Introduction: Public Administration at the Margins

Since the late 1960s, considerable effort has been expended in and by public administration scholars to examine, critique, and attempt to overcome public administration\u27s status as a marginal political, intellectual, and academic enterprise (to use Waldo\u27s [1980] term). These efforts have generated some of the field\u27s most important and insightful literatures, including debates over the research question (Adams, 1992; Box, 1992; McCurdy & Cleary, 1984; White, 1986), the legitimacy problem (Ostrom, 1973; Rohr, 1984; Wamsley et al., 1990), the relevance issue (Alkadry, 2006; Bolton & Stolcis, 2003; LaPorte, 1971), and so on. These scholarly undertakings have generated considerable discourse and understanding about the nature of knowledge generation, the relative historical position of public administration in governance and society, and the complexity of meeting heterogeneous professional, academic, and epistemological expectations. As attendees at the recent Minnowbrook III preconference workshop, we can attest to the persistence of these concerns over the status and legitimacy of public administration in the academy among the field\u27s new scholars.