Administration & Society

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Reclaiming John Dewey: Democracy, Inquiry, Pragmatism, and Public Management

Karen G. Evans
Administration & Society 2000; 32; 308
DOI: 10.1177/00953990022019452
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http://aas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/3/308

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Evans / RECLAIMING
ADMINISTRATION
& JOHN
SOCIETY
DEWEY
/ July 2000
This article argues that it would be not only possible, but also prudent, for the field of public
management to reclaim the philosophy of John Dewey as a guiding ethos for its practice. In
Deweys view, the democratic community is responsible for ensuring that each persons capacity for participation and self-government is fully developed. In such a community, citizens would engage in inquiry to choose appropriate action in particular situations. The public manager would participate in this process by contributing his or her expert knowledge but
would not make policy decisions. Todays decentralized and reinvented government presents
an opportunity for the practice to reconnect to citizens in processes such as those advocated
by Dewey.

RECLAIMING JOHN DEWEY

Democracy, Inquiry, Pragmatism,
and Public Management
KAREN G. EVANS
Indiana University Northwest

To reclaim: to make available for human use; to regain possession of; to rescue from an undesirable state.
Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 1993, p. 976

John Deweys death in 1952, in his 93rd year, marked the end of an era in
American education, American philosophy, and American liberalism.
During his professional life, which began with his first publication in
1882, he wrote prolificallyleaving behind sufficient material in the
AUTHORS NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Third National
Public Management Research Conference held at the University of Georgia, October
30-November 1, 1997, and formed a part of the authors unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Governance, Citizenship, and the New Sciences: Lessons from Dewey and Follett on Realizing Democratic Administration, Blacksburg, Virginia, August 1998. The author would like
to thank colleagues at the Center for Public Administration and Policy, Virginia Tech, and the
anonymous reviewers of Administration & Society for their reading and helpful criticism of
this work.
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 3, July 2000 308-328
2000 Sage Publications, Inc.

308

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form of books, essays, speeches, and reviews to fill 37 volumes of edited

text. Yet, within 25 years of his death, his unique instrumentalism had
disappeared from university philosophy curricula, and his educational
philosophy had become a target for those who seek a scapegoat for the
decline in American education (Ryan, 1995; Westbrook, 1991, p. 542 ff.).
Even before his death, Deweys radical vision of democracy was attacked
and supplanted by democratic realists of the 1940s and 1950s, and his
reconstruction of philosophy as social criticism had fallen victim to the
popularity of both logical positivism and analytical philosophy (Westbrook, 1991, pp. 537-538). John Dewey, once Americas most respected
public philosopher, had almost completely dropped out of our view.
The purpose of this articleto begin a process of reclaiming the work
of John Dewey as a frame for theorizing about public administration and
public managementmirrors, in some respects, a similar reclamation
project by communitarian political theorists and postmodern philosophers. According to Ryan (1995), the renewal of interest in Deweyan
thinking in the last two decades can be attributed in large part to these very
different streams of research (pp. 352-365). This project differs from
those, however, in that its emphasis is on the consistent themes Dewey
threaded throughout the body of his work, not relying on just those bits of
work that offer support to the particular positions of communitarianism and
postmodernism and that ignore or discount the rest of Deweys thinking.
To reclaim something involves making it once again available to do its
work. There is also a sense of rescuing something from the dustbin of
obscurity, of restoring and refining something discarded before its usefulness is over. Additionally, there is a nuance in the verb of claiming
againof recalling something to its proper place or context. It is with all
of these variant definitions in mind that we will examine the Deweyan
themes of democracy, inquiry, and pragmatism as these can be related to
public management.
Although regarded by history as a progressive reformer, John Dewey
was not an advocate of elaborate administrative structure. He preferred
process-oriented participative democracy and bottom-up policy making,
as is confirmed by his approach to education. The emphasis on the value of
expertise so common in the view of other noted progressives is missing in
Dewey; he did not privilege expert opinion over other opinion but saw the
usefulness of both in forming public policy. Whereas other reformers
advocated the bureaucratic form of government agencies that we now criticize, Dewey worked to promote more legitimate democratic authority
over less legitimate technocratic authority (Stever, 1993, p. 438).

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He could hardly deny the economic success enjoyed by the rising corporations of his time, but he worried about the effects of corporate life on
their members and about the danger of technocracy (Stever, 1993, p. 438;
cf. Dewey, The Later Works [LW], Vol. 5).1 Although Dewey respected
science as a project, it was sciences method that he admired most, not its
tendency to establish deterministic foundations. The method and mindset
of inquiry, fueled by a creative intelligence kindled in childhood education, could form a framework for people to meet the problematic situations found in their ordinary life experiences and in more complex or collective levels of experience. In Deweys view of pragmatismalthough
he preferred the terms instrumentalism or experimentalism as a designator
for his approachwe may be able to reclaim an illuminating way of thinking about public management and its place in our American scheme of
governance.

