ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews understanding of policy, politics, and administration (PPA) dynamics from a sample of major research findings in public administration, policy sciences, political science, and public management. It illustrates how an increasing gap developed between ordinary citizens and policymaking. The chapter explains three major theoretical approaches falling under the general rubric of the new institutionalism-rational choice, sociological, and historical institutionalism and their potential for taking the study of the PPA nexus to the next level of explanatory and predictive power. It illustrates the strengths, gaps, and major alternatives for advancing a practical and theoretical understanding of the PPA nexus. The logic of appropriateness applied to the study of PPA dynamics, in turn, both accommodates and finds its own theoretical grounding in cognitive, evolutionary biology, and neuroscientinc theories. The chapter examines the implications of these theoretical developments for future research on the dynamic relationship between policy and administration, as well as other topics, in the study of American bureaucracy.
