An open letter to the public administration and public management communities

For those interested in the doing and the studying of government administration:

It’s time for a fundamental reexamination of the values that drive us, our work, and the governance of American political institutions.

This isn’t just about the restoration of Donald Trump to the White House and the tsunami of disruptive promises he’s making. This is a challenge that goes far deeper, not just in the U.S. and around the world.

Trust in America’s political institutions is at an historic low. In a 2023 Pew poll, 85% of those surveyed said that elected officials don’t care about what “people like them think.” When asked how they feel about politics, 65% said they were “exhausted” and 55% said they were “angry.” Less than one-third of Americans believe that “the federal government has a positive impact on people like you.” Support for existing institutions is crumbling under criticisms from the far right in Germany and Japan and France.  Public administration is the action arm of the state and of the political decisions it makes; distrust of public institutions gravely weakens support for public servants as well.

For more than a century, the basic foundation of the field has been a commitment to ensuring competence in executing the public policies created by elected officials. The endless debate about the “politics-administration dichotomy” has muddied discussion about the core, but we have spent 140 years constructing a nonpartisan civil service. We have invested 90 years seeking to create the most efficient administrative structures. Since the 1970s, we have sought to improve the efficiency of government decisions through policy analysis and the implementation of policy through effective public management. 

But we cannot assume that these foundations continue to serve us well. All of these traditions struggle to connect with the fundamental issues on the policy agenda today. Both elected officials and the public can scarcely hide their disdain for experts. 

Moreover, we’re in a weak position to defend the traditional structural arrangements that are now under attack, because we have taken them for granted, conducting relatively little research on the basic structures and processes of government. For example, we don’t have a lot of research informing the public debate about the impact of removing protections from the civil service—and why this will matter. 

It’s surely the case that not all experts will agree with these propositions. And it’s also the case that many experts see their most important role is fighting against the anti-expert propositions rolling out from populists. These battles are uncomfortable but legitimate.

In assessing the state of public administration and public management, however, we have to reckon with several fundamental propositions. Many people and elected officials believe that the experts who manage government are unaccountable—just 42% in a poll for the Partnership for Public Service think that government is “accountable.” More than half—56%—believe that government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient.” A majority of the public (58%) believes that it is too hard to rid the government of poor performers. Government employees are increasingly worried that the wrong political views will get them purged. Ten careerists in the Homeland Security Department were listed on a “watchlist” of “America’s most subversive immigration bureaucrats.” Individual employees are finding themselves called out by name in an effort to “putthem in trauma.”

In short, the fundamental arrangements about the use of power—especially about the power of experts—arrangements that have carefully developed over more than a century, are quickly disintegrating. Members of the public administration community might well want to fight a rear-guard action against this onslaught. 

It’s folly to dismiss the critique as false—or that it’s temporary—or that it’s purely American. This is a deep-seated, global phenomenon with which the field has a fundamental responsibility to engage, at its most basic level. 

We must reexamine the fundamental values that drive our work. We need:

• A fundamental debate about the field and its goals, much like what surrounded its first years in the early 1900s, the post-World War II years, and the reexamination of the 1970s.

• A focus on how best to deliver results to Americans—not outputs, outcomes, or other tech-speak metrics, but results in terms that Americans see and experience and appreciate in their lived experiences.

• A reinforcement of a process that ensures freedom from political bias, since a fundamental form of distrust is that some people, from some backgrounds or regions, get different (and better) treatment.

• A commitment to efficient delivery of services, so that people feel that their hard work to contribute taxes are respected.

• A redefinition of accountability, to reinforce the connection of the people to the government they receive through the decisions of the public officials they elect.

These are just starters. There surely are others; some of the points I laid out might be rejected. But we need a vigorous debate about the basic principles of the field.

We also need to acknowledge that public administration can’t fix the fundamental problems with our major institutions, especially with Congress. But, within the fabric of the American constitutional system, we can recognize the role that we play. And we can focus especially on the fact that people differentiate between their anger at the system as a whole and their appreciation for services with which they engage—and which serve them well. 

That, indeed, is the bedrock of public administration. 

Sincerely, 

Donald F. Kettl, Professor Emeritus and Former Dean, University of Maryland School of Public Policy