
yards and then to its four, and finally retired to its two for being off-
side, stood firm and took the ball away a foot from her goal-line. It
was then that the west stand shouted and cheered and that Myron,
silent a moment for want of breath, heard his spectacled neighbour
give vent to the enthusiastic remark already recorded. But no team
can win who can’t score, and Parkinson couldn’t score. On attack
she was decidedly weak. The ability was there, but the team had not
yet learned to make use of it. Individually, nearly every fellow in the
Brown line played really excellent football, but teamwork was
missing. For a brief four or five minutes at the beginning of the last
quarter there came a semblance of it, and Parkinson, securing the
ball on a punt near her thirty yards, managed to work it down to the
enemy’s thirty. Guy Brown was the bright particular star, and, aided
by Meldrum, tore off gain after gain through a weakened left side of
the enemy’s ranks. But when Musket Hill brought in two substitutes
to bolster the point of attack the advance petered out, and when
Brown had twice failed to gain and Kearns had lost a yard on a wide
end run, Parkinson was forced to punt. That punt marked the end of
Parkinson’s defiance. From then on she plugged away doggedly to
avert a worse defeat and, aided by the over-zealousness of Musket
Hill’s several substitutes and by the sharp-eyed officials, succeeded.
When the final whistle blew Parkinson was down on her twelve
yards, her back again to the wall, and only that whistle saved her.
Musket Hill appeared more than satisfied with her score of 7 to 0.
It was only her second victory over Parkinson in many years of
contest, although there had been ties and close scores, and Myron,
standing in his place with the other Parkinsonians and cheering
bravely, witnessed a hilarious celebration as Musket Hill overflowed
the field and began a sinuous snake-dance from side to side and
from goal to goal. Then came a hurried scramble for the four-forty-
eight train and a tedious and, for his part, dejected journey back to
Warne. He hoped that Millard would show up, although that
engaging youth hadn’t spoken of returning by that train. He didn’t,
however, and Myron had a dull time of it.
The next afternoon, being Sunday, he and Joe visited Andrew
Merriman, and later they rescued Zephaniah from his box-stall and,
accompanied by that joyous companion, took a long walk into the
country. The afternoon was ideal, although too warm for brisk
walking. Andrew spied some butternut trees up a lane and they
prospected. But the nuts were still green, for no hard frosts had
visited them yet. The boys found a sunny spot nearby and stretched
themselves out on a bank of ferns and Zephaniah had a monstrous
adventure with a cricket and got tangled in a blackberry vine and fell
off a stone wall and, in short, spent the most glorious hour of his
young life.
 Andrew and Joe did most of the talking that afternoon. Myron was
in a rather gloomy frame of mind, although he couldn’t have found
any explanation for the fact. Andrew rallied him once on the score of
his silence, and Myron said he was tired. After that he really thought
he was. Joe was in high spirits. He had been pitted against a worthy
adversary yesterday and, during the time he had faced him, had had
a glorious time. Every one said that he had outplayed his opponent,
and Joe knew it. He regretted that Mr. Driscoll had seen fit to put
Garrison in his place in the last half, however, earnestly assuring
Andrew and Myron that if he had stayed in he would have had “that
guy Fraser eating out of my hand in the last quarter!” But a good
tussle always cheered Joe up wonderfully, and the effects of that
strenuous twenty minutes lasted him for several days: just as a fine
big vari-coloured lump under his left eye did!
When Myron returned to Sohmer at dusk he found a scrawled
note from Chas Cummins. “No one home!” he read. “Looked for you
on the train coming back, but couldn’t find you. What do you know
about us? Looks like Fortune favours the brave and all that sort of
thing, doesn’t it? Watch for developments tomorrow! Yours, C.C.”
Myron found the note somewhat cryptic. For a minute he thought
of going around to see Chas in the evening, but then he decided
that if Chas had wanted to see him he would have said so. As a
result, he stayed at home and did some much-needed studying.
Monday afternoon found a number of the regulars absent from
practice. The game on Saturday had been a strenuous one and
several of the players had earned a rest. Chas was on hand,
however, although not in togs, and the same was true of Jud Mellen.
Cantrell and Garrison and Cater were absent, and one or two others,
and the first squad had a sort of shot-to-pieces look. Dummy
practice started the proceedings, and, since much poor tackling had
been shown in the Musket Hill contest, the drill was a long one. It
seemed to Myron that every one had nerves today, from Coach
Driscoll down to the last and least important substitute. Manager
Farnsworth, pulling the rope that shot the canvas dummy across the
trolley, was short of speech and jerky of manner, Jud Mellen,
watching grimly from beside the freshly-spaded pit, frowned and
twisted his hands about in his uprolled sweater and made biting
comments, and even Billy Goode, normally sweet-tempered as a
cherub, looked and spoke as if some one had been casting
aspersions on Ireland! Only Chas, grinning like a catfish, appeared
unaffected by the general epidemic. Chas joked and jollied and got
himself thoroughly hated by all.
