ABSTRACT
American public administration is the bearer of a tradition of practices that reflect continuous debate about the proper role of the career public service in promoting the public interest. Yet, within this debate there are “continuities of conflict” (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 222) which, when properly understood, are critical to active and responsible participation of the career public service in our system of democratic governance. The historical analysis that follows identifies these major “continuities of conflict” with two goals in mind: first, to illustrate that there is a lively body of tradition within American public administration which anchors praxis to the pursuit of the larger public interest; and, second, to demonstrate that the recovery of this narrative is vital to guiding the exercise of administrative discretion and maintaining the health of our democratic polity (Morgan and Kass, 1991).
