ABSTRACT
Many scholars agree that public administration lacks a governing paradigmatic base (Rainey, 1994; Riccucci, chapter 1 of this volume). Many would also agree that seeking and imposing a narrowly conceived paradigm may do more harm than good to the field by excluding viable, emerging alternatives (Frederickson and Smith, 2003; Rainey, 1994). In particular, public administration is both interdisciplinary and applied, so ‘‘no theory standing alone is capable of accounting for the complexity of the field’’ (Frederickson and Smith, 2003, p. 4).