Back on the gridiron, Coach Driscoll called Myron from the bench
and fixed him with a calculating eye. Myron had visions of clearing
out his locker and retiring from football affairs. But what the coach
said was: “Cummins tells me he had you at full-back the other day.
Ever played there?”
“No, sir, not until Friday.”
“You’re a half, aren’t you? Well, we’ve got plenty of those, such as
they are. Think you could learn full-back? Ever done any punting?”
“Some, yes, sir.”
“Get a ball and show me.”
Over on the second gridiron, with a substitute back to catch or
chase, Myron swung his foot and dropped the ball and saw it go off
at a tangent, and heard the coach say: “Take your time, Foster;
you’ve got all day.” When the back had relayed the pigskin from the
first team gridiron and Myron had it again in his hands he decided to
try to forget that the coach was watching. The result was much
better, for the ball went straight toward the other goal and into the
waiting arms of the back. The punt wasn’t long, but it had been
true, and Mr. Driscoll nodded hopefully.
“Try it again,” he ordered, “and hold your leg straighter. Lock your
knee and keep it so.”
After the next attempt he called down the field. “Where did you
catch that, Morton?” he asked. The back turned and counted the
lines.
 “About the forty, sir,” he shouted.
“Not bad,” commented the coach. “We’re on the twenty-five here.
Try a low one now. And follow through with your foot. Don’t stop
when you strike the ball: keep your foot going right on up: there’s
plenty of room for it!”
Four more punts, varying in distance from a wretched twenty
yards to a glorious forty-five, followed, Myron seeking to profit by
the coach’s instructions. Then: “I guess that’s enough, Foster,” said
Mr. Driscoll. “You’ll stand a lot of practice, but you’ve got a good
swing and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could make a pretty fair
punter. I’ll give you a chance to show what you can do at full-back.
If you buckle down and try hard you’ll stand a chance of a place, for
we need another man there. Wish you had about ten more pounds
on you, though. Go around with Warren’s squad over there for a
while and watch how Houghton does it. I’ll see you again.”
Blanket-wrapped, for Billy Goode had sharp eyes for his charges
and the weather had turned colder overnight, Myron followed the
first team substitutes in their signal practice for a good twenty
minutes. Now and then he caught Chas Cummins’ eye as the squad
trotted by, but that youth’s expression was blank and innocent.
Finally the benches filled again, coach and captain and manager
compared notes like three gentleman burglars meditating a midnight
sortie, the trainer busied himself with blankets and the sparse
audience on the stand kicked their feet against the boards to put
warmth into them. Then Mr. Driscoll faced the benches.
“First and second squads,” he called. “First will kick off. Second,
take this goal. Who’s playing right half for the second? You, Robbins?
Well, we want you on the first. Morton, you go to the second. All
right now? What’s that, Grove? Left tackle? Oh, all right. Simkins! Go
in on the first: left tackle. All right, Hersey! Start it up!”
Myron wondered if the coach had forgotten his promise, for
Williams was playing full-back on the first squad and Houghton on
the second and he, Myron, was adorning the bench with some
twenty-odd other subs. Perhaps Mr. Driscoll had changed his mind,
thought Myron. At that moment Chas called to him and led him
down the side-line a ways. “Drop your blanket, old chap,” he said.
“Coach says I’m to pass you a few, though I’m blessed if I know how
he expects me to work in a pair of trousers that are two inches too
small for me! Get over there by the end of the stand. If you miss
them you won’t have to chase them so far. Now then, perhaps you
know that in the modern game of football, the full-back is called on
to take the snap-back straight from the centre on numerous
occasions. Well, I’m the gentlemanly centre for the nonce. That’s a
bully word, ‘nonce.’ Now we will suppose”—Chas’ voice diminished to
a murmur as he turned his back and placed the ball he had brought
on the sod before him. Myron spread his hands as he had seen
Houghton do, Chas cast a backward glance at him and swept the
ball toward him. By leaping two feet off the earth Myron was just
able to tip it with his fingers. Chas laughed delightedly.
“Gee, that’s just like Cantrell does it!” he exulted. “In fact, I
believe I got it two or three inches higher than he ever did. Guess I’ll
get Driscoll to let me play centre!”
Myron recovered the ball and tossed it back. “Maybe I’d better get
a soap-box or something to stand on,” he suggested.
“None of your lip, my lad! Watch your step, now!”
This time the ball came straight and shoulder high, and Myron
caught it, shifted it to the crook of his left arm and dived forward.
