ABSTRACT
Theories of political control of bureaucracy have a basic objective to explain and ensure how administration can be accountable and subordinate to the formally designated institutions of democratic decisionmaking. Theories of bureaucratic politics stake their claim to utility on a convincing demonstration of the intellectual poverty of the politics-administration dichotomy. Institutional theory in public administration is concerned with the organization and management of contained and bounded public institutions. Postmodern theory in many ways is the culmination of the theoretical fragmentation in public administration that began with the assault on the politics-administration dichotomy. Postmodern theory is a subjective approach to studying social phenomena that focuses heavily on language, the context of human interactions and the social construction of reality. Governance has stealthily crept into the discipline's language and established itself as a virtual synonym for public administration.
