Crawford School Director Professor Janine O'Flynn delivers Donald C. Stone Lecture
Watch Professor O’Flynn's Donald C. Stone lecture here >
The Director of the Crawford School of Public Policy, Professor Janine O'Flynn, was invited by the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) to deliver the 2025 Donald C. Stone Lecture at their annual conference in Washington, DC late last month.
In addition to her role as Director of the Crawford School, Professor O'Flynn is a public administration scholar whose most recent book is Pathways to Positive Public Administration: The International Experience (open access), published in 2024.
In her lecture, ‘Human(e) Government: Charting a Positive Path in a Hostile World’, Professor O'Flynn argues that in a time of increasing negativity towards the public sector globally, we need to recalibrate our focus on how governments create public wealth and value.
Drawing lessons from "how and when government gets it right", she believes, is key to developing a more holistic assessment of public administration that can help counter the hostility that has been directed against the public sector in many countries across the world.
Weaving together a conception of public administration comprised of "positivity, complexity, humility and empathy", Professor O'Flynn argues, will help us "navigate a hostile world and chart a course forward towards a more human and humane public administration."
"Negativity pervades public service discourse, psychological biases, political opportunism, and relentless negative media fuel this", she says.
"We are much better at finding faults and assigning blame than we are at actually recognizing success, understanding its underlying factors and learning from it. Positive public administration, or PPA, offers a counterbalance to that negativity bias", O'Flynn explains.
Negativity pervades public service discourse, psychological biases, political opportunism, and relentless negative media fuel this. We are much better at finding faults and assigning blame than we are at actually recognizing success, understanding its underlying factors and learning from it. Positive public administration, or PPA, offers a counterbalance to that negativity bias.
Established in 1995, the Stone Lecture is one of ASPA's annual conference's most celebrated sessions. It honours the legacy of ASPA's charter member and past president, who served as the deputy budget director of the United States, and played an integral role in developing the Marshall Plan following World War II.
Watch the full lecture on the Crawford's School's Youtube channel >
Transcript
Human(e) Government: Charting a Positive Path in a Hostile World
ASPA Donald C.Stone lecture, delivered 20 March 2025, Washington, DC.
Introduction
Thank you so much Patria for the generous introduction and the invitation to be here today. I’d also like to thank Bill Shields and Karen Garrett from the American Society for Public Administration for all of their support.
It is an immense privilege to be asked to deliver the Donald C. Stone Lecture, and to follow in the footsteps of so many extraordinary colleagues who have gone before me. In my lecture today I will explore some big ideas for the future of our field. In my view, we are in an increasingly uncomfortable transitional moment. We need to ensure we build a human and the humane approach in the face of an increasingly hostile world.
For over 25 years I have studied public sector reform and relationships; not only in Australia, but in other parts of the world. I have learned a lot from looking outside my own country, by working with a broad range of colleagues, and from being in the classroom and boardroom with experts from across the world.
In the past, I have spent a lot of my time focused on mechanisms of governance and on mapping paradigms of public administration and management. But in more recent years, I have been drawn to the moral aspects of public administration, and to what the foundations of the future for our field might be. I will draw heavily on the second of those themes today.
It should go without saying that I will be referring to unfolding developments here in the United States. There is intense global attention on what is happening here, and I will draw on this to provide momentum for the argument that the next era of public administration and management will need to be built on different foundations.
As we move through big transitions and changes and we seek to make sense of the world we are in, more and more we will need to look to new ideas to shape our future. This is a common activity as we react to our past and present and look forward. Today, I will make the case for key elements of a more human and humane approach in an increasingly hostile world. This is not a fully formed manifesto, nor does it preclude other ideas, but rather is my assessment of the big ideas emerging that will shape our future.
Dedication
As we begin, I would like to make the point of honoring those that choose a life of public service.