“Splendidly done, old chap!” applauded Chas. “Quite professional.
Any one can play full-back if he has a good centre like me to pass to
him, though. Now, then, here we go again!”
Chas kept it up until he was red in the face from stooping and
Myron was tired of it, and only stopped, as he said, because he had
heard a suspicious ripping sound in the neighbourhood of his waist.
“It’s all right,” he explained a trifle breathlessly, “to die for your
school, but no one wants to bust his trousers for it!”
 On the way back to the bench Myron said: “What did you mean in
your note about Fortune, Cummins? I didn’t get that. Sorry I was
out, by the way.”
“I meant that things were coming our way, old chap. Didn’t you
observe what a mess of things Steve Kearns made Saturday?”
“Not especially. I guess I wasn’t watching Kearns much.”
“And you grooming for his place! What do you know about you?
Well, poor old Steve balled up everything he tried. Every time he got
the ball he lost a yard. If they’d turned him around he’d have won
the game for us! Between you and me and the bucket there, Foster,
you’ve got the chance of a life-time to land on all four feet right
square behind the first team. All you’ve got to do is show horse-
sense, old chap, and be willing to learn. By the way, you got off a
couple of nice punts over there.”
“I don’t see, though, why I couldn’t have had a show at half,” said
Myron dubiously. “I don’t know enough about playing full-back,
Cummins. I may make an awful mess of it.”
“If you do,” was the grim reply, “I’ll knock the feathers off you. But
you won’t. You mustn’t. Doggone it, son, this is your big chance!
You’ve just got to make good! Remember there’s another year
coming!”
“I’ll try, of course, Cummins, but——”
“But me no buts! You keep in mind—There’s Driscoll calling you.
Go to it, old chap!”
“Go in on the second there at full-back, Foster. You know the
signals, don’t you? All right. Now show something. Warren, give your
full-back some work. Come on, first! Get into it! Let’s see some
playing!”
The whistle piped before Myron had settled into position, however,
and he went back to the bench with the rest and listened to criticism
and instruction and moistened his throat with water and half wished
that Chas Cummins had let him alone. But, back on the field
presently, with the ball arching away overhead, he forgot his stage-
fright and gripped his nose-guard with his teeth and piled into the
play. Warren, acting on instructions, gave him plenty of work, and he
didn’t do it so badly, all things considered. At least, he made three
good gains and he got away two punts, one of which surprised him.
On defence he showed up decidedly well, and Warren, an earnest
little shock-headed youth, gave him praise more than once. He had
some bad moments, as when, ball in hand for a toss to O’Curry
across the line, he found himself besieged by two rampant first team
forwards who had somehow broken through, and, unable to heave,
let himself be forced back many yards. Afterwards, he told himself
aggrievedly that Warren had no right to call on him for a forward-
pass, that he had never had much of it to do and couldn’t be
expected to be proficient. Besides, if your line let the whole opposing
team through on top of you, what could you do, anyway?
How Coach Driscoll had been impressed, Myron had no means of
knowing. The coach made no comments. Myron concluded that he
had failed to make good, and he dressed himself and went back to
Sohmer in a rather depressed state of mind. But after supper Chas
breezed in and relieved him. “Rotten? Nothing of the sort!” declared
Chas. “You were positively good, old chap! I’ll bet Driscoll is
scratching Houghton this minute and writing ‘Foster’ in his little red
book. If you don’t find yourself playing full-back again tomorrow I’ll
—I’ll eat my hat. And I need it, too, having none other. You didn’t
see our young friend, did you, Dobbins?”
“No,” answered Joe. “I wasn’t out.”
“Well, he’s the coming marvel. There’s no doubt about it. All he’s
got to do is learn the position.”
Joe and Myron laughed, the former the more merrily. “That
sounds sort of like a real job,” he commented.
“It isn’t, really,” answered Chas earnestly. “You see, Foster knows
all the moves but he doesn’t know where to fit them in. After all,
playing football is playing football, whether you’re in the line or back
of it, Dobbins. I’ll bet that, if I had to, I could step into any position
on the team tomorrow and get by with it. I don’t say I’d be a
wonder, but I’d do the trick fairly well. That may sound like
conceited guff, but it’s a fact, fellows. Foster’s played half, and a full-
back’s only a half with another name and a few different things to
do. He’ll learn in a week. I’ve got all my money on him to win. I’m
tickled, too. When Foster came to me and asked if I thought he
could play full-back——”
“When I what?” gasped Myron.
Chas winked and frowned. “When he sprung that on me, Dobbins,
I had my doubts. But I said the right thing. I said, ‘Go to it, my boy,
and good luck to you!’ I’m glad I did. We surely need more full-backs
than we’ve got, and I believe Foster’s going to be a good one. Well,
I’m off. By the way, Dobbins, you played a pretty game Saturday. I’ll
have to watch my step or you’ll have me on the bench. Good night!”