JOHN DEWEY AND DEMOCRATIC CAPACITY

When we talk about democracy today, we usually describe a political
system with such features as broad suffrage, a rough political equality
connecting one person to one vote, majority rule, and a liberal constitutional system protecting individual rights. In a discussion of our American
democracy, we add such concepts as representation, interest group liberalism, and an economic base of capitalism mixed with features of a welfare
state. Although these elements all appear on one level of analysis in the
Deweyan understanding of democracy, they could by no means be said to
embody the meaning of democracy as he used the word.
Deweys view of democracy encompassed a much broader and deeper
concept than that of political structure, institutions, and form. The difference begins at the very foundation of democratic theorythe definition of
the individual and his or her relationship with society and the state. Political structures, including those we associate with public management, do
not exist solely for the purpose of economic efficiency in their operations
but, more important, to help develop the ability of the members of a community to live lives that are imbued with a rich aesthetic sense of significance and worth (Alexander, 1995, p.153; cf. LW, Vol. 2, Vol. 13).
Liberal political theory is based on a notion of the individual in a state
of nature and endowed with natural rights prior to the beginning of civil
society. Social groups and governance arise when individuals agree to
give up their perfect natural freedom for some degree of security because

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rights-bearing individuals cannot live peacefully together without a contract defining a relationship among them and protecting their individual
rights. Such an understanding of the individual leads naturally to an economic system driven by a marketplace of goods and services and a political system where the common good is defined and public policy is driven
by a marketplace of interests and influences.
Dewey critiqued this notion of individualism and posed a new understanding of the term in a series of articles in the New Republic in
1929-1930, later published as Individualism, Old and New (LW, Vol. 5,
pp. 41- 123). The old American individual is lost, according to Dewey,
both economically and politically, and our retention of the assumptions
and illusions associated with that lost individual has allowed true individualism to be eroded (Campbell, 1995, p. 160). Participation in the corporate American economic life leaves people dissatisfied, unfulfilled, and
insecure. Confined to economic roles that do not challenge their intelligence or involve them creatively, workers lose touch with their creative
capabilities, and capitalists act as parasites (LW, Vol. 11, p. 158) in their
deflection of social consequences to private gain (LW, Vol. 5, p. 67).
Having not only lost control of the means of production, in a Marxist
sense, workers have also lost any sense of creative involvement in their
work. Although they spend most of their waking hours in the corporate
body, they are not connected in a meaningful way with each other through
that association.
Political activity also leaves the American individual lost. Political issues,
as inscribed in party platforms and presented in campaigns, Dewey argued,
are characterized by their irrelevant artificiality (LW, Vol. 2, p. 312).
Meaningful political discourse, civic participation, and involvement in a
varied associational life in the community have been crowded out of
American life. As a result of these disconnects, people no longer have
contact with the social place that gives their individuality meaning. The
restlessness and apparent rootlessness of the American individual are
not causes but rather symptoms of this loss of meaningful contact with
others.
Dewey took the position that society predates and gives rise to the individual, rather than that individuals, through their contracts with each other,
give rise to social groups. The rights of the individual are a social product.
They are not the negative protections from encroachment by others or by
the state as we are accustomed to thinking, but rather, are positive
rightsthe equal freedom of each to develop his or her inherent capacities
to the utmost degree: Only in social groups does a person have a chance
to develop individuality (Dewey, The Middle Works [MW], Vol. 15, p. 176).

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Dewey argued that the notion of general opposition between the social
and the individualof conflict on a broad scale among individuals and
between society and individualsis a reflection and false generalization
of particular conflicts that do arise, such as class conflicts, wars, and the
tensions resulting from change (LW, Vol. 7). Such conflicts are exacerbated by the old concept of individualism. The task for American society,
after the last remnants of that concept are eradicated, is to develop the
social space where we can recognize the individual as being in process,
as developing in the course of social interaction and by means of societys
facilities (Campbell, 1995, p. 164). For Dewey, then, democracy was first
a social, and only subsequently a political, phenomenon. He saw democracy as an ethical conception, and upon its ethical significance is based its
significance as governmental. Democracy is a form of government only
because it is a form of moral and spiritual association (Dewey,
1888/1993, p. 59). Democracys ethical significance is grounded in the
concept of equality defined as the freedom generated by society for individuals to develop fully the potential each has for participation in the common life of all (Dewey, 1888/1993, p. 63; cf. MW, Vol. 5, p. 394, MW, Vol. 9,
p. 270; and LW, Vol. 11, p. 25).
Because of its ethical nature, the spirit and practice of democracy must
infuse every aspect of experience, offering the best chance we have of
making sense of our contingent world. In fact, the contingent nature of
reality demands an approach to shared living that parallels Deweys idea
of democracy. Having denied the applicability of eternal truths and inherent and universal values, Dewey saw the world as a universe in which
there is real uncertainty and contingency, a world which is not all in, and
never will be, a world which in some respects is incomplete and in the
making, and which in these respects may be made this way or that according as men judge, prize, love, and labor (Dewey, 1919/1993, p. 44).
The key to developing and maintaining a common life, Dewey argues,
is communication and a certain kind of education. According to Alexander, Dewey saw democracy as involving the use of social intelligence to
realize each members potentialities as much as possible to live a life
imbued with a deep, underlying sense of intrinsic meaning and value
(1995, p. 133). Communication in a democracy is on a deeper level than
the mere transmission of facts; it is the glue that binds the social group
together in spite of the differing interests of the members. School is the
locus for the transmission of critical information from one generation to
the next and a place where young people can learn how to communicate
with each other on this deeper level and work together to meet challenges.

