Intellectual Paradigms in Public Administration 中文翻译.doc

Intellectual Paradigms in Public AdministrationWhy So Many and How to Bridge Them?Jiahuan Lu University of Maryland 为何公共行政学存在如此众多的管理思想范式？ 两者之间有何关联？ 美国马里兰大学-刘佳欢The notion of paradigm has become ubiquitous since its inception by Thomas Kuhn as a way to understand the history of science. Paradigms, Kuhn writes, are “universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners”. Within a specific paradigm, Gutting further explains, there is “an acceptance that is so strong it eliminates the need for further discussion of foundational questions about the subject-matter and methodology of the disciplined and enables the discipline to devote most of its energy to puzzle-solving”. The history of scientific development, according to Kuhn, is thus largely characterized by a succession of different paradigms, or paradigm shifts.范式概念自托马斯库恩提出后,便普遍成为解读科学史的途径。库恩写到：“范式是举世公认的科学成就，为一段时期的社会实践提供了解决问题的模板和解决方案”。古亭进一步解释说：“在一个特定的范式里，通常关于主题素材和方法学的缜密性，它省去了对其基本问题的进一步讨论，而是致力于难题的攻克”。根据库恩的理论，在一个又一个不同范式的承接、或范式转换之下，也因此显露出科学发展史的特性。Actually, Kuhn used the concept of paradigm mostly within the domain of natural sciences and was hesitant to expand it to the social sciences, which he believed were characterized by a “tradition of claims, counterclaims, and debates over fundamentals”. Indeed, in most social sciences, paradigm shift is rare. Rather more frequent is “paradigm parallel,” the coexistence of several competing paradigms. Public administration is no exception. After the collapse of the orthodoxy, a consensus on big questions in public administration has never been achieved , such as what public administration is, how to acquire knowledge, what type of knowledge (scientific or interpretative) to pursue, and the relationships between public administration and other disciplines, such as political science and business management. As a result, competing paradigms have emerged to provide their own answers about the nature and assumptions of public administration, with no one of them ever able to dominate. Henry argues that public administration theory has, since its inception, gone through a succession of six paradigms: the politics/administration dichotomy (19001926), principles of public administration (19271937), public administration as political science (19501970), public administration as management(19501970), public administration as public administration(1970present), and governance(1990present). Frederickson and Smith also delineate the pluralism in public administration theory, which might include theories of political control of bureaucracy, theories of bureaucratic politics, theories of public management, rational choice theory, theories of governance, and so on. They admit that “no theory standing alone is capable of accounting for the complexity of the field” .事实上，基于“传统理念、反诉和基本原理的辩论”该理论的特点，库恩在自然科学的领域大部分使用范式概念，而对于是否将其拓展到社会科学颇为犹豫。在大多数社会科学领域内，范式转换的确非常罕见，而能够与一些相互矛盾的范式共存的“平行模式”则出现更为频繁。公共行政学也不例外。东正教解体后，关于公共行政学的重大问题从未达成共识。例如：公共行政学的概念、获取知识的途径、探索哪门学问（学术性或阐述性）、公共行政学与其他学科的关系、政治学与企业管理的联系。因此，竞争模式出现了，并且就关于公共行政学的相关性质和设想给出解答，但没有任何一个范式理论占据主导地位。亨利认为，公共行政学理论自成立以来便秉承了六个范式的理论：政治-行政二分法(19001926)、公共行政学基本原理（1927-1937）、行政学(19501970)、行政管理学(19501970)、公共行政学（1970 - 至今）、管理学（1990-至今）。弗雷德里克森与史密斯共同描述了公共行政学的多元论，其中可能包括官僚主义政治控制理论、官僚政治理论、公共行政学理论、理性选择理论、管理学理论等理论。他们认为没有任何一个孤立的理论能够阐释该领域的复杂性”。Why does the public administration field already have so many paradigms in spite of the short history since its self-consciousness? This is actually an intellectual product of the political heritage (Durant, 2010). In Federalist No. 51, James Madison argued that the fundamental way to ensure the appropriate use of public power was a separation of power into different government branches that would allow checks and balances between them. This anti-statism tradition later became the prologue of what Edward Corwin called “an invitation to struggle” among the three branches of government. Through “tides of reform” (Light, 1998), there has been an enduring struggle over how to divide power within the government system. This unending conflict is also reflected within the administration system. As Kettl argues, “the public administration system reflects broad constellations of power, and as power has become more diffuse, so, too, have the administrative interconnections”.