Policy Analysts in the Bureaucracy

For many years, the public administration community and the newer field of public analysis were at war, fighting battles in the way that academicians sometimes do-with disparaging statements about the intellectual prowess of the other and with acerbic comments about the relevancy and effectiveness of the opposing approach. Within these debates, rigid stereotypes were used to frame the arguments. To the public community, public administrators were functionaries who could not see beyond the limitations of their narrow techniques and their organizational myopia. The public administration community viewed the public people as Chicago-school economists in new dress-individuals who were driven by their maximizing…