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Society exists not only by transmission, by communication, but it may

fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication. . . . Men live in a
community by virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common
(MW, Vol. 9, p. 7).
Concurrent with the process of communication as the lifeblood of
democracy is Deweys notion of the bottom-up rather than top-down
direction of organizing the democratic community. This was at the heart of
his educational philosophy. The school was to be a center for living and
learning cooperatively, engaging the curiosity and imagination of children
through purposeful activity with other learners. The interests of the child
were, he thought, fourfold: the interest in conversation or communication; in inquiry, or finding out things; in making things, or construction;
and in artistic expression (MW, Vol. 1, p. 30). Dewey saw the school as
the place where people learn how to thinkhow to recognize, approach,
and solve problemsnot what to think.
Citizens were, therefore, to be shaped by education, prepared to take an
active stance vis--vis their environmentto engage in an active process
of inquiry. With such preparation, communities could both retain useful
traditions and also change and adapt. And, most important, they could
provide for the development and participation of each individual in determining the course of the communitys unfolding future.
Expertise plays an important, although not predominant, role in collective decision making. Dewey was concerned with the glut of unorganized
information provided by the advance of communication technologyin
his day, the circulation of newspapers and magazines, the telegraph, and
the telephone. He saw experts as contributing to cooperative inquiry not
by framing and executing policies, but in discovering and making known
the facts, upon which the former depend (LW, Vol. 2, p. 365). Experts
have the training and developed intelligence to do the research and present
alternatives to, as Wildavsky (1979) puts it, speak truth to power, but
they may not properly determine or dictate policy (Campbell, 1995, p. 205;
cf. MW, Vol. 10, pp. 406-407). For making the difficult, value-laden
choices among alternatives, there is no expertise, as such; decisions that
will affect lives and livelihoods belong to the democratic and cooperative
process of social inquiry involving all who might be affected.
Small wonder, then, that early scholars and practitioners of public
management found little value in Deweys democratic theory as a contribution to the then-developing understanding of public administration. The
self-image of public servants was tied up in their claim to expertise. The

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legitimacy of their administrative practices was founded in their claim to

science, technology, and special knowledge and an absence of political
activity in the implementation process.

INQUIRY: METHODS OF KNOWING AND ACTING

Dewey hoped that the policy process would eventually be democratized through the application of the scientific process to value problems by
citizens in a process he termed inquiry. He defined inquiry as the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one
that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the original situation into a unified whole (LW, Vol. 12, p. 108; cf.;
Alexander, 1995, p. 139; LW, Vol. 4, p. 183; LW, Vol. 12, p. 121). The situation is not an object or event, or a set of objects or events, in isolation, but
rather, objects or events in connection with a contextual whole (LW,
Vol. 12, p. 72). A situation can be viewed as an episode [or field] of disequilibrium, instability, imbalance, disintegration, disturbance, dysfunction, [or] breakdown . . . in the ongoing activities of some given organism/environment system (Burke, 1994, p. 22; cf. Lavine, 1995, pp.
42-43). The situation is confused, obscure, or conflicted and engenders
real doubt, and this leads us to set in motion an inquiry that aims to ease
that doubt (LW, Vol. 12, pp. 109-110).
Inquiry is not a means or method to find the truth; it is the means or
method to reduce doubt and to restore balance to a problematic situation,
to let us get on with the task at hand. It is the means to the active reduction
of uncertainty to such an extent that tentative next steps can be taken.
Because of the existential nature of the transformation directed by inquiry,
the point of transformation is temporary, and knowledge is partial and particular (LW, Vol. 12, p. 121; cf. Gouinlock, 1995, p. 78).
To understand the meaning of inquiry, it is necessary to examine
Deweys view of knowledge. His three principal works on metaphysics
and epistemology are Experience and Nature (1925/1958; also LW, Vol. 1),
The Quest for Certainty (1929; also LW, 4), and Logic: The Theory of
Inquiry (1938; also LW, Vol. 12). The underlying premises of these works
include the futility of seeking absolute knowledge and certainty (despite
the acknowledged fact that these goals, although unproductive in the long
run, are deeply embedded in human nature); the valuing of knowing as an
activity over knowledge as an end state; seeing cognitive theory as another
form of technological activity or practice; and an epistemological stance

