THE GULF BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE

The consequences of the gulf between theory and practice are illustrated by focusing on Hurricane Katrina. Seven years ago Americans found themselves glued to their televisions, viewing images of destruction that looked more like a Third World country rather than the United States. Four years earlier on September 11, 2001, we had suffered through destruction caused by terrorists and, as a result, believed that we had responded in a way that made the crashes of the three planes a unique occurrence. In many ways, Katrina was a domestic September 11, and strong parallels exist in the way that the country responded to the two crises. On one hand, the actions of individual citizens were heroic and commendable. On the other hand, in both instances, the national government's response makes it difficult to feel positive about the national government's response. Katrina illustrates the serious consequences of failing to find a way to link theory and practice.

As I prepared this lecture, I tried to recreate the images that we all experienced in those early days after Hurricane Katrina struck. I also watched an hour-long production, “The Storm,” released on public television almost three months after the disaster. That program took me back in time.Footnote ² Interviews with federal, state, and local officials generated the kind of information I would have liked to have uncovered if I had the opportunity. As I watched the program, it became very clear that many of the problems that were identified in that television account were predictable. Predictable, that is, if the decision makers involved in the Katrina response knew significant parts of the literature in public administration and public policy might have helped them in their decision-making processes. They would have not have been surprised when the strategies that they used did not work effectively. The 900 people who died as a result of the disaster were not able to ask the most basic question: Why were so many people left behind? What did the players at the federal level learn from the September 11 experience?

The decision makers would have been assisted by looking to the public administration research community for assistance. What do we know in the research community that might have helped those decision makers faced with that horrible disaster? At least eight areas of research might have been used to help answer those questions.Footnote ³

THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY'S RESPONSE

It is tempting to place the blame for these developments on the demand side—those individuals who are in positions of authority. What about the supply side? I looked at the research community's response seven years later.

Let us fast forward to 2012 and assess how the public administration research community responded to the Katrina disaster. To do this, I focused on three of the top journals in our field—the Public Administration Review (PAR), the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM)—and searched journal content dealing with Hurricane Katrina from the time of the incident to August 2012.Footnote ⁴

PAR's pages included 121 articles that dealt with Hurricane Katrina. However, only 21 of those articles had the word “Katrina” in their title. The titles of the other articles included terms such as emergency management, disaster, and crisis, but most of these were titled with generic management terms and used Katrina as an example of broader theoretical and generic questions.

JPART's pages included 22 submissions that dealt with Katrina issues but none of the articles included the word “Katrina” in their title. Like the majority of PAR pieces, the JPART articles focused on generic and theoretical issues such as networks, contracting, patronage, collaboration, strategies, media, and coalition development. Similarly, JPAM included 21 submissions (19 articles and two book reviews) but no articles had the word “Katrina” in their title.

This pattern suggests that researchers were not interested in emphasizing the unique aspects of the Katrina disaster but focused on broader theoretical issues. It mirrors a pattern in our field in which journals contain relatively few articles dealing with racism and poverty. More importantly, it illustrates the divide between practitioners and researchers. Although much of the academic work is applicable to the situation, it was not posed in a way that was accessible to practitioners. The practitioners were likely to view the emergent research as focused on broader questions that would be of limited interest to them. And it is likely that the researchers perceived the practitioners as having a narrow view of these intellectually challenging issues. Both of these groups are right and both are also wrong.

Although some individuals in both communities had reached out beyond the traditional divide, the response to Katrina clearly illustrates the limits of those relationships and the failure of both communities to find ways to enrich their understandings by interacting with one another.

WHAT WOULD JOHN GAUS HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT KATRINA?

This lecture is designed to remind us of Katrina, to revisit the lessons of our founders, and to give homage to John Gaus. Thus I ask the question, what would John Gaus have thought about the Katrina situation?

I must admit that while I was aware of John Gaus' work, especially his oft-cited chapter “Ecology of Government”Footnote ⁵ (Gaus Reference Gaus1947), before I prepared this lecture, I could not have identified a major substantive aspect of his career. But, it turns out, John Gaus was also one of those individuals who brought his experience as a practitioner to the academy. In fact, his service actually preceded his academic career and was earlier than either the New Deal or World War II. Before he completed his doctorate at Harvard, he served as assistant executive secretary of the War Labor Policies Board, the federal agency created in 1918 to arbitrate disputes between workers and employers related to production for World War I. The agency closed in 1919 but was reestablished in 1942 as the National War Labor Board by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Gaus continued to wear a practitioner hat both in Wisconsin and nationally but largely as a consultant or in a citizen capacity.