 CHAPTER XIX
DOCTOR LANE INTERVENES

Chas Cummins proved a good prophet. On the following day

Myron slipped into a niche in the first team, one of many hopeful,
hard-working youths known as “first team subs.” For a few days,
indeed, until after the Phillipsburg game, he was dazed by the
sudden leap from obscurity to conspicuity, from what he termed
neglect to what was extremely like solicitude. Not that his arrival at
the field for practice was the occasion for shouts of acclaim and a
fanfare of trumpets, for those at the helm did not show their interest
in promising candidates in any such manner, but at last he was quite
certain that coach and captain, managers and trainer, were aware of
his existence. There were times when he heartily wished that they
knew less of it. Some one was forever at his elbow, criticising,
explaining, exhorting. Coach Driscoll and Ned Garrison oversaw his
punting practice, Snow lugged him to remote corners of the playfield
to make him catch passes, Katie drilled him in signals, every one, it
seemed to Myron, was having a finger in his pie. And when he was
not being privately coached, as it were, he was legging it around the
gridiron with the substitutes or tumbling about the dummy pit with a
bundle of stuffed and dirty canvas clasped to his bosom. Those were
busy, confusing days. And yet no one outside the football “inner
ring” appeared to be aware of the fact that a new light had arisen in
the Parkinson firmament. Not unnaturally, perhaps, Myron looked for
signs of interest, even of awe, from his acquaintances, but he found
none. At table in dining hall Eldredge still glowered at him, Rogers
cringed and the pestiferous Tinkham poked sly fun. Only Joe and
Andrew and Chas, among his friends, showed him honour; and Joe
as a strewer of blossoms in his path was not an overwhelming
success. Joe seemed to think that his chum’s leap to incipient fame
was pleasing but not remarkable, while Myron was absolutely certain
that it was stupendous and unparalleled in the annals of preparatory
school football. When you are watched and guided as Myron was by
those in command you are likely to think that. He wondered whether
Joe was not just a little bit envious. Of course, Joe’s position was
quite as assured as his own, but Joe had not engaged the time and
attention and solicitude of the entire coaching force. He hoped Joe
wasn’t going to be disagreeable about it.
Phillipsburg came and went, defeated easily enough, 12 points to
3, and Warne High School followed a week later. High School always
put up a good fight against Parkinson, and she made no exception
this year. Coach Driscoll used many substitutes that afternoon and so
High School found her work easier. Myron had his baptism by fire in
the second period and lasted until the end of the third. He was taken
out then because High School had tied the score and it was
necessary to add another touchdown or field-goal to the home
team’s side of the ledger. So Kearns, who was still the most
dependable full-back in sight, took Myron’s place. Kearns gained and
lost in his usual way, and had no great part in the securing of the
third Parkinson score. Katie was mainly responsible for that, for he
sneaked away from the opponent’s thirty-two yards and landed the
ball on her eight, from whence it was carried over on the fourth
down by Brounker. That made the figures 20 to 14, and there they
remained for the rest of the contest.
Myron was huffy about being removed and every one who spoke
to him discovered the fact. Of course, he was huffy in a perfectly
gentlemanly way. He didn’t scold and he didn’t sneer, but he
indulged in irony and intimated that if football affairs continued to be
managed as they had been that afternoon he would refuse to be
held responsible if the season ended in defeat. Oddly enough, no
one appeared panic-stricken at the veiled threat. Joe grinned, until
Myron looked haughty and insulted, and then became grave and
spoke his mind. He had an annoying way of doing that, to Myron’s
way of thinking.
 “Kiddo,” said Joe, on this occasion, “if I was you I’d let Driscoll and
Mellen run things their own way. Maybe their way don’t always look
good to you, but you aren’t in possession of all the—the facts, so to
speak. When they put in Kearns today they had a reason, believe
me, Brother. You attend to your knitting and let theirs alone. If they
drop a stitch, it’s their funeral, not yours. You’ve got just about all
you can do to beat Kearns and Williams for full-back’s position——”
“I’m ahead of Williams right now,” said Myron with asperity.
“All right, kiddo; you stay there. Don’t get highfaluting and swell-
headed. Just as soon as you do you’ll quit playing your best and
Williams’ll slip past you. Take an old man’s advice, Brother.”
“I wish you’d stop that ‘Brother,’” said Myron pettishly. “I’m not
your brother. And I’m not swell-headed, either. And I don’t try to tell
Driscoll how to run the team. Only, when I know my own—my own
capabilities I naturally think something’s sort of funny when things
happen like what happened today!”
