ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes a case for experience-based agency as a unit of analysis in public affairs and administration. It explores the roles of agency, sentience, and sapience and how they relate to this notion of an experience-based unit of analysis. Agency has numerous consequences to daily lives. Sentience is understood commonly as the ability to feel or perceive some experience. The process of dehumanization affords people less agency, thereby making them in a very practical way less of a sentient being, with less agency. Sapience, or the quality of wisdom, is commonly linked to ideas including judgment. Refining and elevating the understanding of experience, agency, sentience, and sapience provide a path forward to a better understanding of public affairs and administration. The benefit of considering agency, sentience, and sapience together emerges from the richness one gains from considering the facets of intentionality, judgment, and the capacity to act in the context of “being”.