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emphasizing active engagement with nature or experience as the source of

useful staging areas from which problematic situations are resolved
through a coevolution of the situation and the inquirer.
Dewey argued that the world is contingentthat experience must be
the basis for knowingand that experience is never merely passive. He
saw experience as primarily a process of undergoing; a process of standing something; of suffering and passion, of affection, in the literal sense of
these words (Dewey, 1917/1981, p. 63). But he saw people as more than
receptors of experience; they are agents . . . trying experiments . . . concerned with undergoing in a way which may influence what is still to happen (Dewey, 1917/1981, p. 63). The creative intelligence of humans
developed in knowing and experiencing in this active way improves their
ability to achieve some level of control over the contingencies of life.
Pragmatic thinking is thinking toward future consequences rather than
back toward the premises of the past and choosing among potential consequences when acting in the present. Where both empiricist and idealist
philosophies had concentrated on a retrospective understanding of experience, Dewey lauds anticipation and projection as distinctive features of
human doings and undergoings . . . [and] highlights the future, the forward-looking character of human experience (West, 1989, p. 90).
According to West, one significant feature of Deweys metaphysics is
that it accentuates the role of critical intelligence in human experience
(1989, p. 97). Critical intelligence aims to overcome obstacles, resolve
problems, and project realizable possibilities in pressing predicaments
(West, 1989, p. 97). The notion of critical intelligence may be associated
with the scientific method, but the results of science do not constitute disclosure of the real (West, 1989, p. 97). Dewey saw science instrumentally, as the best tool we conscious organisms have to cope with our environment (West, 1989, pp. 97-98).
Although Dewey applauded science for offering rigorous methods for
solving problems and acquiring good information about the way the world
works, he stressed that science is not the only means to know the world.
The voice of science is not privileged over other voices; it is but one voice
in the choir of experiencing the world. Art, for example, is an equally valid
means of experience, and the activity of knowing through art enriches
human understanding (LW, Vol. 10; cf. Gouinlock, 1995, p. 77).
If we abandon the quest for certainty that has been philosophys principal occupation, we can accept knowingthe meaning attributed to events
and objects by the community of inquirersas the standard by which the
truth of an event or object is evaluated. Dewey would have us substitute the

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concept warranted assertability for that of truth. He agreed with William

James that truth does not inhere in objects or events but, rather, consists of
the meaning we ascribe to them. As James put it, The truth of an idea is
not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes
true, is made true by events (James, 1907, in Thayer, 1982, p. 229). We
can make statements or assertions about events or situations that are warranted by our assignment of meaning and our agreement as to fact to such
an extent that we can base action on them. We can then take an active
stance with respect to and cooperatively engage in making sense of an
inherently uncertain, unstable, and processual world. Assumptions that
certainty and absolute, objective truth are discoverable, Dewey thought,
obstruct the kind of knowing that allows active interventionagencyin
the world.
Through the ages, we have posited that there is an objective reality,
characterized by its completeness and order, and that, through science, we
could discover facts about that realityfacts that, as science perfected
them, would come to correspond more and more closely with that reality.
Dewey argues that what is experienced is what is realthat there is no
perfect and eternal truth to which our discovered facts can correspond. If
there were such a perfect, unified, and complete world, there would be no
room for human agency, for freedom (LW, Vol. 4, p. 199). It is the contingent, experiential world that gives us the space and the incentive to attempt
to look ahead to the probable consequences of our freely chosen actions and
make decisions that exert some degree of control over those consequences.
Dewey, in Experience and Nature, describes this experiential world in
this manner:
We live in a world which is an impressive and irresistible mixture of sufficiencies, tight completenesses, order, recurrences which make possible
prediction and control, and [italics added] singularities, ambiguities,
uncertain possibilities, processes going on to consequences yet indeterminate. They are mixed not mechanically but vitally like the wheat and tares of
the parable. We may recognize them separately but we cannot divide them,
for unlike wheat and tares they grow from the same root. Qualities have
defects as necessary conditions of their excellencies; the instrumentalities
of truth are the causes of error; change gives meaning to permanence and
recurrence makes novelty possible. A world that was wholly risky would be
a world in which adventure is impossible, and only a living world can
include death. (1958, pp. 47-48)

The world we experience is real but not fixed. It is a world in need of

transformation in order to render it more coherent and more secure.

