Wilson's Demarcation of Field: Outline for Reconsideration

  • Published : 2009.05.22

Abstract

Dualized program for building Public Administration scholarship in Korea has been, in a sense, a result of theoretical tension between the two positions, politics/administration dualism vs. politics/administration monism. The program has maintained its integrity by its dependence on a foundational question, "Is administration a different field of action from politics?" Korean community for the study of public administration has maintained its oneness by internally asking this question even though the two external philosophical positions were relatively indubitable. Strating from the well-known changes in the community, this brief outline for the future full exegesis tries to read carefully one point shown in the second chapter of one of the most seminal proposals for foundation of modern Public Administration, one paragrahp in the second chapter of "The Study of Administration" by Woodrow Wilson. What was the contemporary meaning of Wilson's classic distinction made in 1887? Keeping this research question in our mind, we will attempt to prepare for the full understanding of a kind of internal distinction Wilson explicitly draws between the constitutional and the administrative.

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