Abstracts
Abstract
There is a long-standing discussion, often framed in terms of a crisis, in the literature about the identity of public administration. One of the most salient roots of this alleged crisis is the ideological and political questioning of the role of public administration. We argue in this paper that a way of strengthening the identity of public administration is to reconnect to the fundamental question of its purpose. In order to answer this question, we explore the concept of purpose and relate it to the philosophical and political theoretical discussions about the purpose of the state. We find two kinds of purposes, which we term the instrumentalistic and the intrinsic. If public administration is assigned an intrumentalistic purpose, it is assessed as valuable if the consequences are valuable. If it is assigned an intrinsic purpose, it is assessed as valuable in itself. We conclude that the instrumentalistic purpose of public administration dominates contemporary discourse, and that this contributes to the identity crisis. The article ends with a suggestion that the intrinsic purpose of public administration be given a more salient position in the discussion.
Keywords:
- Public administration,
- identity,
- purpose,
- intrinsic,
- instrumentalistic
Résumé
La crise d’identité de l’administration publique est, depuis longtemps, débattue dans la littérature académique. L'une des principales sources de cette prétendue crise est un questionnement idéologique et politique sur le rôle de l'administration publique. Dans cet article, nous soutenons qu'une façon de renforcer l'identité de l'administration publique est de revenir à la question fondamentale de son objectif. Afin de répondre à cette question, nous explorons le concept de fins (purpose) et le relions aux discussions théoriques philosophiques et politiques sur le but de l'État. Nous avançons deux types de fins que nous appelons instrumentaliste et intrinsèque, le premier portant sur les effets de l’administration publique et le second sur sa nature propre. Nous concluons que le but instrumentaliste domine le discours contemporain et que cela contribue à entretenir la crise d’identité de l’administration publique. L’article se termine en suggérant qu’une plus grande attention portée à ses fins intrinsèques contribuerait à nuancer la discussion.
Mots-clés :
- Administration publique,
- identité,
- intention,
- intrinsèque,
- instrumentaliste
Appendices
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