Thinking Ecologically

Abstract

Writing in 1947, John Gaus argued that changes in the “ecology” of society helped to explain the ebb, flow, and substance of the growth of the administrative state in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. More precisely, Gaus tells us to pay attention to changes in people, place, technology (hard and soft), public philosophy, and crises if we want to understand these dynamics in the United States. They are no less powerful today in helping you understand the long-term (or “secular”) forces that have helped to shape the contemporary context of public management that we discussed in chapter 1.