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Public Administration Theory Primer, 3rd Edition
Sample Comprehensive Exam or Discussion Questions
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Possibilities of Theory
1. Discuss what makes a theory useful. What limitations exist in theories?
2. Public administration is a normative field. If public administration scholars must provide reliable
theory with the hope that public officials will use it to make democratic government as effective
as possible, what needs to be done in order for this to happen? What do public administration
scholars need to provide, and what are the “best” features of a democratic government? In
other words, what is your preferred normative state of public administration and why?
Chapter 2. Theories of Political Control of Bureaucracy
1. Theories of bureaucratic control are fundamentally Madisonian, in that they are borne from a
concern that bureaucracy can abuse individual liberty. Provide a review of this concern and the
mechanisms and structures available to mitigate it. Does the modern state, and a civil service
based on management, expertise, and professionalism eliminate our worry about a bureaucracy
that is—or could be—out of control?
2. How well do government agencies respond to citizens? How do government agencies respond
to citizens? Is it possible to achieve democratic ideals via a non-elected civil service?
3. The initial premise behind agency theory, or principal-agency theory, was that government
agencies are either out of control or at least very difficult to control. Review this premise, the
assumptions of agency theory, and how well agencies respond to political control.
4. The “politics-administration dichotomy,” as proposed by Woodrow Wilson, was widely accepted
until the middle of the twentieth century. Describe Wilson’s argument, and the challenges to it
made by Waldo and Simon.
5. Client responsiveness theory includes an important premise about street-level bureaucrats: that
they have at least some discretion in how they provide their services. What are the advantages
of this discretion? Are there concerns about how it might be used?
Chapter 3. Theories of Bureaucratic Politics
1. Review the tension between administrative efficiency and democratic values. Discuss Waldo’s
critique of how the founders of public administration resolved that tension. Is efficiency truly
the primary objective of bureaucracy?
2. Review and critique “Model III”, first proposed by Graham Allison in his book Essence of
Decision. How has it influenced subsequent development of theory in bureaucratic politics?
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3. If bureaucrats—Wilson’s “operators”—have discretion in how they provide their services, what
determines (or at least conditions) their day to day behavior? What do theories of organization
and re-organization say about improving government outputs and outcomes?
4. The theory of representative bureaucracy directly attempts to reconcile the values of democracy
with the hierarchical and authoritarian nature of bureaucracy. Review the theory and whether
its normative conclusions successfully resolve the contradiction.
Chapter 4. Public Institutional Theory
1. Weberian theory of bureaucracy has been largely replaced by work that began in the 1960s,
culminating in 1989, with Wilson’s Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They
Do It and March and Olsen’s Rediscovering Institutions. Review the advances in the field as a
result, and evaluate the claim that “today we are all institutionalists”.
2. Discuss the flexibility in the application of institutionalism. In terms of providing a coherent
understanding of public administration, can it be considered a strength or a weakness?
3. Review how institutionalism can be used comparatively to understand government outputs and
outcomes, as well as the implications of fragmented versus consolidated systems.
4. Discuss how the garbage can model may be applied to the understanding of the diffusion of
innovation.
Chapter 5. Theories of Public Management
1. Review the status of theory on networked bureaucracy. Given the rise of contracting and
privatization, what will be the key components of theories in this area? Will theories of
networked bureaucracy supplant current models based on political control?
2. Evaluate the development of, and prospect for, leadership as a theoretical area. Will it be able
to provide a coherent understanding of public administration?
3. Review the debate over Gulick’s principles of management. What are those principles, how
have they been critiqued? What does recent empirical work reveal about Simon’s critique of
Gulick?
4. After being absent from the field of public administration, management theory is back. In many
ways, this resurgence has led to New Public Management. Discuss the rise of NPM, and review
the empirical critiques of it.
5. While the field of public administration was not actively studying management, “middle-range”
theories in other fields that help inform management theory were being developed. Evaluate
how group, role, and communication theory have contributed to the development of
management theory in public administration.
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Chapter 6. Postmodern Theory
1. Is a postpositivist framework, such as postmodern public administration theory, useful when the
emphasis among many of the social sciences is on empirical, data-driven research, with null
hypothesis significance testing?
2. How do the epistemological assumptions of behavioral social science differ from those of
postmodern public administration theory?
