Reasoned Administration and Democratic Legitimacy: How Administrative Law Supports Democratic Government explores the fundamental bases for the legitimacy of the modern administrative state. While some have argued that modern administrative states are a threat to liberty and at war with democratic governance, Jerry L. Mashaw demonstrates that in fact reasoned administration is more respectful of rights and equal citizenship and truer to democratic values than lawmaking by either courts or legislatures. His account features the law's demand for reason giving and reasonableness as the crucial criterion for the legality of administrative action. In an argument combining history, sociology, political theory and law, this book demonstrates how administrative law's demand for reasoned administration structures administrative decision-making, empowers actors within and outside the government, and supports a complex vision of democratic self-rule.

The discipline of public administration draws predominantly from political and organizational theory, but also from other social and behavioral sciences, philosophy, and even theology. This diversity results in conflicting prescriptions for the "proper" administrative role. So, how are those new to public administration to know which ideas are "legitimate"? Rather than accepting conventional arguments for administrative legitimacy through delegated constitutional authority or expertise, Logics of Legitimacy: Three Traditions of Public Administration Praxis does not assume that any one approach to professionalism is accepted by all scholars, practitioners, citizens, or elected representatives. Instead, it offers a framework for public administration theory and practice that fully includes the citizen as a political actor alongside elected representatives and administrators. This framework: Considers both direct and representative forms of democracy Examines concepts from both political and organizational theory, addressing many of the key questions in public administration Examines past and present approaches to administration Presents a conceptual lens for understanding public administration theory and explaining different administrative roles and practices The framework for public administration theory and practice is presented in three traditions of main prescriptions for practice: Constitutional (the bureaucrat), Discretionary (the entrepreneur), and Collaborative (the steward). This book is appropriate for use in graduate-level courses that explore the philosophical, historical, and intellectual foundations of public administration. Upon qualified course adoption, instructors will gain access to a course outline and corresponding lecture slides.

Explains how administrative government maintains mutual respect among citizens, legitimates administrative government under law, and supports a realistic vision of democracy.

One of the most striking developments in American history has been the steady growth in the administrative process, to the point that the regulatory agencies of the federal government now affect the lives of more citizens more pervasively than the courts and possibly the Congress. In virtually every relevant respect, the administrative process has become a fourth branch of government, comparable in the scope of its authority and the impact of its decision making to the three more familiar constitutional branches. This book identifies and examines the causes of the enduring sense of crisis associated with the administrative process. This book argues a theory of legitimacy for the administrative process must be created. The author seeks to develop such a theory from the quality of administrative justice, taking as a premise the conviction that the capacity of government to devise fair procedures for the discharge of its decision-making responsibilities is the essence of democratic practice.

Based on in-depth studies of the relationship between expertise and democracy in Europe, this book presents a new approach to how the un-elected can be made safe for democracy. It addresses the challenge of reconciling modern governments’ need for knowledge with the demand for democratic legitimacy. Knowledge-based decision-making is indispensable to modern democracies. This book establishes a public reason model of legitimacy and clarifies the conditions under which unelected bodies can be deemed legitimate as they are called upon to handle pandemics, financial crises, climate change and migration flows. Expert bodies are seeking neither re-election nor popularity, they can speak truth to power as well as to the citizenry at large. They are unelected, yet they wield power. How could they possibly be legitimate? This book is of key interest to scholars and students of democracy, governance, and more broadly to political and administrative science as well as the Science Technology Studies (STS).

In this "postmodern, end-of-the-century" moment, the question of what role public administration can legitimately play in a democratic society has deepened and taken on increased urgency. At the same time the movement toward global marketization has gained enormous momentum, traditional prejudices and racial and ethnic violence have appeared with a renewed virulence, presenting unprecedented challenges to democratic governments. Legitimacy in Public Administration reveals how the issue of administrative legitimacy is directly implicated, indeed central, to this broader issue. It argues that legitimacy hinges at the generic level on the question of alterityùhow to regard and relate to "different others." This book reviews the history of the legitimacy issue in the literature of American public administration with the purpose of demonstrating that this discourse has been distorted by an underlying and undisclosed commitment to an elitist "Man of Reason" model of the public administratorÆs role. Current attempts to reformulate administration to meet the challenge of new conditions will fail, the author argues, because they have not escaped the grip of this implicit distortion. Legitimacy in Public Administration includes a challenging concluding chapter that uses insights from gender theory and demonstrates the connection between the legitimacy question and the critical problem of alterity. The author also offers a new way to fundamentally reframe the legitimacy question, so as not only to help the field of public administration resolve it, but to show how this resolution can create a new understanding of the problem of racial and ethnic prejudice.

The discipline of public administration draws predominantly from political and organizational theory, but also from other social and behavioral sciences, philosophy, and even theology. This diversity results in conflicting prescriptions for the "proper" administrative role. So, how are those new to public administration to know which ideas are "legitimate"? Rather than accepting conventional arguments for administrative legitimacy through delegated constitutional authority or expertise, Logics of Legitimacy: Three Traditions of Public Administration Praxis does not assume that any one approach to professionalism is accepted by all scholars, practitioners, citizens, or elected representatives. Instead, it offers a framework for public administration theory and practice that fully includes the citizen as a political actor alongside elected representatives and administrators. This framework: Considers both direct and representative forms of democracy Examines concepts from both political and organizational theory, addressing many of the key questions in public administration Examines past and present approaches to administration Presents a conceptual lens for understanding public administration theory and explaining different administrative roles and practices The framework for public administration theory and practice is presented in three traditions of main prescriptions for practice: Constitutional (the bureaucrat), Discretionary (the entrepreneur), and Collaborative (the steward). This book is appropriate for use in graduate-level courses that explore the philosophical, historical, and intellectual foundations of public administration. Upon qualified course adoption, instructors will gain access to a course outline and corresponding lecture slides.