When I was completing my latest book Pathways to Positive Administration at the end of 2023, I was working with one of my co-editors, Paul ’t Hart in the Netherlands, putting the full draft to bed, ready to send to the publisher.[1]
We were inspired by the incredible contributions which had all focused on what can be achieved when government works well, with examples stretching from Bhutan to Burkina-Faso to Pakistan and everywhere in between. We chose to dedicate the book to all who continue to believe in and work towards good government, wherever they are in the world. We thought this was important in an increasingly hostile world, with more turbulent times on the horizon. In a book that seeks to help reorient our field in a more positive direction, we wanted to recognize those that do the good work, which often goes unrecognized, and is increasingly under attack.
In February this year, the Federal News Network published an open letter to the American people, written by career civil servants setting out the many ways in which the work they do touches people’s lives.[2] From preserving the natural beauty of the nation, to providing medical services to veterans. The letter included a plea:
“Valuing the sacred trust and the responsibilities you have vested in us we are disheartened that many of you think we are part of a plot that works against your interests. Most of us heeded a call to serve because we love this country and what it represents as much as you and wanted to give back. The hard work we do, we do on your behalf. When you doubt our commitment, please keep this in mind … We are not your enemies.”
How did we come to this?
While our dedication was to all, I wanted to take a moment here at the American Society for Public Administration, to dedicate my lecture to those who are serving with commitment and courage across the United States. And to acknowledge the many ways in which they have, and will continue to, make a profound difference in their communities, their nation, and across the world. We see you and we thank you.
Donald C. Stone
It is humbling indeed to be invited to deliver the Donald C. Stone Lecture. Stone’s career was an exemplar of the notion of public service.[3] Across his life he contributed widely, including to the implementation of the Marshall Plan for Europe, the organization of the executive office of the President of the United States, and to UNESCO, alongside roles at Springfield College, the University of Pittsburg and Carnegie-Mellon.
For Stone, public service was a calling, an expression of American idealism. He espoused values that continue to shape public service thinking: a commitment to nonpolitical and nonpartisan professionalism, responsive and efficient government, and the importance of well-qualified, competent managers.
His influence on the professionalization of public management in the United States has been widely recognized. Throughout his career he drew scholarly and practice communities together, and he championed the development of a distinctive field for public administration. Not one subservient to others; but a distinctive field of its own. His values and his efforts helped to shape public administration today, and his principles at sit the core of the mission of the American Society for Public Administration which he co-founded in 1939.
Today, I speak with that legacy in mind.
Turbulent Times
It is surreal to be here in Washington D.C. at a time like this to deliver this lecture. As is clear, I’m not American – my big Australian accent might give that away. But I want to make some opening comments about the turbulent times we find ourselves in.
I’m a scholar of public administration and management, who has a keen interest in developments around the world, including in the United States. Like many, I have been watching with a close eye to developments here. It is fair to say that between receiving the invitation from ASPA and today, much has changed that has shaped my remarks.
I first came to D.C. in 2012 as part of a project I was working on with Australian Public Service Commission and several academic colleagues. The aim of that project was to bring together practitioner and academic experts to design a new performance management approach. It came with an ambitious aim: to drive a high-performance culture in the Australia Public Service. As part of that project, we undertook a study tour, including to D.C.
I was very lucky to get an insider's introduction to D.C. by G. Edward (Ed) DeSeve. I had met him the year prior in Australia when he visited with President Obama. We worked together on a masterclass for public servants on joined up government, and on the plane over he’d read my soon to be released book. Ed decided then and there that we were kindred spirits: he was right, and we have remained friends since. I am delighted that he is here today.
During that trip I met with the National Academy of Public Administration, the IBM Center for the Business of Government, the Government Accountability Office, the Office of Management and Budget, the Government Performance Coalition, and several federal agencies. Each were generous with their time, and keen to know more about our work. It was here I learned how Australia had provided some inspiration for reforms adopted in the US, just as we borrowed from our US colleagues to implement change back home.
I also learnt that people here spoke my language. They cared about public service; they talked about mission and performance, and they were committed to creating public value. They cared deeply about building effective institutions to do the work of government, for the good of the people. They knew that the system had problems, weaknesses, and dysfunctions, but they were committed to addressing them. That initial visit shaped my thinking in many ways, and for many years to come.