“Lots of funny things happen that we can’t account for in this
world,” remarked Joe philosophically as he bent over his book again.
“Best thing to do is let ’em happen.”
“Oh, rats!” muttered the other.
It was about this time that Myron began to have fallings-out with
Old Addie. Old Addie—he wasn’t phenomenally old, by any means,
but he seemed old in a faculty composed of young or youngish men
—was well-liked, and kindly and just to a fault. But he had views on
the importance of Greek and Latin not held by all members of his
classes. He believed that Herodotus was the greatest man who ever
lived and Horace the greatest poet, and held that an acquaintance
with the writings of these and other departed masters was an
essential part of every person’s education. Many disagreed with him.
Those who disagreed and kept the fact to themselves got on very
nicely. Those who were so misguided as to disagree and say so
earned his pitying contempt; although contempt is perhaps too
strong a word. Myron in a rash moment confessed that Latin didn’t
interest him. He had to think up on the spur of the moment some
plausible excuse for being illy prepared, and that excuse seemed
handy. The result was unfortunate. There was a meeting in Mr.
Addicks’ study in the evening, a meeting that lasted for an hour and
a quarter and that included readings from the Latin poets, essayists
and historians, sometimes in translation, more often in the original.
Myron, bored to tears, at last capitulated. He owned that Latin was
indeed a beautiful language, that Livy was a wonder, Cicero a peach
and Horace a corker. He didn’t use just those terms, but that’s a
detail. Mr. Addicks, suspicious of the sudden conversion, pledged him
to a reformation in the matter of study and freed him.
But the conversion was not real and Old Addie soon developed a
most embarrassing habit of calling on Myron in class. Myron called it
“picking on me.” Whatever it was called, it usually resulted
disastrously to Myron’s pretences of having studied in the manner
agreed on. Old Addie waxed sarcastic, Myron assumed a haughty,
contemptuous air. They became antagonistic and trouble brewed.
Myron didn’t have enough time to do justice to all his courses, he
declared to Joe, and since Latin was the least liked and the most
troublesome it was Latin that suffered. There is no doubt that two
and a half hours—often more—of football leaves a chap more
inclined for bed than study. Not infrequently Myron went to sleep
with his head on a book and had to be forcibly wrested from slumber
by Joe at ten o’clock or thereabouts. So matters stood at the end of
Myron’s first fortnight of what might be called intensive football
training. So, in fact, they continued to stand, with slight changes, to
the morning of the day on which Parkinson played Day and Robins
School.
The team was to travel away from home for that contest and
Myron was to go with it, not as a spectator, but as a useful member
of the force. He did not go, however. At chapel his name was among
a list of seven others recited by the Principal, and at eleven he was
admitted to the inner sanctum, behind the room in which he had, a
month and a half ago, held converse with Mr. Morgan. This time it
was “Jud” himself who received him. The Principal’s real name was
Judson, but at some earlier time in his incumbency of the office he
had been dubbed Jud, and in spite of the possible likelihood of
getting him confused with the captain of the football team, he was
still so called. Doctor Lane taught English, but his courses were
advanced and Myron had not reached them. In consequence he
knew very little of Jud; much less than Jud knew of him; and he felt
a certain amount of awe as he took the indicated chair at the left of
the big mahogany desk. The Doctor didn’t beat about the bush any
to speak of. He advanced at once to the matter in hand, which
appeared to be: Why wasn’t Myron keeping up in Latin?
Myron said he thought it must be because he didn’t have time
enough to study it. He said it was his firm belief that he was taking
too many courses. He thought that it would be better if he was
allowed to drop one course, preferably Latin, until the next term.
Doctor Lane smiled wanly and wanted to know if Myron was quite
sure that he was making the most of what time he had. Myron said
he thought he was. He didn’t say it very convincedly, however.
Doctor Lane inquired how much time each day was devoted to Latin.
Myron didn’t seem to have a very clear impression; perhaps, though,
an hour. Jud delved into the boy’s daily life and elicited the fact that
something like two and a half hours were devoted to learning to play
full-back and something less than three to learning his lessons.
Presented as Jud presented it, the fact didn’t look attractive even to
Myron. He felt dimly that something was wrong. He attempted to
better his statement by explaining that very often he studied
between hours—a little. Doctor Lane was not impressed. He twiddled
a card that appeared to hold a record of Myron’s scholastic career for
a moment and then pronounced a verdict.
“Foster, as I diagnose your case, you are too much interested in
football and not sufficiently in your studies. Also, football is claiming
too much of your time. Football is a splendid game and a beneficent
form of exercise, but it is not the—what I may call the chief industry
here, Foster. We try to do other things besides play football. Perhaps
you have lost sight of that fact.”
