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Chapter 9
Mutual Critiques
among Traditions
Introduction
All theories of public administration seek to manifest a legitimate ethos. However,
because they are normative in nature, none can claim a necessarily “better” approach
than the others. ey are simply dierent. ese competing approaches have been
depicted as legitimacy logics grounded in diering sources of political authority
granted to the governance roles of elected representative, public administrator, and
citizen. ese logics correspond respectively to the Constitutional, Discretionary,
and Collaborative Traditions of public administration and their respective role
conceptu ...