Conclusion

In commenting upon the chapters gathered together in this volume I have had certain guidelines in mind. To the best of my ability, I have tried to consider the significance of the chapters on their own terms. I have tried to do so without reference to such commentary as may have occurred since they were first presented. I have tried to confine my observations to the relationship of the chapters in this volume to the most meaningful issues for the present dialogue and near future of the field. For the purposes of this reflection, the new public administration of Minnowbrook I and the papers gathered in the companion volume to the present one have served as background, but I have tried to restrain the temptation for detailed comparison. I hasten to avow that this approach—and the inescapable frailties of personal and perhaps idiosyncratic intellectual predilections and perceptions—has undoubtedly caused me to neglect some content of this volume which might strike others as more significant than that which I do discuss. I offer only a corollary to “Miles’ Law”:⁽¹⁾ what you see depends on where you stand on the path and what you have seen on other paths.

A quarter of a century ago, in commenting upon Minnow-brook I, I thought the main themes were relevance, antipositivism, ethics, innovation, concern for clients, antibureaucratic philosophy, social equity, and repression.⁽²⁾ With the exception, perhaps, of “repression” (which mainly surfaces in this volume only in the sense of the repressiveness of technicism), this could serve as a reasonable sketch of important themes of the chapters in this volume. The present discussion is organized under not very different headings. After a brief discussion of themes which seem central, I attempt a summary of some general impressions of the Minnowbrook perspective as it has evolved. Throughout, I try to indicate where I believe additional investigation and reflection might well serve the field and its future.     

The rationalization of democracy: Liberal,elitist, and corporatist conceptions of democracy∗

Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

On Bureaucratic Discourse: A Radical Feminist Analysis of the Role of Public Administration in Late Capitalism

Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . . . or the End of the Social and Other Essays, trans, by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 123 pp.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 159 pp.

Omar Cabezas, Fire from the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista, translated by Kathleen Weaver with a foreword by Carlos Fuentes and an afterword by Walter LaFeber (Crown Publishers, Inc.: New York, 1985), pp. 233.     

Ideas and Policy Change

Peter Hall's 1993 article came at the same time as a parallel body of literature was developing, some building explicitly, some only implicitly, on similar ideas. I review some literature on policy communities, ideas, and the nature of policy change before exploring the statistical distribution of budget changes at three levels of aggregation. The similarity of these results suggests that a single process may be at work rather than different processes for first‐, second‐, and third‐order change, as Hall's original formulation has it. As Hall suggests, these processes typically generate only marginal adjustments but occasionally create fundamental change. The degree of discredit to the status quo may be an important unexplored variable in explaining the ability of policy reformers to enact marginal, substantial, or fundamental policy changes. In sum, this article shows the similarities and mutual value of Hall's approach with others that would appear to be starkly contrasting.