The Disarticulation of the Administrative State (and Public Administration)

The author takes the opportunity to review two compelling contributions to the field of Public Administration (PA) to expose how either would not ostensibly identify with the scholarly field of PA itself. Both of the works advance their theses through the integration of disciplines, though less than a self-identifying "public administration" scholar might like. Nonetheless, they do so better than PA scholarship has done beyond its own limited readership. The author argues that pathologies of managerial and political silos that largely ignore "rule of law" as a pillar of the administrative state make Public Administration-as an academic enterprise-largely silent (or incapable) in conversations about critical issues of governmental legitimacy and crisis.