What is The Public? A Pragmatic Analysis of a Core Concept in Public Administration

The discipline of public administration has grappled with concepts regarding the public for well over a century. Scholars from public opinion, public choice, and public value(s) have analyzed myriad elements of administration related to the public. Scholars also have applied numerous concepts from philosophical pragmatism to public administration. However, detailed explorations of the fundamental concept of the public remain surprisingly sparse. The public remains eclipsed by administration. In this essay, I analyze the concept of the public focusing on the works of John Dewey. Viewed through this lens, publics emerge when social interaction generates unregulated effects on communities that respond by organizing collective or state action, a process which I refer to as the realization of the pragmatic public. I juxtapose the theory with multiple extant literatures in public administration, including public choice, transaction costs, and public value(s). I identify consistencies and inconsistencies to provide a pluralistic yet coherent framework in the hope of revealing points of departure for future theory development. Finally, I reframe and extend the pragmatic public by applying the insights of contemporary scholarship in networks and complexity theory.