3. Can postmodern public administration theory, particularly critical theory, inform other
frameworks in public administration, such as decision theory or public management theory? If
so, how?
4. What null hypotheses can be generated from postmodern dialect and the notion of
hyperreality?
5. By definition, grounded theory is the opposite of deductive research based on null hypothesis
significance testing. What types of organizational and bureaucratic behaviors are conducive to a
grounded theory methodological approach?
Chapter 7. Decision Theory
1. Some argue that the tenets of bounded rationality as originally discussed by Herbert Simon are
no longer useful. What are the shortcomings of bounded rationality? Does recent work in
behavioral economics improve our ability to build a theoretical framework on decision making?
2. Apply Kahneman’s “system 1” and “system 2” to organizational decision making. Under what
conditions, and in what areas will public administrators be more likely to adopt system 1 and
system 2?
3. Is a predictive theory of decision making possible? Discuss the evolution of decision making
theory in your answer.
4. Is Ariely’s “predictably irrational” framework useful to the study of public administrative
behavior? Is such a theory amenable to null hypothesis significance testing?
Chapter 8. Rational Choice Theory and Irrational Behavior
1. Discuss the evolution of the individual bureaucrat from a self-interested utility maximizer to a
boundedly rational decision maker. Be sure to reference key scholars who have influenced this
evolution.
2. How does trust in leadership affect bureaucratic behavior? What are the implications for the
individual and the organization?
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3. Does the “Tiebout hypothesis” for the delivery of public goods withstand empirical scrutiny? If
not, what does this tell us about theories of human behavior based on neoclassical utility
maximization?
4. Ostrom’s work on common pool resources suggests that administrative involvement by the
state in the delivery of public goods is not always desirable or necessary. What are the
limitations to Ostrom’s work on common pool resources (CPRs)?
5. Empirical and theoretical advances from behavioral economics and social psychology cast
serious doubt on the neoclassical economic model of human behavior; however, to what extent
is it possible to test whether individual bureaucrat behavior conforms to this new and emerging
framework?
Chapter 9. Theories of Governance
1. What is the “hollow state,” and how does it contrast with the Weberian model bureaucracy?
2. What is “hybridity,” and why is it more likely to be observed at local levels of government?
3. Is the theory of global governance testable? If so, what hypothesis or hypotheses are amenable
to empirical observation?
4. Global governance theory is by definition “interjurisdictional,” including state and non-state
actors, as well as complex networks of actors. Without institutional boundaries, isn’t such a
theory ultimately tautological? Discuss why or why not.
5. To what extent should non-state actors be involved in the delivery of public goods, particularly
those related to national defense or security? The evidence from public administration is mixed,
yet governments seem to be moving in the direction of more private sector involvement. Why
the mismatch between theory and reality, and what challenges does this present?
6. Collaborative governance theory is an emerging field in public administration. It is clear from a
number of international crises (humanitarian and economic) that collaboration is simply not
feasible due to entrenched interests. What are the limits to collaborative governance theory?
Chapter 10. Conclusion: A Bright Future for Theory?
1. What are the dimensions of good theory? Should theories of bureaucratic behavior be judged
by their predictive capacity, given that the unit of analysis is the individual human being?
2. The emerging field of governance theory is perhaps the most comprehensive theoretical
framework in public administration. Yet, the interjurisdictional element of it, and complex
network analysis that is required, potentially renders it a descriptive framework at best. Is this
acceptable?
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3. Is a unifying theory of public administration possible? Should public administration be a subfield
of political science, as is often the case in academic departments? Or, have theoretical
developments advanced enough for it to stand alone?
4. Postmodern theory, theories of public management, and now governance theory, have
dominated public administration for decades. Yet, all three frameworks lack parsimony and
predictive capacity. As such, is it accurate to consider public administration a legitimate
subfield? Or, is public administration simply borrowing dominant theoretic perspectives from
psychology, economics, and political science, and applying them to organizations and
bureaucrats?
5. To what extent is it necessary for public administration theory, particularly decision theory and
rational choice theory (or irrational choice theory), to become more interdisciplinary? How far
do you predict public administration will move in this direction over the next 20-30 years?
6. Experimental design has rarely been applied to public administration, yet it is the primary
method of inquiry utilized by psychologists and political scientists studying individual human
behavior. Under what conditions can this methodology be applied to the study of bureaucratic
behavior?
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