Rejoinder to Keller and Spicer

ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Ruth Ann Strickland Ph.D., Professor (Creator)
Institution
Appalachian State University (ASU )
Web Site: https://library.appstate.edu/

Abstract: The article presents the authors' response to a critique of an article that levied several criticisms arguing for stronger links between political science and public administration. In their commentary on our article, Keller and Spicer levied four criticisms arguing for stronger links between political science and public administration. The approaches Keller and Spicer do espouse are not contradictory with viewing government as a system, and, indeed, complement such a view. Nothing inherent in a systems framework contends that administrators cannot take an activist role, as Carl Friedrich (1940), George Frederickson (1971), and John Rohr (1986) argue they should, for arguing that government converts inputs into policy outputs does not necessarily specify the role of public administrators in that conversion. Another old but still useful concept in political science--that of the iron triangle--sees bureaucrats as activist and astutely forming a political coalition with members of key subcommittees in the U.S. Congress as well as relevant interest groups to garner more resources for their agency and its mission.

Additional Information

Publication
Marcia Lynn Whicker, Ruth Ann Strickland and Dorothy Olshfski. (1996). "Rejoinder to Keller and Spicer." Public Administration Review 56 (November/December, no. 6): 614-615. [also reprinted in 1997] (ISSN: 0033-3352) Wiley-Blackwell [The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com]
Language: English
Date: 1996

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