The subject of this book is one of the most central and timely in Public Administration - how to make sense of critical theory, and (especially) how to assess its implications for everyday practice. Charles Frederick Abel and Arthur Sementelli argue that Evolutionary Critical Theory - a synergistic employment of the methodologies of traditional social science, institutionalism, and hermeneutics - provides fresh insights into the core issues of Public Administration theory and practice. While some may argue that public administration theory is an oxymoron, this ground-breaking volume explodes that notion and argues that Evolutionary Critical Theory is an especially helpful and powerful tool for administrative scholars and practitioners in their quest to realize good government.

Selected Contents: 1. Precis2. Public Administration as Discipline and the Estrangement of Theory3. Ontology and Theory in Public Administration4. Critical Theory and Public Administration5. Evolutionary Critical Theory6. Evolutionary Critical Theory, Power, and Emancipation7. Evolutionary Critical Theory and the "Good Society"8. Evolutionary Critical Theory and Public Administration

This is the first major theoretical advance in studies of justice since Walzer. Public Administration has been almost exclusively a field for professionals, its academic component concerned with such empirical matters as training practitioners, evaluating models, and assembling a body of evidence within which to test assumptions. The growth of theoretical examinations of the field itself has been a relatively recent development. ""Justice and Public Administration"" is an ambitious effort to grapple with justice as a theoretical component of the practice of public administration, yet with sufficient theoretical power to be meaningful in philosophy, political studies, and sociology. The time is ripe for such an effort, as the questions that gather under the labels of modernity, the postmodern, and critical theory now transcend a single discipline. The work of John Rawls on justice in public life has had a generation of influence on scholarship, and this work seems to have a high degree of likelihood of making meaningful statements on these questions in the field.