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Knowing an experienced world is instrumental to rearranging it and giving it a form that is more useful to our purposes. But knowing in this sense
is not something done apart from the world: it takes place experimentally
inside experienced situations (Hickman, 1990, p. 37, italics added).
Inquiry does not give rise to general or universal answers or solutions; it is
specific to a particular situation . . . a continuing process . . . never completely settled (Hickman, 1990, p. 38). And, the knowing that arises from
inquiry cannot be separated from the practice that gives rise to it in each
particular situation (Hickman, 1990, p. 38).
In the context of a metaphysics of contingency and an epistemology of
knowing as an active practice, theory and practice take on a different relationship. Classical philosophy had placed a premium on theory, contemplation, and wisdom and had minimized the importance of the practical
wisdom associated with practice. Dewey overturned this hierarchy. For
him, theory became simply another form of practice, one that enriches
possibilities and opens up new aims, or ends-in-viewa different, but
not necessarily better, means of shaping a contingent world (Hickman,
1990, p. 119). Theory can be seen as yet another tool to be used in inquiry:
The framing of practical goalsends-in-view as opposed to ultimate,
transcendent endsis devised in actual problematic situations. . . . We
cannot envision a goal without . . . adopting a program of action to reach
it. . . . Thus means and ends are organically related in an unbroken continuum (Diggins, 1994, p. 241). Theory and practice are, therefore, different phases of a stretch of intelligent inquiry, with one emphasizing thinking, planning, and evaluating, and the other principally involved with
executing the resulting insights (Hickman, 1990, p. 111).
According to Dewey, the role of philosophy had to change from one of
puzzling over eternal truths to one of inspiring vision and imagination in
the course of meeting ordinary problems. Reflection alone cannot hope to
resolve the issues of a contingent world. However, in a complicated and
perverse world, action which is not informed with vision, imagination,
and reflection, is more likely to increase confusion and conflict than to
straighten things out (Dewey, 1917/1981, p. 95). It is because the world is
contingent that philosophy must, he concluded, climb down from the
ivory towers of academe and provide the method and vision that will assist
in dealing with the problems of men (Dewey, 1917/1981, p. 95).
Richard Rorty is often credited with bringing Deweys work back into
academic credibility.2 He accomplished this by tying Deweys antifoundationalist stance with his own postmodern neo-pragmatist philosophy. However, Rorty has also sought to separate Deweys metaphysics and

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epistemology from the balance of his work and to discredit these aspects,
especially those that do not lend support to his neo-pragmatist interpretation of liberalism (Rorty, 1982, pp. 72ff.). Rorty argues that, late in his
life, Dewey became disenchanted with his naturalist metaphysics, commenting to a colleague in a letter that, if he could, he would rewrite Experience and Nature because there was so much misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the work; furthermore, Rorty contends that it would have
been good if Dewey had been able to do so (1982, p. 72; cf. Dewey &
Bentley, 1964, p. 64; Sleeper, 1986, pp. 106 ff.; Westbrook, 1991, p. 345).
Other present-day pragmatists denounce Rortys appropriation of parts
of Deweys work and what they perceive as his assumption that he can
speak for Dewey when Dewey has spoken quite exhaustively for himself
(Gouinlock, 1995, p. 72; Langsdorf & Smith, 1995, p. 7; Lavine, 1995, p. 47;
Macke, 1995, pp. 155-156; among others).
According to Hook (1927/1977), in his doctoral dissertation, the philosophical position of Deweys instrumentalism is enriched by its
epistemological and metaphysical implications, and Hook demonstrates
that these in no way are nave and presently regrettable trappings, but integral to the internal consistency and external applicability of pragmatism.
Deweys introduction to the published dissertation reinforces his continuing faith in the positions he took in Experience and Nature and The Quest
for Certainty. Dewey certainly struggled to make clear his understanding
of the tentative nature of the reality in which humans act, and he was disappointed in his failure to do so. However, abstracting his metaphysical
works, admittedly difficult to read and understand, from his works on
democracy and ethics leaves Deweys social criticism without the setting
that makes his view unique and useful in coping with the trappings of the
modern world. The metaphysical underpinnings of pragmatism provide a
coherent thread of thought around which one can theorize about public
management and administration.

THE CONTOURS OF THE PRAGMATIC TURN

John Deweys instrumentalism does not provide a prescription for public management; it provides, instead, a context in which to think about the
future direction of public management. Todays downsizing, privatizing,
and reinvention of government movements reflect a lack of confidence in
government institutions that are organized on the old liberal principles.
The isolation and mobility of individuals, a condition Dewey recognized

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80 years ago as enlarged by information and transportation technologies