This lecture's subject developed as I became intrigued with the perspective that emerged from Gaus' writings. Most of us know Gaus through his academic writings, especially his Reflections on Public Administration. That book, along with his essays in The Frontiers of Public Administration (Gaus, White, and Dimock Reference Gaus, White and Dimock1936) (as well as other works) give us a glimpse of the way that Gaus drew on his experience in and about government to comment on issues related to organization and activities of the public sector. While very conversant with theory and both American and European theorists, he openly drew on the social, economic, and political change that was emerging from American society. All of his work was illustrated by specific problems and responses to the changes, not simply to theories and academic literature.

His long career (he died in 1969) included attention to the development of the profession, and he served as president both of ASPA and APSA. To my knowledge, he is the only person to have held both positions. His work emphasized the interrelationship between politics and administration and seemed to be directed toward decision makers as well as citizens.

I resonated with the description of John Gaus in the Dictionary of American Political Scientists. “Three interrelated themes weave their way through his writings: a rejection of the traditional notion of the separation of politics and administration, the openness of public organizations to their environmental influences, and the responsibility of positive, affirmative government in responding to national crises and emergencies” (Utter and Lockhart Reference Utter and Lockhart2002). These same themes I have tried to emphasize in my work and are rooted in the experience of someone who was embedded in settings outside of the academy.

My reading of a rather obscure work, “A Study of Research in Public Administration,” gave me the richest perspective on John Gaus. Gaus wrote this report in 1930 for the Advisory Committee on Public Administration of the Social Science Research Council and it is available only in the original typing (Gaus Reference Gaus1930). Reading this volume returned me to my early days as a student of American history. My first graduate degree was in American studies where my work focused on the Progressive Era of the early 20th century. The 140 yellowed pages of the Gaus report seemed like an artifact from the past, yet it raised many of the issues that concern me today. Gaus updated his 1930 views in a piece he wrote in 1945, noting that World War II and the New Deal contributed to the further increase in the expansion, as well as the complexity, of the functions of government. He emphasized the relationship between administration and policy and pointed to the need to have “better preparation, review, and application of policy” (Gaus Reference Gaus1945).

Writing the original report in the years just before the New Deal, Gaus provided a picture of a society—not simply public organizations—that found itself recovering from World War I, absorbing immigrants, dealing with social and political change, involving the public as well as universities, and determining what role government would play in those activities. He described issues that were evolving after the Depression, and a few years later these became a part of FDR's agenda and contributed directly to the world of the New Deal. Indeed, his perspective seems to be quite different than that of Brownlow.

The themes that emerged from Gaus' study of research in public administration are extremely topical today. Gaus approached these themes not as a skeptic but as someone who was always looking for new responses to new issues. He focused on the reality of constant change as well as the importance of government structure. Yet he provided significant advice on research.

He told us that research occurs at many points and in many forms. It includes activities that we now call evaluation. It does not occur only in universities. He noted that research and action in administration belongs to many professions including the law, medicine, engineering, city planning, education, business, and agriculture. Rarely do we engage in collaborative research (Gaus Reference Gaus1945, 178).

Gaus signaled a need for officials and civic groups to come together with academics. He wrote that university activities should not be separated from other institutions in the society. He called for the revival of historical studies and argued that training, education, research, and practice are all linked. Gaus noted that universities tend to spend their time creating training programs rather than expanding research interests in the field (Gaus Reference Gaus1945, 142).

One paragraph in that report really spoke to me and seems to be particularly relevant to our world of research today.

As early as 1930, Gaus warned of some of the negative aspects of an academic field that was becoming increasingly professionalized and self conscious about controlling its own identity. Although public administration defined itself as a field of practice, it tended to make that definition in a way that separated it from those who tilled in the practical vineyards. The experience of people like Brownlow, Gulick, and Merriam during the New Deal and World War II kept the focus on practice and, as a result, served as a check on the field's academic behavior. But even individuals who were found in or close to decision-making processes at the national government level exhibited tendencies to redefine their past and minimize the complex lessons of their experience. As the field of historiography tells us, people tend to “rewrite” history in a way that serves their contemporary needs.

The inheritance of the Progressive Movement that the contemporary public administration community usually embraces is quite different from that which Gaus described in 1930. The aspects of Progressivism that have been emphasized by most of our community over the years focus on its technocratic aspects, influences from the private sector, a middle-class definition of “good government,” and highlighting efficiency values. While acknowledging those attributes, Gaus' work, by contrast, emphasizes other parts of the Progressive agenda—social change and activism (especially issues that arose from immigration), the labor movement, the concerns of the muckrakers, and the values found in John Dewey's 1927 book, The Public and Its Problems. In all of his work, Gaus had his ear attuned to the changes occurring in the American society.

