160 6: Postmodern Th eory
move subtly away from the logic of state or nation building (to include cities)
and the concentration of ever more economic capacity or sovereignty toward the
search for multi-institutional compatibilities, attempts to fi nd cross-jurisdictional
convergence, and, above all, searches for procedures that will aid the develop-
ment of generally acceptable decision processes and rules. Postmodern public
administration will be “a network of agreements facilitating the compatibility be-
tween open units, rather than the architecture artifi cially built around a capital”
(Guéhenno 1995, 65).
Postmodern public administration will be all about process, procedure, and
the search for rules. One postmodernist describes the role of agents of the state as
being engaged with the agents of other states in a collective search for the invisi-
ble chains that can bind people together:
When society is functioning, there is no time for confl ict to appear, it is dissolved
in a multitude of microdecisions and microadjustments, in which the weak test
the strength of the strong and the strong make the weak feel the force of their
strength, and in which everyone, in the last analysis, fi nds their place. We are
thus also as far here from the institutional age of power, which institutionalizes
confl ict, as from the feudal age, in which the triumph of the strong leads to the
absorption of the weak. In the imperial age (postmodern and postnational), the
strong are suffi ciently strong as soon as the weak have come to recognize their
place. A certain social geography naturally imposes itself.
Th is peaceful tranquility of the imperial age is not that of the triumph of rea-
son. It covers the muffl ed echoes of the thousand piecemeal battles that have pre-
pared the way for the splitting off of great confrontations. In this respect, Japan
is much more “modern” than litigious America. Decisionmaking in Japan takes
much longer than in America, and its implementation is shorter. (Guéhenno
1995, 70–71)Th e emphasis on networks is in line with what others view as the key to mov-
ing postmodern theory forward. To adequately address concerns across groups
and networks within a society requires a focus on dialogue and participatory
governance (Bogason 2005, 249). A focus on the interests of the individual citi-
zen, rather than on bureaucratic structures or centralized bases of power, is best
achieved through direct citizen participation. However, to make advances within
the fi eld will require working within existing theoretical frameworks. Th us, many
postmodern scholars seem to recognize that to eff ectively move the fi eld of post-
modern public administration theory forward requires an approach that includes
both traditional institutional factors and a strong emphasis on networks and rela-
tionships within the institution itself (Bogason 2005, 244–245).
Postmodern public administration theory emphasizes teamwork and, al-
though it is seldom admitted, conformity. Th e objective is to reduce the need for
structural hierarchy and the exercise of power, to put in their place a multitude