这是一个公共行政学读本,所选文献涉及到当今公共行政的性质、结构、功能以及其所面临的挑战。该读本立足于这样的假设,即认为公共行政并非就是把工商行政的工具应用于政府机构的管理而已,而是具有其自身贯穿全局的核心价值和伦理。这个读本所选的文献大多出版于该领域*有影响的文章和著作,它从“21世纪来临之际”的当代视角去洞察由来已久的公共行政问题,就此而言这个读本是****的。

Preface
1 DEFINING PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION
1 Public Administration
2 The Study of Administration
3 Feminist Theory of Public Administration
2 THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
4 The Rise of the American Administrative State
5 From Public Administration to Public Management:Reassessing a Revolution
6 Public Administration in America:Why our Uniqueness is Exceptional and Important
3 DECISION-MAKIGN IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
7 The Science of Muddiling Through
8 Public Choice and Public Sector Management
9 Bureaucracy and Democracy:The Case for More Bureaucracy and Less Democracy
4 REINVENTING THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT
10 Changing States,Governance,and the Public Service
11 Learning to get the Balance in Privatization
12 Works Better and Costs Less?Sweet and Sour Perpectives on the NPR
5 INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS
13 American Federalism,State Governments and Public Policy:Weaving Together Loose Theoretical Threads
14 The Rebirth of Federalism:Slouching toward Washington
15 Restructuring the State:Devolution,Privatization,and the Geographic Redistribution of Power and Capacity in Governance
6 MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION THEORY
16 Beyond the Bureaucratic Paradigm
……
7 ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
8 MANAGERIALISM AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
9 STRATEGIC PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
10 LEADERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILITY
11 PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
12 SOCIAL EQUITY
13 PUBLIC BUDGETING
14 EVALUATION AND MEASURING PRODUCTIVITY
15 HONOR AND ETHICS
Credits
……

There is no single, generally-accepted, definition of public administration, and perhaps there never will be.1 In this chapter, we explain why this is so, and while the absence of a single definition may be frustrating, it at least partially reflects healthy "growing pains" of a young, complex, and thus highly interesting field of academic study and practice.
Public administration may be defined as all processes, organizations, and individuals ... associated with carrying out laws and other rules adopted or issued by legislatures, executives, and courts.2 (Emphasis in original.)
Public administration is so vast that there is no way to encompass it all with only one definition.3
Public administration, like many human endeavors, is difficult to define.... In part, this is because public administration covers such a vast amount of activity. ... It was pointed out some time ago that any one-paragraph or even one-sentence definition of public administration is bound to prove temporarily mind-paralyzing.4
To define a subject is to fix its boundaries or, if those turn out to be fuzzy, to identify its essence, its core character. But for public administration this has proved so intractable a problem that its scholarly study is said to be suffering a "crisis of identity."5
All of us who teach public administration have our own sense of what it is, and most of us would agree about many aspects of a definition. "Public administration does involve activity, it is concerned with politics and policy-making, it tends to be concentrated in the executive branch of government, it does differ from private [business] administration, and it is concerned with implementing the law."6 On the other hand, we also disagree spiritedly about where the "boundaries" of public administration lie and about the relative importance of various dimensions of public administration. 自20世纪80年代恢复以来,行政管理学在我国经历了十多年的摸索和积累期,世纪之交终于呈现出飞跃式发展的态势:行政管理学博士点相继设立,公共管理获得一级学科的地位,公共管理专业硕士学位(MPA)教育开始启动且发展迅猛,开设行政管理本科专业的大专院校达到130家,公共事业管理本科专业则突破了300家,加上党校、行政学院公共管理教研机构的大量设立,说公共管理是21世纪初我国发展*迅猛的学科并不夸张。
学科飞跃式发展的另一重要标志是新领域的开拓和知识的积累及其快速更新。**自然科学基金委员会对与宏观管理相关的117种外文期刊进行的文献计量研究表明:“公共管理理论与方法是1994--2004年间国外关注*多的领域。其中,有关公共管理基本理论与方法的论文数占到了全部论文总量的44.6%。”对中国期刊网77种核心期刊的文献计量学分析的结果显示,“自1994年至2003年的十年间,关于公共管理基本理论与方法方面的论文增长迅速,从1994年的554篇,上升到2003年的1934篇,增幅达到3倍以上”。但在总量上仅占全部论文总量的4.59%,与国外的同类研究相比呈现出明显的差距(**自然科学基金会管理科学部:《宏观管理与政策学科“十一五”发展战略研究报告》)。
系统了解和追踪国外的新理论和新方法,并在批判的基础上加以消化和吸收,是学科知识积累和更新的重要环节之一。进入21世纪后,我国对西方公共管理著作的翻译出版结束了零星分散的状态,呈现出系统化和细分化同时并进的势头。中国人民大学出版社的《公共行政与公共管理经典译丛》和《公共政策经典译丛》,华夏出版社的《政治学与行政管理学译丛》,上海三联书店的《制度分析与公共政策译丛》,中国青年出版社的《公共管理译丛》等,都对学科发展和政府管理现代化产生了积极的影响。北京大学出版社《公共管理学经典教材原版影印丛书》的出版值得庆贺!

J.史蒂文·奥特,科罗拉多大学公共行政学博士,现任犹他大学政治学系教授、社会科学和行为科学学院院长。奥特教授在公共行政学、非营利组织、人力资源管理、组织理论、组织行为和组织文化等领域撰写和主编了大量著作和文章。