164 6: Postmodern Th eory
Conclusions
A recent review of Public Administration Review, one of the leading journals
of the discipline, indicates that the dominant methodological approach con-
tinues to be quantitative/statistical, more specifi cally “behavioral-empirical”
(Raaddschelders and Lee 2011, 24). Very little journal space appears to be de-
voted to the dialectal/hermeneutic qualitative approaches advocated by post-
modernists; from 2000 to 2009 less than 15 percent of articles were devoted to
normative, descriptive, biographical, and historical methodologies combined.
Th ese reviewers are right to note however that the journal’s addition of sections
devoted to “Practitioner- Academic Exchange” and “Th eory to Practice” open
the door for more qualitative approaches; for postmodernists these sections
provide valuable research avenues to reach a wide audience.
Using primarily logic, deduction, and philosophical reasoning, scholars work-
ing from the postmodern public administration theory perspective have provided
thoughtful and provocative analyses of the problem of administrative responsibil-
ity (Harmon 1995), trust (Kass 2003), gender (Stivers 2002), legitimacy (McSwite
1997), and a wide range of other issues in the fi eld. Although these studies might
be criticized for lacking an empirical base, the same criticism can be leveled at
assumption-based mathematical modeling used to test rational choice theory.
Postmodern research and theory, in addition to their central place in PAT-
net and its journal, Administrative Th eory and Praxis, is highly infl uential among
the members of the Law and Society Association. Of the leading scholarly pub-
lications associated with public administration, the prestigious Law and Society
Review, the association’s journal, is the leading example of the importance of
postmodern research and theory in the fi eld. Less directly associated with public
administration, but strongly infl uenced by postmodern theory, are journals deal-
ing with women in the public sector, such as Woman and Politics. It is probably
a safe generalization that many of the public administration issues being con-
sidered in this literature have to do with race, gender, class, and inequality—all
central themes in postmodern thought.
Th e postmodern methodological perspective described here is associated with
deterritorialization, an analytic approach that seeks to break down the structural
territories found in all organizations. Th ese territories are refl ected in rigid de-
partmental and bureau categories, in reifi ed accounting categories, in the special
professions and educational processes that prepare people for public service, and
in all the other ways that work is divided. Like virtually everyone in public admin-
istration, postmodernists seek to break down both the organizational silos and
the fi xed patterns of thought that come with categories and actual or intellectual
territory. In postmodern lingo, the postmodern deterritorialization argument
has long been a part of public administration, although postmodernists could
claim that their approaches to ameliorating the structural defi cits of organization
promise to be more successful than earlier approaches.