Governing Narratives: Symbolic Politics and Policy Change

4. The Politics of Changing Practices

4 The Politics of Changing Practices in this chapter, i first portray the realm of practice, exemplified by public administration , as thoroughly imbued with the potential for political challenge. Public administration’s façade of neutrality recalls the strategy of the readerly text, but in the daily practices of public administration the writerly text is in evidence , particularly at moments of impasse. The tension generated in the contest between changing practices and maintaining a stable order makes public administration a preeminent site for politics.Then i propose that the dynamic that melds narrative and practice is a symbiotic relationship. I. polItIcS In publIc admInIStr atIon Let’s begin with a striking disconnect that appears in the public administration literature: the dramatic politics of the U.S. Forest Service’s political beginnings , reported in appendix 2, is not part of the story in Herbert Kaufman’s public administration classic, The Forest Ranger. Had the Forest Service been drained of its politics by 1960, when it was appreciated as a well-run government agency but not remembered as the living legacy of the once-emergent conservation narrative? Kaufman (1960, xxvii) states in the preface that his book “does not deal with the processes in which such policy is formed, or with the desirability or defects of prevailing policy, or with measures that might improve The Politics of Changing Practices / 59 policy or the methods of policy formulation. in a general way, current policy is taken as a ‘given.’” He then proceeds to drive the point home. He notes that his book is not about the political life of the U.S. Forest Service; not about its institutional environment and relations with other agencies; not about cooperation with state-level governmental agencies; not about institutional protection or expansion of jurisdiction or power; not about strategic compromises; and not about bureaucratic politics. “All that is relevant here is that the men in the field are apparently doing what the top officers want done in the field; the study aims at explaining how the wishes of the latter are transformed into the actions of the former” (xxix). We are all products of our times, and, of course, Kaufman was no exception . His commitment to study the machinations inside an organization resonated with the intellectual mood of 1960s behaviorism. in the isolated closedsystem organization of the time, management and control displaced history and political environment. For example, Kaufman framed the Forest Service’s strategic compromises and cooperation with state-level agencies as a simple matter of fact rather than an unstable arrangement that came on the heels of political struggle. The single-minded focus on managerial control displaces history and politics, offering instead an instrumental focus on operations, perceived as ahistorical . His declarative style of enunciating factuality downplays the political commotion that has played out in the scope and direction of the U.S. Forest Service ’s mission: “Management of timber and control of fire are the chief activities , but recreation and wildlife protection have arisen sharply in importance in recent years” (9). The political and social forces that gave rise to that change in mission—such as the evolving preservation narrative—are set off to the margins in Kaufman’s presentation, as if genesis amnesia has afflicted the U.S. Forest Service . There is no notice taken of either the corruption that the U.S. Forest Service confronted in its early years or the high value placed on conservation that inspired the early forest rangers. As the first head of the U.S. Forest Service from 1905 to 1910, Gifford Pinchot drew the line on corruption. He confronted Secretary of the interior Richard ballinger for conflict of interest because ballinger represented Clarence Cunningham as a private attorney, but as a public official (at the General Land Office before it was transferred from interior to Agriculture) he helped move Cunningham ’s dubious coal claims through the system.The Cunningham/ballinger scheme saw ballinger-as-attorney representing Cunningham in the courts after ballinger-as-public-official steered Cunningham’s land claims through the Department of interior. PresidentTaft eventually exonerated ballinger but in doing so alienated the former president Roosevelt and exposed a fissure in the Republican Party. ballinger’s case was unique in its public controversy, but the appro- 60 / Chapter 4 priation of public resources was not unusual. even so, there were rare prosecutions of timber thieves or con artists making phony land claims...