勿令车轮倒转:对公共行政身份的探寻

Don’t reinvent the wheel:the search for an identity for public administration

许多年来,公共行政都经历着身份危机。本文认为,事实上,公共行政之身份以一种建构完善的知识主体的碎片形态存在着,它为人所遗忘并常常被忽视。我们主张重新组合这些碎片,并将它们以一种能够明确公共行政身份的逻辑进行排列。我们的方法是将公共行政视为一门关注结果的社会科学,而非一个依赖于普遍观点的专业。我们认为,公共行政的三大支柱,即政治、法律和管理之间是一个三元关系。而它们之间的相互联系使其在面对某些问题时形成了诸多格局配置与临时安排。在特定情况下,某一支柱的重要性可能超过其他两个。但这种变动不应当被看成公共行政的身份危机。相反,为了明确导致三者间重要程度变化的条件和环境,本文提出了一个考察公共行政身份的研究议程,通过纵向的历史研究,各种格局配置可能于其中得以确认。知识积累得越多,我们越能更好地建构一条合理的公共行政研究之路,并使它摆脱身份危机的呼号。

For many years,public administration has suffered from an identity crisis.This article argues that public administration’s identity actually exists in the form of abandoned and often neglected fragments of well-established knowledge.We advocate reassembling these fragments and arranging them using a logic that will crystallize an identity for public administration.Our approach is based on viewing public administration as a social science of results,not a profession relying on a generic viewpoint.We maintain that there is a trialectic system of relationships among three pillars of public administration:the political,the legal and the managerial.The interrelationships between these pillars generate configurations,temporary arrangements geared toward certain issues.At any given time,one pillar may be emphasized over the other two.Such variations should not be viewed as a crisis of identity.Rather,this article suggests a research agenda for examining the identity of the field through longitudinal historical studies in which configurations may be identified in order to determine the conditions and circumstances that led to the variations in emphasis among the pillars.The more knowledge that is accumulated,the better we will be able to develop a reasonable approach for public administration and free it from oft-repeated cries of identity crisis.