ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book lays out the constitutional stewardship approach for public service professionals using several legacies rooted in, and vigorously debated during, the American Founding and considered in the scholarship related to public administration over the last two centuries. It places special focus on the more than 90,000 local governments in America today—general purpose, school districts, and special districts. To make the most of the opportunities for trust-building, public administrators need to take seriously that they are engaged in a clinical practice. Trust in abstract institutions is a recent development in the long arc of history. This trust enables us to defer to the multiple and complex sets of institutional expertise needed for the modern word to function.