To come to D.C. now seems like another world. Colleagues are operating in an increasingly hostile environment, and the frantic pace of announcements is almost impossible to keep up. Earlier this week I was able to explore the extraordinary National Museum of African American History and Culture; the same day it, and other Smithsonian institutions, were subject to an Executive Order, to “Restore Truth and Sanity to American History”, and position them as symbols of “inspiration and American greatness.”[4]
Despite this frantic pace, we have colleagues who are trying to keep up – cataloguing, commenting and reporting on these across social and traditional media, as we set up for the longer run analysis and assessment of what is going on.
The language and the landscape are transformed, rupturing the well-known institutional architecture of government. This is playing out a hyper speed. Last month in The New York Times, Tressie McMillan Cottom, described the ensuing chaos as “content for the Trump Show”, arguing the aim was to demoralize the federal bureaucracy.[5] In her op-ed just two days ago, former Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, said: “Today they are not reinventing government; they’re wrecking it.”[6]
I want to draw out a few examples that symbolise this increasingly hostile environment through patterns of revolution, catastrophe, erasure, and trauma.
Revolution
In a recent podcast with Joe Rogan, Elon Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and explained his revolution against the federal bureaucracy: “Normally, the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast … This is the first time that they’re not, that the revolution might actually succeed.”[7] And he is blasting social media with his revolutionary acts, posting on X that he spent the “weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper,”, labelling it “a criminal organization whose time had come to die”.[8] And he famously waved that chainsaw around shouting “this is a chainsaw for bureaucracy”.[9]
Earlier this week, The Washington Post warned that Social Security was breaking, with cuts exacerbating old problems, and creating new ones.[10] A crisis is at hand: websites are crashing, phones ring out, some field offices are operating without pens, paper and headsets due to spending restrictions. People have left, and others have been pushed out. Former officials contend that this is orchestrated chaos to crash the agency.
In a recent blog on what’s happening at Social Security, Paul Krugman argued that cruelty toward some of society’s most vulnerable, was all part of a plan.[11] And that this was being led by a person who has identified empathy as the fundamental weakness of Western society. More on that later.
Catastrophe
Whether through the Department of Agriculture cutting $500M in deliveries to foodbanks which will impact the poorest Americans[12], through cutting aid to the world’s most vulnerable children, or removing access to antiretrovirals that block HIV from developing into AIDS, catastrophes are brewing as the US government abruptly cancels or cuts funding and programs across the nation and the world.
In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof countered the claim made by Musk that: “no one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding ... No one.”[13] Kristof draws on examples from South Sudan, where people who were living with AIDS, unable to get their medicines, have died as programs were killed. These short-run tragedies may morph quickly into catastrophes in parts of the world where the US has long provided protection against AIDS, starvation, and disease. And cuts to vaccine programs will impact the rest of the world as diseases take hold and spread. Working with experts, Kristof estimated that 500,000 people might die within a single year if the US cuts funding for vaccines.
Erasure
The war on diversity, equity and inclusion is changing how we see the federal public service. On PBS Newshour, Don Moynihan argued that history is being whitewashed, as images and stories of women, people of colour, and trans people are being purged from government websites and buildings.[14] His blog from a few weeks ago reports that 26,000 images had already been flagged for removal from military websites, and that might grow to 100,000.[15] Articles about Native Americans were removed, as were those about prominent Black veterans, and Women Airforce Service Pilots. This is being done under the guise that DEI is dead. Despite some reinstatements, Moynihan tells us to focus on what and who is being targeted and subject to erasure; this is the important point.
Trauma
Trauma can be an outcome of change, but also part of the plan. Speeches in 2023 and 2024 given by the now head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, highlight the point. In those speeches, he spoke explicitly about inflicting trauma on civil servants: “we want bureaucrats to be traumatically affected … When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.” ProPublica suggests this reflects his long-held view that government should be brought to heel by a sweepingly powerful executive branch.[16]
Anne Applebaum’s Atlantic article on “regime change” in February, argued that the administration was seeking to reinstall a patronage system.[17] To do so, she argued: “the administration will first have to break the morale of the people who believe in the old civil-service ethos”.