(and that now is further exacerbated by such technologies as the Internet),
has led to increased voter apathy and feelings of helplessness (Dewey,
1954, p. 126; Ryan, 1995, p. 286; cf. Stever, 1993, pp. 422-423). To deal
with these conditions, we have to rethink our relationships with each other
and the world. Pragmatism offers a ground against which we can accomplish this rethinking.
The technologies of the early 20th century cried out for some kind of
collective control, and, in Deweys view, liberal assumptions about the
individual in combination with the replacement of other associations with
corporate life obstructed efforts to achieve that control (LW, Vol. 5, pp.
72-73; cf. Stever, 1993, p. 426). Greater and greater areas formerly under
some kind of collective control have been lost to experts whose narrowly
defined specialties and privileged knowledge have given them an overwhelming influence in the arena of public discourse. The privileging of
the voice of the expert, the development and use of technical languages,
and the erosion of communication across publics have widened the gap
between government and citizens (Dewey, 1927/1954, p. 152). The ordinary citizens voice has been drowned out, and her participation in decisions and policies affecting the common good has been reduced to meaningless ritual.
Dewey argued that democratic community could be enhanced by
means of scientific method and inquiry; he held that a well-educated democratic community has both the capability to control technology and use it
to enhance the life of all, rather than the life of the few, as well as an ethical
or moral imperative to do so. He recognized the process qualities of both
science and democratic community. According to Lavine, Dewey saw that
scientific method and democratic process are the processes which critique, control, and enhance process, but they are not themselves dissolved
by it (1995, p. 45). Dewey conceptualized democratic processes as a
search procedure in which we look for policies, laws, and administrative
techniques that will allow us to continue a common life in a way that all of
us can find fruitful and fulfilling (Ryan, 1995, p. 313). That procedure
exhibited the best of scientific technique combined with the moral obligations arising out of living together.
Pragmatisms connection of theory to practice brings a significant
change in meaning to both. Rather than visualizing theory as something
outside of practiceinforming practice from aboveDewey shows
thought as functioning on the same ontological level as action,
and . . . thinking and acting as continuous events . . . thinking is not merely

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instrumental . . . but . . . it issues in practical knowledge that is ontologically consequential (Sleeper, 1986, p. 65; cf. Hickman, 1990, p. 48). The
work of knowledge is to transform the experienced reality of ordinary
events from a status of problematic to satisfying. Such a task is possible
because, as Sleeper puts it, reality is always in process and is not fixed in
character, which means that judgment is efficacious in the reconstruction
and transformation of the real (1986, p. 63). In Deweys pragmatism,
knowledge becomes a form of action. . . . To be and to know is to do and
to act (Diggins, 1994, p. 219).
For Dewey, then, theories are tools, and tools, theories. Thinking takes
one outside the immediate problematic situation to get leverage for
understanding it (MW, Vol. 10, p. 327). The application of a tool
becomes part of the active productive skill brought to bear on the situation. The purpose of the tool is to reorganize the experience in some way
that will overcome its disparity, its incompatibility, or its inconsistency
(Hickman, 1990, p. 21). Public management in a democratic society presents conditions wherein both kinds of tools have important and reinforcing tasks. The context of the community of inquirers as well as the contributions of both theory and practical application can enhance the ability of
public managers to find and serve the public good.
Tools are theories in that, until they have been applied and the results
evaluated, it is impossible to credit them with resolving a situation. Theories are tools in that they are useful for sorting out and deciding among
possible actions and consequences the one that will best resolve a situation; they help organize experience (Shields, 1996, p. 396). According
to Shields, pragmatists view and judge theories as instruments in problem solving, and, as a result, pragmatism is a philosophy that is married
to the concrete, chaotic, messy world of experiencea place where PA
practitioners work and solve problems (1996, p. 395).
Dewey also reconstructed the meaning of cause and effect. In pragmatic inquiry, there is a recognition that causality is not linear, that events
or actions we label effects cannot be traced straight back to events or
actions that we label causes. These labels have lost meaning in a world
without objective and absolute foundations, and, therefore, it is better to
think in terms of means and consequences, terms that are a part of the
everyday vocabulary of public managers. Lavine tells us that such a
vocabulary of means and consequences focuses on change introduced
by human agency (1995, p. 43). The classical tradition in philosophy
had a coherent view of being, the good, and reason; but the view was
mistaken, and as such it was a bar to enriched, fulfilling conduct. In

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redefining the nature and tasks of intelligence, Dewey made a massive

contribution to our self understanding and to our powers of action
(Gouinlock, 1995, p. 86).
Critical intelligence applied to social problems in collective inquiry
allows human actors to bring about change. The application of judgment,
especially appreciative judgment, yields policy outcomes that reflect
both facts and values (Vickers, 1995, pp. 86 ff.). Vickers theory of appreciative judgment parallels Deweys contention that value judgments cannot be separated from facts in collective decision making. Pragmatism,
precisely because it is concerned with the consequences of critical and
reflective activity . . . cannot assume a neutral philosophical stance
(Macke, 1995, p. 157). It dissolves all such dualismsfact/value, policy/
administrationseeing, instead, a continuum of experiences.
All inquiry involves evaluationsocial inquiry even more than scientific. As Campbell explains, social problems are fundamentally more
complex . . . [they] are more deeply rooted in history . . . [and] social
inquiry lags behind or develops more slowly than other branches of
inquiry (1995, pp. 195-196). For Dewey, all scientific inquiries, regardless of their field of focus, are natural, situational, grounded in problems,
integrations of theory and practice, and evaluative. . . . The integration of
particular, non-expert, experience, fostered by the establishment of interaction and discussion, enables the community to better use the unique
insights of its individuals who are attempting to fill the role of moral
prophet (Campbell, 1995, p. 199; cf. LW, Vol. 7, p. 343).

