The Political Economy of Public Organizations

The search for a theory of public administration often takes on aspects of a quest for Hold Grail or a hunt for mythical unicorn. Public administration theory has meant variously: a search for scientific principles; broad ruminations on what phenomena are included within the field; and general orientations of students of subject, both professional and academic.1 Seldom has theory referred to systematic, empirically based explanations of a phenomenon; a system of related and proven propositions that answer question Why? Though this article cannot begin to present such a theory, hopefully, it does more than issue another pious call for one. It is intended to set forth a framework with roots in organizational analysis that is simple but has enough heuristic power to make its application appealing to a wide range of students of public administration; that can pose questions for those areas still in need of exploration, and conceptually link them with those areas already well defined. A framework that can perform such an integrative role would represent a major step toward explanations of individuals, groups, or organizations behave as they do in that part of political system we have analytically abstracted and labeled public administration; and it would tell us something about how that behavior affects public policy. If we can better answer why questions,