Utopias, ideal-types, paradigms, models and good practices: repertoire of conceptual tools for public administration?

Abstract

We have concluded the previous chapter with More’s masterpiece which introduced the notion of utopia and utopian thinking as a way of practising teleological thinking in the study of public governance. In Aristotle’s framework of the four causes (introduced in Chapter 2 and examined for application to PA in Chapter 6), this approach entails starting the analysis from the final cause – that is, the goal or end, the reason why something is brought about – to then turn to the other causes, like the material cause (what enables a thing to be transformed from a potentiality into actuality) and the efficient cause (the forces that bring about change). A utopian approach also entails taking as incipit of the analysis the potentiality (what might be, but does not yet exist in actuality), rather than actuality (what exists here and now). At the opposite pole we can find the notion of a practice that works, a practice (too often and erroneously qualified as ‘best’ in much of the grey literature and consultancy papers) which exists in actuality and is predicated to produce certain effects, at least in the given context where it is operating. ‘Best practices’ or ‘good practices’, as they are often called, exist in actuality rather than in potentiality like utopias, and the starting point is the efficient cause: the causal mechanism which brings about the effect the practice produces. Conceptually, ‘practices’ can be seen to lie at the opposite pole than utopias: practices exist in actuality (here and now), utopias exist as potentials; practices are characterised primarily by a logic of efficient cause, utopias by a logic of final cause. We can also consider there are other conceptual tools that enjoy currency in PA that are located at intermediate points in-between utopias and practices (see Figure 8.1). These are the notions of: model, ideal-type, and paradigm (definitions are provided later in the chapter as the concepts are introduced and examined in turn). In this chapter, we revisit these five notions – utopias, paradigms,