 Jud let that sink in for a moment and returned the card to its
place in an indexed cabinet, closing the drawer with a decisive bang
that made Myron jump.
“So,” continued the Principal drily, “I think it will be best if you
detach yourself from football interests for—for awhile, Foster.”
Silence ensued. Myron gulped. Then he asked in a small voice:
“How long, sir?”
“Oh, we won’t decide that now.” Jud’s voice and manner struck
Myron as being far too bright and flippant. “We’ll see how it works
out. I’ve known it to work very nicely in many cases. I shall expect
to hear better—much better—accounts of you from Mr. Addicks,
Foster. Good morning.”
And that is why Myron didn’t go bowling off to the station with the
rest of the team, and why Kearns and Houghton played the full-back
position that afternoon, and why, after a miserable six hours spent in
mooning about a deserted campus and a lonely room, Myron packed
a suit-case with a few of his yellow-hued shirts and similar
necessities and unobtrusively made his way to Maple Street in the
early gloom of the October evening.
 CHAPTER XX
ANDY TAKES A JOURNEY

At a few minutes past eight that evening Joe clattered hurriedly up

the stairs of the house in Mill Street and thumped imperatively at
Andrew’s door. Just why he thumped didn’t appear, since he threw
the door open without waiting for permission. Andrew looked up
inquiringly from his book in the yellow radius of light around the
table.
“Hello,” he greeted. “Slide under the bed and maybe they won’t
find you.”
“It’s that idiot, Myron,” announced Joe breathlessly, and sank into
a chair.
“What’s he done now?” asked Andrew interestedly.
“Bolted!”
“Bolted?”
“Beat it—vamoosed—lit out—gone!”
“Where? What for?”
“I don’t know where, but he’s gone. I suppose he’s headed home.
He’s in wrong at the Office over Latin, and this morning Doc Lane
told him to quit football. He was to have gone along with us to play
Day and Robins, you know, and was all keyed up about it. I didn’t
get many of the details: only saw him for about three minutes just
before we left: but he was talking then about firing himself and
hiring out to Kenwood for the rest of the year.”
Andrew frowned. “A sweet thought,” he murmured sarcastically.
 “Oh, he wouldn’t do it,” said Joe. “He likes to talk like that, but
he’s all right behind his mouth.”
“I hope so. Where—when did he go?”
“Search me. I know he was gone when I got back at six, or a little
before. I thought, of course, that he was around somewhere;
probably at Alumni. But he wasn’t at dinner and he didn’t show up
afterwards, and I remembered his line of talk this morning and got
to snooping around and found his suit-case gone and some of his
things; brushes and sponge and the like of those.”
“Maybe he got leave to go home over Sunday.”
“I thought of that and found out from Mr. Hoyt. Had to be careful
so he wouldn’t get suspicious, but I got away with it, I guess. He
hasn’t asked for leave; and wouldn’t have got it anyway, I guess. No,
he’s just plain beat it.”
Andrew whistled softly and expressively.
“That fixes him,” he said regretfully. “On top of probation——”
“That’s the point,” urged Joe. “He’s dished for fair if faculty gets
wind of it. That’s why I came. I can’t go. I asked Driscoll and he said
nothing doing. So it’s up to you, Andy.”
“Up to me? Go? Where?”
“Go after him and bring him back,” answered Joe. “I looked up
trains. He probably waited until after dark, because he wouldn’t have
risked being seen with a suit-case, and if he did he must have taken
the six-eighteen for New York. There’s no train for Port Foster out of
Philadelphia until seven-twelve tomorrow morning. He might stay in
New York overnight or go on to Philadelphia, so the best way’ll be to
go right through to Philadelphia and watch the Port Foster trains.”
Andrew stared amazedly. “Look here, Joe,” he said, “are you
suggesting that I go to Philadelphia after Myron?”
“Sure,” answered Joe impatiently. “What did you suppose? And
you’ll have to get a hustle on, too: it’s about eight-fifteen now and
your train goes at nine-five. I’d go in a minute, but I’m in training
and the rule’s strict, and if I got caught—fare thee well!”
To Joe’s surprise, Andrew began to laugh. “Well, you’re a wonder,
Joe,” he gasped. “Why, man alive, I can’t go traipsing all over the
United States like that! I’m beastly sorry for Myron, but——”
“Why can’t you?” demanded Joe, scowling. “Some one’s got to,
and that’s flat. If he’s caught away from school without permission
they’ll chuck him as sure as shooting. Why do you say you can’t go,
Andy?”
“Why—why, for one reason, I can’t afford it, you idiot! How much
do you think it’ll cost to go to Philadelphia and back? I’m no
millionaire! Why——”
“I thought of that.” Joe pulled a roll of bills from his trousers
pocket and flung it on the table. “There’s twenty-five, all I have right
now. It’s enough, I guess.”