On Friday, the New York Times coverage of the so-called DOGE Playbook, reported managers in some agencies had been told to eliminate 40% or more of their staff.[18] Cuts these say will jeopardize agency missions and destroy morale. A manager from the Department of Health and Human Services reported: “our mission has been completely demolished”.
Trauma is a weapon in this process and is being inflicted in many ways.
These are just a few examples from recent weeks, and there are many, many more. What we are seeing is a new language of governing – revolution, catastrophe, erasure, and trauma – which is hostile and fuels turbulence, or even chaos. For some, these represent a regime attacking its own institutions.
The reaction from abroad is noteworthy. In Australia, for example, in a speech in February titled From Servant to Partner, the Assistant Minister for Public Service, Hon. Patrick Gorman said: “Tonight, I argue that all Australians, especially conservatives [his political rivals], should cherish our public service. … Australia now faces the most challenging set of strategic circumstances since World War II. Is it really the time to be launching an attack on the public service? At best, deep cuts ... will take our nation backwards. At worst, deep cuts will make us less secure, less safe and unable to shape the world around us … There has never been a worse time in Australia's post-war history to be launching a civil war on the public service.”[19] Our election was called on Friday.
Given all of what I have just said, it may seem strange that I want to focus on positivity, complexity, humility and empathy. These seem to stand in stark contrast. But I think we must focus here, because these are the ways in which we might guard against hostility now, and into the future as we tackle the big questions of our field.
Foundations for the Future?
Today I will discuss four ideas to shape future thinking in our field. To do so, I am drawing on ideas from recent international collections I have co-edited, as well as a series of chapters and articles from over the last few years about where our field is going. Alongside this I have also been working through these ideas with senior leaders in practice, and this has helped sharpen my views.
I took the first shot at drawing some of these big ideas together in 2022, for a chapter on global perspectives for the excellent Handbook of Teaching Public Administration edited by Ian Elliott and colleagues.[20] It’s great to see Ian here today.
In that chapter, I argued that public administration was at an inflection point. Public institutions were coming under increasing pressure, challenges were intensifying, and there were pressing demands for transformative social change. At the time, some were arguing for a new manifesto of government, claiming government was broken and reliant on old models that could no longer cope. Innovative ideas were emerging, providing relief from more rational approaches which have dominated the past.
At the same time there are shifting foundations as a broader and more inclusive account of public administration is starting to break through. We are moving beyond dominant Anglo-American conceptions towards a more multi-cultural public administration. A field that will hopefully be more inclusive of a greater set of worldviews and values. This can change our field profoundly, and for the better. The work on non-Western Public Administration, Buddhist public administration, and Islamic Public Value, are all terrific examples of these developments.
This was the context into which I sketched out some of these big ideas – complexity, humility and empathy. More recently, I have been weaving positivity with this trio to provide four foundations for the future.
None of these are necessarily new ideas, but each is helping us to think about the future in new ways. Individually, and in concert, they emphasize human and humane aspects of governing.
Let me speak to each of these - positivity, complexity, humility and empathy – in turn.
Positivity
The current hostility toward public servants and the public service is part of a decades long negative trope about government. This has exploded here in the United States, but this negative discourse of waste, bloat, inefficiency, scandal, crisis and corruption has influenced the hollowing out of the state in multiple settings, over many years.
We do not get everything right in the public sector. It is also true that we have focused exponentially more attention on what goes wrong rather than on what we get right. In recent years, a group of scholars from around the world joined together to develop a purposefully positive stream of research. These are not people who are ignorant of the problems of the public sector. Many of them have spent their careers exploring every facet of governing, including crisis, scandals, failures, ethical dilemmas and more.
In 2021, these 15 scholars published a provocative essay challenging colleagues to “take a walk on the bright side”.[21] We asked them to consider doing research that was decidedly positive in nature. We challenged them to devote attention to uncovering the factors and mechanisms that enabled government to do things well. In an era of declining trust, amidst a catastrophic global pandemic, we argued that it was time to give more attention to the positive aspects of government.
