268 10: Conclusion: A Bright Future for Th eory?
existing theoretical frameworks on governance and collaborative governance
are cumbersome and can be policy specifi c. Governance theory methodology is
also diverse, employing qualitative and quantitative techniques, including formal
modeling. In fact, of all the theories discussed in this book, governance theory is
most porous and least contained (thus the mixed reviews in Table 10.1), yet holds
the most promise. Although the payoff from the governance eff ort is not yet fully
realized, its potential to clear the fog of confusion that settles quickly aft er sweep-
ing decentralization and to usefully inform the practice of public administration
is considerable.
Th eory in Public Administration
Th is brief summary of the frameworks considered in this book should make clear
that theory in public administration has primarily served two basic purposes: (1)
to assemble facts into a coherent and explanatory whole and (2) to provide per-
spectives on what “should” be done and to create guides for action. Virtually all
the major contributions covered in the Primer help provide a clearer understand-
ing of the complex world of public administration in explaining both what it does
and why. Indeed, even though rational choice scores low in descriptive capacity
and empirical warranty and both decision theory and rational choice score low/
mixed in explanatory capacity in Table 10.1, these conceptual platforms are driv-
ing some of the most promising empirical work relevant to public administration.
Empirical advances are being made in all directions regarding decisionmaking
processes, at both the institutional and individual levels, and scholars are increas-
ingly gaining a fi rmer grasp on what constitutes utility given various social con-
straints. At least a substantial minority of these contributions has also contributed
to the applied practice of public administration (see the work of Elinor Ostrom
as a prime example). Th e extraordinary persistence of the principles of manage-
ment approach as guides for administrative action is perhaps the best example of
this claim. NPM, Total Quality Management, management by objectives, and any
number of other administrative movements with their own acronyms testify to
the theoretical fecundity and applied utility of intellectual frameworks pioneered
by the likes of Taylor, Barnard, Fayol, and Gulick.
Public administration has been less successful in creating theories in the
positivist, scientifi c sense. Th is failure cannot be attributed to lack of eff ort, not
with sustained projects, such as decision theory, rational choice theory, and
newly developing behavioral theories, explicitly aimed at this objective. As Table
10.1 indicates, public administration theory struggles with a predictable series
of tradeoff s. Parsimonious theories, for example, tend to have comparatively
weak descriptive capacities; theories with strong descriptive capacities struggle
to match such strengths in parsimony and predictive capacity. Needless to say,
despite the persistent search for a science of administration, we still lack admin-
istrative equivalents to the laws of motion or gravity. Postmodern theory argues