Andrew stared at the money in surprise. “Well—but—look here,
I’ve got an engagement in the morning. And how do you know I can
get leave?”
“Take it! No one’ll know you’re away,” said Joe. “Gosh, we’ve got
to risk something!”
“We have? You mean I have, don’t you?”
“Oh, what’s the difference? Myron’s a friend, ain’t he, and we can’t
let him go and kill himself off like this without making a try, can we?
Besides, the team needs him bad. If he’d hung on a bit longer he’d
have been full-back and—and everything! I—I’d like to wring his silly
neck!”
Andrew smiled. Then he stared thoughtfully at the table. At last he
seized the roll of money, thrust it in his pocket and pushed back his
chair. “Guess you’re right, Joe,” he said. “What time did you say the
train goes?”
 “Nine-five.” Joe jerked out his watch. “You’ve got forty minutes.
Better pack a toothbrush and a night-shirt, kiddo.”
“Pack nothing,” replied Andrew. “A toothbrush and a comb will see
me through, and those go in my pocket. I want that brown book,
though, and some sheets of paper. Better have my fountain pen,
too. You’ll have to take a message to Wynant, 29 Williams, for me,
Joe. Better do it tonight. Tell him I’m called away and can’t be
around in the morning. I’ll see him when I get back. Now, what
about the dogs? Mind coming around in the morning and letting
them out and feeding them? Good! We’re off, then.”
Andrew turned out the light and they fumbled their way to the
door. Outside, Andrew gave the key to Joe. “Don’t forget the dogs,
Joe,” he reminded. “Now, then, tell me again about these trains. It’s
Philadelphia I’m going to, is it?”
Joe explained carefully as they hurried through the illy-lighted
streets toward the station. “Better get to Philadelphia by the first
train you can make, Andy. You can sleep on the way, some. The first
Sunday train for Port Foster leaves Philadelphia at twelve minutes
past seven. There isn’t another until ten-something. He may wait for
that. You’ll have to watch for him on the platform. For the love of
mud, Andy, don’t miss him!”
“I won’t!” answered the other grimly as they entered the station.
“Wait here a minute. I’m going to call up the Office.”
“The Office!” exclaimed Joe aghast. “What for?”
“To get permission.”
“But——”
“I know. I won’t. Here, you buy the ticket. Get it to Philadelphia
and return if you can. I’ll be right with you.”
Andrew was as good as his word. Joe viewed him anxiously. “Did
you get it?” he asked.
 Andrew nodded. “Yes. I told Mr. Hoyt I had to be away overnight
on important matters. He hemmed a bit at first, but finally came
around. So that’s all right. I feel rather better for having faculty’s
blessing, Joe.” Ten minutes later the long train rolled in and Andrew
climbed aboard. He was going into a day coach, but Joe pulled him
back and hurried him down the platform, past a hundred lighted
windows and hustled him into a parlour-car. “Might as well be as
comfortable as you can,” he explained. “You can get a pretty fair nap
in one of those chairs if you don’t mind waking up with a broken
neck! Good-bye and good luck, Andy!”
“Good-bye. See you tomorrow afternoon or evening. Don’t forget
Tess and the puppies!”
Then the train pulled out and Joe heaved a sigh of relief and made
his way back to the campus and Williams Hall and the indignant Mr.
Wynant.
About the same time Coach Driscoll and Captain Mellen were
talking things over in the former’s lodgings. Parkinson had played
smooth, hard football that afternoon, bringing encouragement to
both, and their countenances still reflected satisfaction. “Looks as
though we had struck our gait at last, Cap,” said Mr. Driscoll, puffing
comfortably at his pipe.
“It does look so,” agreed Jud. “It’s time, too, with only two more
games before Kenwood.”
“Well, I’d rather see a team come slowly and not reach the peak
too early in the season. I’m more afraid of slumps than the smallpox,
Mellen. Remember year before last’s experience?”
Jud nodded. “If we can hold it where it is, Coach, we’ll be all right,
I guess. Some of the fellows certainly played themselves proud
today: Keith and Meldrum and Norris——”
“And Mellen,” suggested Mr. Driscoll, smiling through the smoke.
“I guess I didn’t do so badly,” Jud allowed. “But that Dobbins was
the corker, when you come right down to brass tacks, don’t you
think so?”
“Dobbins played as remarkable a game as I’ve seen in a long, long
time,” was the reply. “The way he opened holes in the D. and R. line
was pretty. They weren’t holes, either, they were—were nice, broad
boulevards! A stick of dynamite wouldn’t have made more of a mess
of their centre!”
“And he’s all there on defence, too,” said Jud. “Steady as a
concrete wall. He and Keith work like twins.”
