Looking for Postmodern Public Administration Th eory 153
In addition, a feminist perspective on the administrative state would encour-
age theory to come to terms with depersonalized power. Th e claim to adminis-
trative discretion is the claim to power on the basis of technical, managerial, and
moral expertise. Th e discretionary judgments of administrators are said to be
justifi able because they make decisions on the basis of the more objective knowl-
edge, clearer vision, higher principles, or deeper commitment to wrestling with
the tough questions of public life than do other citizens. Th is claim to power is
asserted on the basis that the arena in which it is exercised is distinctive because
it is public. But as we have seen, a discrete public sector maintains its boundaries
(therefore its exceptionalism) at the expense of women. A feminist interpreta-
tion of administrative discretion and of the power inherent in it must therefore
begin by calling into question the accepted model of discretionary judgment.
(Stivers 2002, 141–142)Many other dialectics appear in the postmodern perspective—image and real-
ity, black and white, colonial and postcolonial, local and global, and so forth. Of
these, the feminist perspective is probably the most developed.
It is worth noting a contradictory strand of feminist reasoning that has re-
cently developed in the public management literature. Like Stivers and other
feminist scholars, this research stream acknowledges the culturally masculine
values embedded in organizations. However, it departs from traditional femi-
nist approaches by emphasizing the aspects of bureaucracy that can empower
rather than oppress women in public-sector organizations. From this perspec-
tive, organizational rules are viewed as potential levelers of the organizational
playing fi eld, tools of legitimacy for women who hold positions of power, and
protectors of support staff autonomy (mostly women), whom managerial
discretion could render servile (DeHart-Davis 2009). Accordingly, organiza-
tions with fewer rules and more administrative discretion—particularly within
male-dominated hierarchies—are seen as potentially debilitating to the experi-
ences of organizational women, particularly regarding career ascendency, exer-
cise of authority, and diff erential performance expectations. Th ese perspectives
are supported by empirical evidence that women in city organizations tend to
perceive bureaucracy more favorably than their male counterparts do and are
slightly less likely to bend organizational rules, even as they ascend the hierar-
chy (Portillo and DeHart-Davis 2009). Even though this research is infl uenced
by postmodern feminist thinking, it is pragmatic in its leanings and thus rep-
resents a hybrid form relatively new to the public administration literature.
Th e feminist perspective also provides a useful analytic lens regarding what
scholars have termed “emotional labor.” Public administration scholars working
in this area trace this line of research back to the work of the sociologist Arlie
Hochschild. Within any organization, public or private, there exist norms for
accepted behavior (the logic of appropriateness discussed in Chapter 7 applies