DEWEYS INSTRUMENTALISM
AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
Why reclaim Dewey now? And, perhaps more to the point, why should
the public management or public administration communities, as opposed
to some other field or fields, attempt it? After all, these same communities
rejected or ignored Dewey in the 1940s, turning as they did to a more
managerialist or behaviorist stance in developing the practices of governance of their time (and our own). By equating professional expertise with
infallible and, thus, superior science, public management created the
box within which it is today trapped. Through its disdain for Deweys (and
others) embrace of democratic themes, the field has lost touch with the
citizen and finds itself distanced from the power of the sovereign embodied in the citizen.

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In a time characterized by attacks on public institutions, taking a stance

toward change guided by pragmatism transforms the problems of public
management into opportunities for collective inquiry and agency. If public management fails to encourage the development and expression of the
collective intelligence of citizens, if it fails to hear the voices of todays
moral prophets, it stands to lose their unique insights into complex problems that will effect their lives and those of generations to come. For those
in positions where organizational change and development take place, one
challenge is to find effective ways to bring about meaningful citizen
involvement. Deweys approach to community offers one avenue to
explore toward that end.
The recent literature of public management stresses several problematic areas that seem to cry out for the application of Deweys approach to
social inquiry (among others, see Bozeman, 1993; Frederickson, 1996;
and Kettl & Milward, 1996). There is a rising concern, for example, that
there appears to be no one coherent theoretical base for public management research. Democracy and citizen participation, or the lack of these in
public organizations, present another disturbing situation. The relationship between academics theorizing about public management and practitioners in the field is yet another problem calling for our attention.
Deweys view of the world as dynamic process, his understanding of truth,
and his commitment to democratic social processes offer invaluable
insights into these problems.
A Deweyan model of democratic inquiry and policy making extends
beyond Peters (1996) alternative to todays much maligned bureaucracythe participatory state (pp. 25 ff.). It is perhaps counterintuitive to
suggest that fewer, rather than more, overhead controls on the policy process might yield results that reduce uncertainty and come closer to determining and serving the public good. Public managers hesitate before
inviting further citizen participation in policy decisions, but that might be
just the wrong way to go. Reich argues that rather than making and implementing decisions, it is the managers role to manage an ongoing process
of public deliberation and educationa by-product of which is a series of
mutual adaptations, agreements, compromises, and, on occasion, stalemates (1990, p. 8). It is the leaders role in a democracy to engage the
publicsharpening the publics understanding of what is at stake, alternative courses of action for coping with it, benefits and disadvantages following from each course, and why one course is preferable . . . [creating] a
mandate for action (Reich, 1990, p. 49). Reichs portrayal of democratic
leadership is certainly reminiscent of Deweys portrait of the experts role

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in community inquirythat of providing the facts and the context in

which collective problem solving can be attempted.
Due to its complexity and the nature of its consequences, public policy
making should have access to as wide a variety of inputs as possible. As
Bryson, Ackerman, Eden, and Finn (1996) demonstrate, the public policy
arena is replete with what they call critical incidents, situations in which
emergent issues vocally demand attention. As official policy makers have
a limited ability to attend to multiple issues simultaneously, the change
process itself becomes disjointed, and resulting actions for change are
often simply window dressing, failing to address the underlying issues
and concerns of citizens (cf. Baumgartner & Jones, 1993). Citizen participation modeled on Deweys conceptualization of collective inquiry and
democratic decision-making publics would be useful in dealing with the
issues we face in this time of transition. Public agencies thus conceived
would be conditioned on a normative dependence among all parties
concerned with the outcomes of the policy processan enabling or
empowering relationship, rather than one characterized, as is so often true
today, by mistrust, anger, open hostility, and conflict (Wamsley, 1990, p. 146).
Public agencies of this sort would have as a basis for their relating to
citizens a belief in the inherent capacity of those citizens to learn, communicate, and participate in resolving their common problems. As Stivers
argues, societal learning aims at individual and social judgment capacity,
the fostering of mutual respect, and the recognition of mutual interdependence. . . . [It] is open-ended, contextual, participative, and focused on
understanding and synthesis (1990, p. 263). The role of public management in such a context moves from one of making decisions and taking
action for others to doing those things with others, lending whatever aid is
necessary to increase the capacity of those others to be involved in creating their own futures, as individuals and as members of communities.
What Dewey offers public management, then, is a subtle change of
emphasis and a new understanding of responsibility. Recognition of the
world as contingent, as a process rather than as an object, leads us to view
our various roles in the process of living together as a community more
responsibly. Public management as a professional practice can build a
bridge between people as responsible individuals and people as part of a
responsible community, or it can build barriers that make connection and
community impossible. The expertise of public managers can be
employed to provide facts, outline alternatives, and identify consequences
for a public and inclusive decision-making process, or it can be employed
to reduce citizens feelings of capability or efficacy to the point that they

