ABSTRACT
Public administration became an academic discipline as well as a recognized field of professional expertise more or less at a time when positivism was the dominant philosophy of science. It continues to cast a long shadow on the theory and the practice of public administration. The recent turn to interpretivist or even avowedly postmodern approaches as well as the current emphasis on innovation, flexibility, and public consultation have undermined the positivist foundations of public administration. However, the ongoing search for methodological rigor combined with the new public management's emphasis on the measurement of outputs provide strong incentives to look for ways of objectively developing and implementing quantitative analytical tools; in other words, positivism continues to find committed defenders.
