Charles Goodsell's New Vision

Goodsell’s New Vision: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The call to public service cannot be answered by one who lacks a direction, a focus, or a clearly articulated goal: a “vision.” Charles Goodsell discusses the idea of vision at length in his article, A New Vision for Public Administration, but falls short of granting the “new” vision we are promised, giving us little more than fodder for a strategic planning session and recycled ideas from our nation’s founders. The “vision” for the discussion herein is to dismantle Goodsell’s “New Vision” by reducing those ideas into manageable moving parts, identifying the ideas that have been reused, and recycling those pieces that are redundant to the current system.

It cannot go without mention that Goodsell’s

metaphor of “vision” as it relates to eyesight is heavy-handed for this application. Though he attempts to channel one of his contemporaries with the use of this imagery, it muddies the reading and is incomplete in its application. Goodsell uses valuable page space to explain the idea to those unfamiliar with the activity of seeing, and confuses the reader with a multitude of interpretations of the word “vision.”

Moving past the writing style, Goodsell presents us with three views of public administration: the state, the market, and civil society, which he sums up as “the controlling executive, the market reformer, or the participation advocate” (2006, pg. 628). Looking at public administration from these three angles, it begs the question: can we have a strong leader, a minimized system, and citizen participation in one government? According to Paul Light, that was exactly the view Jefferson had for American government, “Jefferson viewed the executive as but one actor in a broader system of government in which people, states, and national government worked together toward progress” (2011, pg. s10). The deep divisions that Goodsell observes in viewing public administration are the byproduct of federalism, which is a product of compromise in the balance of power within our government (Stillman, 1990).

What Goodsell proposes as his “new vision” relies heavily on a sketch of a wagon wheel, the center of which is the role of government and public administration as a system of rule and response. He uses this model to discuss his idea of integrated public governance, though the spokes of his wheels do not indicate the direction of the flow of power between organizations listed and rule/response. Similarly, Goodsell uses another sketch of a rocket as a metaphor for mission, using the term “trajectory” as the “pathway of movement in pursuit of mission” (2006, pg. 630). In summary, according to Goodsell, an organization’s mission is made up from having had a good history, having a current purpose to organize around, and focusing that ideology both internally and externally to stakeholders. This is not new information.

Ultimately, what Goodsell leaves us with is the desired outcome of public trust.

He contends that “[public] administration’s contribution to public trust tends to be invisible because most of its contribution is at a routine or below-the-surface-level” (2006, Pg. 633). Is it the role of the public to recognize the contributions of public administrators or is it better that public administrators be those who are behind the scenes, working tirelessly for the common good? Thomas Jefferson said “in a virtuous government, public offices are what they should be: burdens to those appointed to them […] foreseen to bring with them intense labor and great private loss” (as cited in Light, 2011, pg. s10).

Charles Goodsell’s New Vision for Public Administration is one which has been idealized since the signing of the constitution. He draws greatly from the utopia of government envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and other framers. What he presents to us is a repackaged version of the current system, and the dream of an era of public trust in government. Perhaps the “new vision” of public administration is one in which the public has their eyes closed.

Goodsell, C. (2006). A New Vision for Public Administration. Public Administration Review, 66(4), 623-635.

Light, P. (2011). Federalist No. 1: How would Publius define good government today? Public Administration Review, Special Issue (December), s7-s14.

Stillman, R. (1990). The Peculiar ‘Stateless’ Origins of Public Administration and the Consequences

for Government Today. Public Administration Review, 50(2), 156-167.