在自我意识萌芽这么短的历史时期内，为何有如此之多的范式理论出现在公共行政学中？这实际上是政治遗产的精神产物（杜兰特，2010）。詹姆斯麦迪逊在联邦党人第51章写到：“要确保合理使用权力，最根本办法是将权力分离到不同的政府部门，让他们相互制衡。这种反国家主义的传统，后来成为爱德华考文所谓的三个政府分支政体之间“战书邀请函”的序言。经过“改革潮汐”（光，1998），在政府系统内部如何分权引发了持久战和无休止的冲突。正如凯特尔所说：“公共行政管理体制体现的权力分布广泛，同样也使得权力更加分散，因此出现行政连体”。As early as the 1950s, Kaufman (1956) found that the rapid growth of public administration since its self-consciousness had exhibited the pursuit of three competing values: representativeness, neutral competence, and executive leadership. “The story of public administration,” wrote Kaufman, “is thus one of a changing balance among the values, not of total displacement”. Kettl (2002) further suggests that the study and the practice of public administration have to be differentiated in order to respond to four conflicting American political traditions, Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian, and Madisonian. Each political philosophy prescribes its own distinct administrative ideas, values, and rationales, together making the gaps between them hard to bridge.早在20世纪50年代，考夫曼（1956）发现，自公共行政管理自我意识萌芽以来发展神速，表现为探求三个竞值：代表性、中立的能力、行政领导。考夫曼写道：“公共行政的历史是这些价值的平衡变化之一，并非完全取代”。凯特尔（2002）进一步表明，为了响应四个相互矛盾冲突的美国政治传统，公共行政管理的研究和实践是有区别的。这四个相互矛盾的美国政治传统包括：汉密尔顿、杰斐逊、威尔逊、麦迪逊。每一个政治哲学都具备其独特的管理理念、价值观和基本原理，很难减少它们之间的悬殊差距。Stillman (1991), holding a historical institutionalism perspective, describes how the “stateless” origin of the American public administration system gave rise to the fragmentation in public administration theory. At the founding of the United States, a systematic design of public administration was absent. Because of this, American public administration building was actually an incremental “chinking-in” process, pragmatically bringing in various temporary administrative solutions to solve challenges, but none in a systematic way. Taken together, these temporary and sometimes competing administrative components constituted the American public administration system. This temporary and inconsistent nature, on the one hand, enabled the administrative system to adapt to external demands, but on the other hand, “created an administrative state and a bureaucratic administrative model without a single overarching model or well-structured paradigm”. Reflected in theory development, this paradox “added a high degree of ambiguity to public administration theory and opened the topic to enormous opportunities for continual interpretations and reinterpretations”.斯蒂尔曼（ 1991）在公共行政管理理论中，从历史制度主义的角度介绍了“无国籍”的起源论导致美国公共行政管理系统分裂。在美国建国初期，没有公共行政管理系统化的设计图样。正因为如此，美国公共行政大楼实际上是在不断琢磨推敲过程中逐渐建造起来的，同时引进各种临时管理解决方案来解决难题，但没有任何一个系统化的方法。综上所述，这些临时的、相互抵触的管理部门构成了美国公共行政管理体制。从一方面来说，临时性和矛盾性使得行政系统适应外部需求；但另一方面，没有一个单一的总体模型或良好的构建模型的情况下，临时性和矛盾性建立了一个行政国和官僚行政机构。在理论发展表现在，这个悖论使得公共行政管理理论非常模糊不清，在不断诠释和再诠释过程中开始了更多新的议题。In combining these arguments, it is reasonable to admit that the differentiation in public administration theory and the rise of multi-paradigms were inevitable. But how would the multi-paradigm nature of contemporary public administration literature affect the advancement of public administration knowledge? Ostrom (1973) argues that the multi-paradigm characteristic of the public administration field, the proliferation of competing theories, perspectives, and research methods, blurs its identity as a unified discipline and finally leads to an intellectual crisis. “The loss of theoretical hegemony,” Frederickson and Smith note, “gave public administration an identity crisis and made it vulnerable to colonization from other disciplines”.综上所述，我们可以合理地认为，公共行政管理理论中的差异性和多元范式的崛起是必然的。但是，当代公共行政文献的多元范式如何影响公共行政管理学科的发展？奥斯特罗姆（1973）认为，公共行政管理领域的多元范式特征，竞争理论、观点和研究方法分散，模糊了该学科本身的统一性，最终导致智识危机。