Negativity pervades public service discourse. Psychological biases, political opportunism, and relentless negative media help to fuel this. We are much better at finding faults and assigning blame than we are at recognising success, understanding its underlying factors, and learning from it. Positive public administration (or PPA) offers a counterbalance to this negativity bias. Locating and learning from successes to drive positive change. Developing a more positive public administration is not only important as a program of research, but also in providing a buttress against hostility towards government around the world. It is our intention to disrupt the “failure narrative”.[22]
We asked our colleagues to consider joining us to explore the following questions: First, why is it that particular public policies, programs, organizations, networks, or partnerships manage do much better than others to produce widely valued societal outcomes. And second, how might knowledge of this be used to advance institutional learning, and influence practice.
A subset of us pushed this further, taking these questions to the world. We worked with 57 authors from across the world to produce a major collection on PPA which was published last year.[23] This collection delves into the foundations of this new idea and identifies potential practices and tools of PPA. It was an incredible project which showcases examples where government works well, across every continent. I’m pleased to say it is also open access and free to anyone who would like to read it.
PPA though is more than just a technical exercise. It’s a normative approach that recognises the value of government. When well-organised, executed, and held accountable, government can, and does, deliver essential services and create societal value that private actors simply cannot do.[24] This requires skill, heart, ingenuity and perseverance. It also requires a nod to history, as well as being open to the idea that government create public value. We are not alone here, and renewed attention to valuing government have been gathering steam for some time now.
In their book American Amnesia almost a decade ago, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson lamented how the war on government has led Americans to forget how important it has been to American prosperity.[25] They open their book with the following: “The book is about an uncomfortable truth: it takes government – a lot of government – for advanced societies to flourish.” Despite this, they argue that” we live in an era of profound scepticism about government”, where Americans have become less willing to acknowledge government's role in supporting freedom and prosperity.
In her work on the value of the state, starting with her book The Entrenreuerial State in 2013, Mariana Mazzucato reminded us that government is value creating.[26] Even if government had been written out of the story of innovation and success for a long time. She has championed a view of government which goes beyond the idea of market corrector, to recognise its role in catalysing success, and fuelling innovation. Government here fuels public wealth and value creation. This contrasts, she argues, with the narrower, often negative story of government that has constrained bold action, shaped a negative perception of public servants, and created chronic risk aversion. Over time this has eroded trust and confidence in the state.
Starting with the Fifth Risk in 2018, Michael Lewis has showed us what happens if we don’t understand the value that government creates and the role of public servants.[27] He followed this with the Premonition which looked at the COVID pandemic.[28] And his latest in conjunction with the Washington Post is the book Who is Government which profiles public servants and the incredible work they do.[29] His book on this arrived the day before I travelled to the US. A review in the Washington Post last week noted: “Page after page, the book breaks down the cynical caricature of the federal government that has persisted over the years and been amplified in recent months. It shows that far from being riddled with and corrupted by waste, fraud, abuse and laziness, the federal government is (or was) filled with people working hard — people painfully aware that they’re stewarding government resources, doing so artfully under tight constraints, all of whom could be doing something for more money elsewhere.”[30]
Colleagues in the United Kingdom, are pressing forward on a related project on positive public policy. This is focusing on chronic problems, complex crises and and emerging challenges, and how we can learn from success and failure to inform strategic, systemic and participatory approaches to government.[31]
In our work on positive public administration, we are challenging our colleagues to be more holistic in our assessment of government. We are not asking them to abandon critical perspectives, or to engage in propaganda. But rather to give some attention to when and how government gets it right.
A more positive movement is developing in the field as a way of focusing on what government does well and drawing lessons from it. This orientation is both more human and more humane, bringing people back into a more positive story of public service.
Complexity
Complexity is the second big idea I want to emphasize today.
We are quick to acknowledge that we live in increasingly complex times, yet we are not so comfortable with it. But we need to move beyond just acknowledging complexity, toward becoming more comfortable with the turbulent, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world that we live in.