“Pretty,” agreed Mr. Driscoll. “I guess there’s no question as to
who’ll play right guard against Kenwood. I wish, though, I knew who
was going to play full-back.” Mr. Driscoll frowned. “You’re sure
Foster’s out of it?”
“Fairly. I only know what you know. I haven’t seen him. I’m not
surprised, though. He was beginning to show a good deal of side
and you know yourself that when a fellow gets his head swelled he
comes a cropper one way or another.”
“I know. Still, we mustn’t be too hard on the boy, for we’ve paid
him a good deal of attention and that’s likely to turn a chap’s head
unless it’s screwed on pretty tightly. And we’ve worked him hard,
too. Maybe he hasn’t had time to do enough studying.”
“Well, he’s out of it, anyway. It’s hard luck, for I thought he was
coming along finely. I guess it will have to be Kearns, after all.”
The coach nodded. “I haven’t lost hope of Kearns yet, Cap. He’s
got it in him to play good football. I was wondering, though, if we
could spare Brounker for the position. He’s a good half, but we may
not need him there, and perhaps with some coaching between now
and three weeks from now he’d be better than Kearns.”
“I suppose there’s a chance of Foster getting clear before the
Kenwood game,” said Jud doubtfully, “but he wouldn’t be much use
to us.”
“Mighty little,” replied the coach. “Of course, if he was off only a
week it would be different. In that case we could take him back and
have him handy in case Kearns went bad. But I don’t know——”
“I guess I’d better see him in the morning and find out what the
prospects are. If he will saw wood and get rid of his conditions, or
whatever his trouble is, by a week from Monday——”
“Yes, tell him that. Brow-beat him a bit. Get him on his mettle. I’ll
see him, if you think it would be better.”
“I’ll take a fall out of him first,” said Jud. “By the way, he and
Dobbins room together. It might be a good scheme to get Dobbins
after him. I guess they’re pretty close from what I hear, and maybe
he’d listen to Dobbins when he wouldn’t to me. Well, anyway, I think
we can lick Kenwood this year even without a full-back,” he ended.
Mr. Driscoll smiled and shook his head. “Let’s not be too sure,
Mellen,” he said. “Wait until the Sunday papers come. Six to six
sounds pretty good for Phillipsburg, but we don’t know yet how
many of her subs Kenwood used. That coach of hers is a foxy chap,
and it may be that he was satisfied to get away with a tie and leave
us guessing. Perhaps he thought we had scouts over there today,
looking them over.”
“I sort of wish we had had,” said Jud. “Oh, I know your idea on
the subject, Coach, and I’m not saying you aren’t right, but, just the
same, it’s a handicap. Kenwood sends fellows to watch our playing
and gets lots of useful information, I’ll bet, and we have to depend
on what the papers tell us. And most of that guff is written by
fellows friendly to Kenwood. If the Kenwood coach wants the news
to go out that the team is rotten, it goes out, and we have to
swallow it. I’d give a hundred dollars to see her play Montrose next
Saturday!”
“That’s high pay for acting the spy,” replied the coach gravely.
“See here, Jud Mellen, you’re a fair and square, decent sort, from all
I’ve seen of you, and I’ve known you for three years. You wouldn’t
pick a pocket or lie, and I’ve never yet seen you doing any dirty
work in a game. Then just how would you explain it to your
conscience if you went over to Kenwood next Saturday with the idea
of seeing how much information you could get hold of regarding
Kenwood’s plays and signals and so on?”
“But, gosh ding it, Mr. Driscoll, I wouldn’t wear a false moustache
and all that! I wouldn’t sneak in, I’d go openly. There’s no reason
why I shouldn’t see Kenwood play a game of football just because I
happen to play with Parkinson!”
“Not if just being entertained was what you were there for, Cap,”
answered the other. “But it wouldn’t be. You’d be a spy, and you
know it, old son. That’s what I object to. When the time comes that
it is an understood and mutually agreed on thing that members of
one football team are welcome to see another team play, why, then I
won’t make a yip. But you know how we love to get word here from
the gate that a Kenwood scout has gone in! We cut out new plays
and try to look worse than we are.”
“You mean we would if you’d let us,” laughed Jud.
“You do it, anyhow,” said the coach, smiling. “I’ve watched you too
often. The last time we had visitors I asked Cater why he didn’t use
a certain play in front of the other fellow’s goal and get a score and
he looked innocent and said he’d forgot it. No, we’ll get along
without that sort of stuff, Mellen, while I’m here. I don’t like it a bit.”
“Well, I said you were right,” Jud laughed. “I just had to have my
little kick. Hello, nearly ten! I must leg it. I’ll see Foster in the
morning; Dobbins, too; and let you know what I learn. Good night,
Coach.”
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