ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book suggests that government must be understood as a layered phenomenon and that people must penetrate beyond the immediate and visible by digging for deeper levels of meaning and by positioning the present firmly in the past. These four perspectives are relevant to the understanding of all Western governments: the citizen, the bureaucrat, the politician, and the academic have to perform when attempting to understand reality. No Western government has ever discarded the impact of the past in its attempt to address problems for the future. One can argue that public administration theory chases fashions, but at the same time it is an expression of the degree to which it responds to political, social, and economic change. Government has not only become an integral part of Western culture, it increasingly defines Western culture.