We need to work out how to grapple with this complexity, rather than try to tame it. In many ways, and across many systems, we remain wedded to approaches that rely on developing rational responses to an increasingly irrational world. Many of our systems remain wedded to ways of operating where we develop standard rules and then apply them repeatedly, at scale, to address public problems. Of course, this has been a fundamental principle of bureaucratic organisation. Which, for all the decades of reform, remains the bedrock of many public sector systems the world over. My point here is not to demonise bureaucracy which remains powerfully effective for some activities. But rather, to stress that we need to rapidly expand our capacity to work in a world where certainty and rationality are no longer the defining characteristics.
Remaining wedded to this view of the world gives us something magical, even precious: the illusion of simplicity and control. And perhaps these are desired in large measure in a world that sometimes seems to be out of control. But this leaves us prone to pushing complexity aside and focusing on the technical, rather than relational aspects of governing. This tendency has left many governments poorly positioned to experiment, adapt and cope with change, when these are the very attributes needed to deal with mega-threats and polycrises.
How do we deal with this? And how might complexity feature in a more human and humane approach to the future?
A complex world needs flexibility, adaptiveness, foresight, experimentation, and the engagement of “unconventional expertise”. Some groups, like the Centre for Public Impact, have emphasised the power of human learning systems.[32] These draw together aspects such as human insight, collective intelligence, judgement, humility, and empathy with more relational ways of operating.
Others have argued that problem-solving mindsets, rather than those that privilege stability and rationality should guide us. Beth Simone Noveck has shown in her work on public problem solving that when public servants work differently, government’s solve problems better.[33] She makes the case for more adaptive approaches that draw on data, human-centred design, collective intelligence, and partnerships to work through seemingly intractable problems in more innovative ways.
Similarly, Matt Andrews’ work on Problem-Driven Iterative Adaption, is another example with powerful tools to grapple with complexity.[34] This approach, developed from extensive international practice, shows that we can do public administration and management in more iterative and context-appropriate ways, and we can use these tools to break down complex challenges.
The work that Ed DeSeve has been leading through the Agile Government Center here in the US is another great example.[35] The Center, and academics such as Ines Mergel, have been developing principles and approaches that seek to adopt mission-focused, fast, flexible and inclusive change that involve the public, rather than relying on hierarchical, command and control models.
Together these types of approaches, signal a movement towards new ways of thinking that grapple with complexity and provide practical tools to help us do it. Getting comfortable with complexity and embracing relational ways of work should be an important foundation for the future of our field.
Humility
The third foundation is humility, which connects to more relational modes of operating, and can help in confronting complexity. The ability and willingness to reflect on oneself and one’s actions, to be more openminded, to be able to identify and admit mistakes, and to have a willingness to learn, are all important aspects of humility.
Humility is in high demand in a more turbulent world, even if we don’t have the supply side of that story right yet. In a more VUCA world, it is much more difficult, and much less useful, to try and devise rational legal rules for universal action. In other words, our search for certainty can be misplaced.
In his work on human learning systems, Toby Lowe argues that in the quest for certainty in government we became fixated on measures, incentives, and targets.[36] And, in doing so, we often focused on the wrong things. He goes on to argue that this narrower view gave us “delusions of grandeur” as we often fixated on what we could measure, rather than what mattered. The so-called New Public Management pushed us too far in this direction.
Humility can be a sort of antidote for such pathologies and may help us to grapple more effectively with complexity. We can think of humility in different ways, two of which I will mention today. But both of which focus us more on the human aspect of public administration, and on being more humane.
Firstly, there is the idea of humble government which has been developed by colleagues at the DEMOS think tank in Finland.[37] Here policymaking begins with an acknowledgement of uncertainty. Policy is seen as a continuously iterative process. Starting here means policymakers can be more willing to change their minds as new information arises. Indeed, they would be expected to do so. Humble governments make it clear that they do not have all the answers, thus opening up space for being more experimental. The role of government, then, is about fully realising the promises made to constituents and involves shifts in power.
DEMOS colleagues guiding this work tell us: “It can be hard for governments to say that we don’t have all the answers, and to put genuine decision-making power into the hands of the public and the workers who serve them. But brave governments do this. (p. 8).” Just let me repeat that line: Brave governments do this.
