Public Administration as Pragmatic, Democratic, and Objective

In the foregoing essay, Patricia M. Shields argues that public administration and administrators should support a much greater incorporation of classical pragmatism than has been the case to date. This paper supports that conclusion by focusing on classical pragmatism's central benefit to public administration: its ability to provide the field with a claim to objectivity that it badly needs, but which Shields barely mentions. It shows how objectivity is closely connected to a pragmatic conception of democracy, and how this conception of democracy is diametrically opposed to one built on a fact/value (or administration/politics) dichotomy.