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no longer feel they have anything to offer. The development and exercise
of expertise can contribute to strengthening community and democratic
process, or it can contribute to eroding these; our choice of how to use the
tools of our trade makes a difference in the direction the future takes in
America.
Dewey was often criticized during his lifetime for describing processeseducational policies or the processes of democratic inquiry
without stating what the proper ends of those processes ought to be (Ryan,
1995). His pivotal works on education, The School and Society (MW, Vol. 1,
pp. 5-109) and Democracy and Education (MW, Vol. 9) discuss the broad
purposes of education and the negative consequences to democratic society if educational techniques like memorization and recitation were
allowed to continue to dominate the classroom. They do not include specific teaching plans and syllabi; they encourage teachers, rather, to experiment and to facilitate their students experimentation with the materials of
the world of experience. Teaching mathematics and teamwork through a
building project or history and culture through such projects as weaving or
artfit the experience to the capabilities and interests of the childwere
the kinds of suggestions Dewey made for education. He emphasized helping students learn the skills of joint problem solving, not encouraging them
to compete with each other and insisting that they work and learn alone.
Today, as we face problems with our educational system, we are facing
many of these same issues again. The emphasis placed on standardized
tests and competition between students for academic scholarships and
awards mirrors the shortcomings Dewey identified with the 19th century
classroom full of students reciting words of the past without necessarily
understanding their meaning and impact. This turning back the clock in
educational techniques worries the best teachers (Mathews, 1997). It not
only further erodes the possibility of cooperative endeavors but also
ill-prepares future citizens for their roles in the policy process, so it should
worry us as well.
The general uneasiness we feel about our institutions of governance,
the mistrust and apathy of our citizens, and the separation between the theory and practice of public management are all symptoms of loss. As public
management has distanced itself from those it serves, that loss can only
intensify. Although it would be impractical to suggest a return to service
delivery through mechanisms like the settlement houses of the turn of the
century, public agencies could work toward adopting a stance toward the
community that recreates the ambiance of the settlement house movementa sense of partnership between the agency and the citizen.

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Democracy in America, as Tocqueville noted in the 1830s, is the result

of a beautiful, but fragile, experiment. We are the inheritors of a tradition
of government emphasizing a delicate balance between inclusiveness and
the chaos of mass democracy, between the common interest and our separate interests, and between efficient action and meaningful action. We
have tended to think that that delicate mechanism would go on forever
without adjustment. This was just what Dewey, toward the end of his life,
warned against (Dewey, 1939/1968). He argued that, to preserve what is
best from our traditional past, we have to re-create by deliberate and
determined endeavor the kind of democracy which in its origin . . . was
largely the product of a fortunate combination of men and circumstances
(Dewey, 1939, in The Philosopher of the Common Man, 1968, p. 221). He
described that democracy as
belief in the ability of human experience to generate the aims and methods
by which further experience will grow in ordered richness . . . the faith that
the process of experience is more important than any specific result
attained . . . [and that it] is the sole way of living which believes wholeheartedly in the process of experience as end and as means. (Dewey, 1939, in The
Philosopher of the Common Man, 1968, pp. 227-228)

Public management has a role to play in achieving this kind of democracy in America. Our challenge is to define that role, and the reemergence
of the work of John Dewey, taken as a whole, can assist us in meeting that
challenge.
NOTES
1. Unless otherwise specified, citations of Deweys work will be designated according to
the collection of his work edited by Jo Ann Boydston and published by the Southern Illinois
University Press and will be indicated as The Middle Works (MW) or The Later Works (LW).
2. Rorty is not alone in this revival of interest in Deweys work and in pragmatism. Others
include biographers Robert Westbrook, Alan Ryan, Larry Hickman, and James Campbell;
philosopher Raymond Boisvert; and James Stever and Patricia Shields, who make the connection between Dewey and pragmatism and public administration.

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Karen G. Evans is an assistant professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University Northwest. Her research interests center on democratic theory, pragmatism, administrative structure and reform, and the new sciences. Her work has
been published in Public Administration Review and Administrative Theory and
Praxis. She has also coauthored entries in The International Encyclopedia of Public
Policy and Administration and a chapter in Frederickson and Johnstons (1999)
Public Management Reform and Innovation: Research, Theory and Application
(University of Alabama Press).

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