摘 要: | Democratic Politics, the Rational Bureaucracy and Public Administration Abstract: Hundred years of western public administration have witnessed a tension between rational bureaucracy and democracy that has always been a major issue which has attracted much attention. Bureaucracy, widely regarded as "a wolf in sheep skin", has been an enemy of democratic governance rather than a friend. Therefore, how to coordinate the tension between rational bureaucracy and democracy becomes a core problem in the study of public administration. This paper argues that the dual value appeal of modern society to democracy and science has influenced on the theory and practice of the western public administration. The tradition of constitutional democracy makes public administration descend to the maid of constitutional values and democracy values, while rational bureaucracy often leads more and more to the an irrational way of life in modern world, and hence the multiple tensions and conflicts between "formal rationality" and "substantive irrationality". Nowadays, in China, to meet the requirements of Public Administration from modern administrative state and even the world civilization, it is necessary to break through such a traditional managerialism mode that zeroes unilaterally in on efficiency and economy, and highlight the normative values and ideas on which public administration based.
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