Public Policy and Administration: The Goals of Rationality and Responsibility

In "Public Policy and Administration...," the late Norton E. Long, espousing that bureaucracies in government engage in both policy making and administration, stresses that administrative organizations should reflect the needs of society. In so doing, these groupings must ask questions, provide facts, and also formulate policy proposals. As a result, "...it is possible to build administrative structures whose accounts of the facts will provide a salutary limitation to the range of policy proposals that politicians will find it politic to espouse." Long's retrospective follows this condensed reprint of his earlier manuscript, with reactions by an academician and a practitioner.