弗雷德里克森和史密斯标注：“霸权理论的丧失，使得公共行政管理陷入危机，容易被他学科同化”。Given the perils, how are we to promote the future development of our knowledge of public administration? Three paths have been proposed. The first one emphasizes the necessarity of forming a dominant paradigm in scientific advancement. According to Cole, “accumulation of knowledge can occur only when scientists are committed to a paradigm and take it as the starting point for additional research that progress can be made. Without agreement on fundamentals, scientists will not be able to build on the work of others and will spend all their time debating assumptions and first principles”. Pfeffer (1993) emphasizes the formation of a dominant paradigm as a critical prerequisite to scientific advancement. He argues that competing paradigms in a field obstruct the scientific development of the field, as demonstrated by longer time to publication, higher journal rejection rates, fewer cross-citations among fields, fewer collaborations among scholars, and so on. Building on these observations, Pfeffer further calls on the scholars who control the field to develop a set of standards and then maintain theoretical and methodological conformity. In this way, an agreement about the fundamental problems in a specific field and the way to solve them could be achieved.鉴于这些风险，我们如何进一步推动公共行政管理学科的发展？据此有三个途径的提议。一是在科技进步中强调主导范式形成的必要性。根据科尔所说：“只有当科学家们致力于范式，并以此作为出发点进行另外的研究，才能取得进展，知识才会有所累积。如果没有在基本面达成共识，科学家们将不能在工作上与他人建立合作关系，那么在设想和基本原理上的辩论将会浪费掉他们全部的时间”。普费弗（ 1993）强调科技进步的一个关键先决条件是主导范式的形成。他认为，竞争范式阻碍科技进步，虽然长期出版的刊物已证实：较高的期刊的退稿率、引文的穿插使用较少、学者之间的合作减少等等。基于这些现象，普费弗进一步呼吁这些领域的学者们制定出一套标准，然后保持理论和方法的一致性。唯有如此，特定领域中的基本原则问题以及解决方案方可达成一致。Quite different from Pfeffers claim for developing one dominant paradigm, Qiu, Donaldson, and Luo (2012) argue that in social science research, a more feasible way might be to start advancing theory by working within one established paradigm, “paradigm persistence.” They also develop a route of paradigm persistence, from paradigm continuity, paradigm elaboration, to paradigm extension, each implying a different level of theory development under one paradigm. At the beginning, paradigm continuity refines and synthesizes existing theories. Paradigm elaboration then digs deeper into the core of those theories, develops variants, and makes them more complex. At the highest paradigm-extension stage, researchers extend the paradigm to different contexts and develop new theories.邱、唐纳森、罗（2012）他们认为，在社会科学研究中，一个比较可行的办法可能是在已建立的范式模式下推动理论的发展持久范式论。这一点与普费弗主导范式的发展观点完全不同。他们还从范式连续性、范式的阐述研究范式持久性到范式扩展的途径，每一个阶段都意味着一个范式下的不同层次理论的发展。起初，范式连续性不断改进并综合现有的理论。随后范式的阐述对这些理论的核心、差异性发展进行深入探讨，并使其变得更为复杂。在最高范式扩展阶段，研究人员把范式扩展到不同的环境和新的理论发展中。A third approach goes beyond the discussion of the necessarity and possibility of having one dominant paradigm. It holds a pluralistic, met paradigm perspective that simultaneously considers sets of theoretical lenses under different paradigms. This metaparadigm view, according to Gioia and Pitre, “is not a demand for integration of theories or resolution of disagreements or paradoxes that inevitably emerge from theoretical comparison,” but “an attempt to account for many representations related to an area of study by linking theories through their common transition zones” and “constitute a multidimensional representation of the topic area”. Therefore, it actually follows a replication logic: If a certain knowledge on public administration is supported by a number of theories and paradigms, we have more confidence in the robustness of such understanding. Putting together, by “triangulating” across theories and paradigms, a comprehensive understanding of public administration activities could be embraced with more confidence. Indeed, in view of the multi-paradigm nature of contemporary public administration literature, I argue this approach might be more preferred.第三种方法除了对一个主导范式的可能性和必要性探讨外，还囊括了一个多元化的、元范式的角度，同时考虑不同的范式下的理论视角。根据焦亚和彼得雷所说，对于理论比较中必然存在的理论整合、解决分歧、悖论矛盾，在元范