The view of the practitioner/decision maker that emerges from Gaus' work requires modesty about authority and acceptance of uncertainty, contains multiple actors from multiple sectors, and acknowledges constant change emerging from the external environment. It embraces multiple goals and often conflicting values and expects both optimistic and pessimistic responses from the citizenry. Furthermore, this view point accepts the limits of technical responses within a political environment, and the realization that the US skepticism about government power and authority embedded in government structures creates fragmented and diffuse systems.

Gaus wrote in Reflections on Public Administration—a later work—that “There is no royal road, or short cut, to the solving of our problems of public housekeeping—save in major reversals of long-time environmental changes, a retreat from power industry and the application of science to human affairs” (Gaus Reference Gaus1947, 91). His work communicated a sense of possibility about involving the citizenry in the study of efforts of those inside government. He wrote: “Despite the understandable reaction against the expansion of government functions and the problems brought with it, we seem to be embarked upon a further use of government in such fundamental substantive fields as food, housing and health” (Gaus Reference Gaus1947, 149). And he thought that public administration research should be closely linked to that world.

HOW DOES GAUS SPEAK TO US TODAY?

What would Gaus say about these issues today? What is happening in the world of practice and how has the public administration research community responded to those changes? What would have Gaus said about the Katrina experience?

I recently published a book Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions (Radin Reference Radin2012). Writing that volume was both stimulating and depressing because I also argue for breaking “accepted patterns and categories” in the way we think about federal management reform. The world that I describe in that book—what I call the world of contradictions—picks up on many of Gaus' observations. While I may describe them a bit differently than Gaus, the points of emphasis overlap. The world of contradictions that I describe is characterized by the following:

• • The size, diversity, complexity, and constant change within the US system.

• • Thinking about more than efficiency values and acknowledging the importance of both effectiveness and equity values.

• • Avoiding wholesale transfer of private sector solutions to public sector settings.

• • Acknowledging the limits of institutions.

• • Skepticism about one-size-fits-all approaches.

• • Taking the players in the political environment seriously. This includes Congress, the Executive Branch, and organizations with influence, if not authority, over decision making.

• • Acknowledging that conflict is natural and cannot be avoided.

• • Dealing with the federal government in a segmented fashion in contrast to a parliamentary structure.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Are we destined to continue this pattern? Will practitioners operate in their independent sphere while researchers focus on abstract and generic issues? Will academics be able to meet the needs of their MPA and MPP students who are entering the world of practice? Although the reward structure of both worlds makes it extremely difficult for practitioners to institutionalize shared perspectives, the consequences of those divisions are too important for us to continue as we have over the past several decades.

We are challenged to think about the consequences of Katrina by finding ways for public administration scholars to try to reach across those divisions. This can be done in three ways. First, schools and departments should encourage faculty members to spend time within organizations involved in the policymaking and management processes. This can be done by using existing mechanisms, such as sabbaticals and leaves. Today, few junior faculty consider such an experience. The Intergovernmental Personnel Act, formerly used to support programs such as the NASPAA Faculty Fellows program, is still on the books, but budget limitations have kept many agencies from utilizing that authority. These opportunities would provide faculty with direct knowledge of decision making. This might discourage them from working in a narrow research environment. Currently, I am working within APSA to try to start a fellowship program that would support junior faculty in these types of efforts.

Second, faculty should seek out opportunities to collaborate with practitioners in research efforts, drawing on suggestions made by Donald Schon years ago. As Schon noted, these collaborations not only provide opportunities for faculty to comprehend the practitioner's world but also provide practitioners with opportunities to reflect on their experience by drawing on conceptual frameworks that academics might bring to the exchange.

And third, schools and departments should redefine how they think about their adjunct faculty. Too often adjuncts are seen simply as practitioners who are cheap labor who can fill teaching slots. I am always amazed and heartened at the willingness of such individuals to spend significant time in their teaching role with minimal compensation. But adjuncts can also bring other attributes to the academic setting. Their experience pushes the limits of the textbooks and traditional syllabi to bring new ideas to the academy. They provide essential career counseling to students who desire practitioner careers, not traditional academic pathways. Rarely are the adjuncts rewarded for their contributions.

We cannot expect a mature academic profession to be as open to change as public administration was in the New Deal and World War II period. But we can keep the spirit of that era alive by finding ways to reclaim our past and design appropriate ways to link theory and practice. Reading or rereading Gaus helps in this attempt. Many of the most interesting ideas in public administration have come from the world of practice, and researchers must be able to learn from them. My assignments inside government, working with decision makers, have yielded incredibly rich experiences that have both practical and academic consequences. Like the founders of public administration, those in the research community are challenged to find ways to treat practitioners as a rich resource that keeps us in touch with what occurs in our constantly changing environment.