ABSTRACT
For as long as there have been governments, members of the public have engaged with those governments as citizens, customers, and partners. The perspective on the public's place in public management began to change only in the second half of the twentieth century. The New Public Management and the idea of citizen as customer both survive as potent forces in governments around the world. On the politics side of the dichotomy, the public was viewed as holding an essential role in a democracy through its participation in defining the "state will." Although flaws in the politics-administration dichotomy were obvious from the outset, the dichotomy dominated public administration theory and practice through most of the twentieth century. The public administration community became increasingly troubled in the 1960s by allegations of bias and injustice against its members. By the 1980s another generation's frustrations with government and bureaucracy stirred a new round of reform in public administration.