In the world of Humble Government, government does not know best. Processes of learning can take place together so that collectively we can find ways to help each person, and each place, to decide what is right for them. This translates into a much bigger appetite for engagement with community. Here we can see some connection to some of the tools I mentioned when I spoke about complexity – iteration, inclusion, and information. Such ideas shone through in our recent book on positive public administration too.
The second way we might tackle this is in building a capacity for passionate humility in public servants. This translates into focusing on the humane aspects of public service and cultivating an ethic of care and compassion alongside technical expertise. In their work on passionate humility some 25 years ago, Dvora Yanow and Hugh Willmott stressed the importance of tacit, local, and experiential forms of practical reasoning and expertise derived from lived experience.[38] Passionate humility acknowledges that those we serve have independent agency - thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, and judgment – and this approach includes them and their wisdom in the practice of public service. Here we see again links to ideas such as local knowledge and context as we did in my comments on grappling with complexity.
Getting comfortable with humility may be more challenging for some administrative cultures than others. And it is true that the most common question I am asked when I work with senior public servants on this idea, is how can be humble if many political actors can’t be.
Empathy
The final idea is empathy; the ability to put ourselves in the place of another, and to see the world as they do. And, in doing do, to understand another’s feelings.
Empathy has long been held up as a positive attribute in the field. However, in bureaucratic systems empathy loses out by design. Bureaucracy’s power comes from the removal of emotion and empathy by devising seemingly optimal legal rational rules. Thus, ensuring that everyone is treated the same. The pursuit of efficiency and equity can engineer out our capacity and space for empathy.
Approaches like Human Learning Systems[39] and the Relational State,[40] bring empathy back to the centre. Here we see arguments about letting public servants be human, and an emphasis on working together with constituents and communities. These approaches stress the importance of public servants building relationships with the people they serve so they can better understand their strengths, and their needs. This involves a liberation of sorts for public servants, and for the people. Rather than models that are built on control from above, trust shines through when we focus on empathy. With empathy as a foundation, a radical turn toward human and humane approaches could be built. This is an area that needs a lot more attention in our field. Assel Mussagulova’s excellent systematic review on empathy in public administration, published in Public Management Review last year is leading the way.[41]
Empathy connects with positivity, humility and complexity in interesting ways. In our book on positive public administration, for example, we saw fascinating work on so-called cultural chameleons.[42] Public servants who adopted more empathetic and adaptive approaches to working with stakeholders, bringing large-scale infrastructure projects to success by doing so.
Like humility, empathy leads us toward much more human and humane approaches to public administration.
A More Human(e) Public Administration?
Today I have sought to stake out some big ideas to shape our field for the future. In some ways this is a very prospective exercise. But I argue these threads have been emerging for some time, from quite different directions. Of course, some of these ideas are not new at all, but how we weave them together might be.
Whilst these stand in stark contrast to what we are currently witnessing in the United States, these are part of some broader global trends that may indeed shape our next paradigm of public administration. These paradigms are our very means of making sense of our world, and they develop in reaction to the past, and provide some promise for the future.
When woven together, positivity, complexity, humility and empathy can be mutually reinforcing, as we navigate a hostile world and chart a course forward towards a more human and humane public administration.
A Reminder in Challenging Times
As I close today, I want to draw on the work of Richard Kirlin, who at the start of the century set out big questions for a significant public administration. He challenged us to thing big and to take our role seriously.[43] Like Donald. C Stone, he saw a place for public administration as a powerful force for good. And his quote here challenges us all to keep an eye to the big picture. We were delighted that together with Rich Callahan he contributed to our book on positive public administration.
“Public administration is a central part of the grandest of human endeavours – shaping a better future for ourselves and those yet unborn. The institutions crafted to achieve human aspirations require administration, including public agencies; however, the measure of success is not at the instrumental level, but in its enduring value not only to those in a particular nation, state, or city, but worldwide to all who aspire for improved lives . . . We should take our role in society very seriously – the big questions of public administration must address how we make society better or worse for citizens.”
In our current times, to serve with courage and commitment is a challenge. And scholars and practitioners must do this side-by-side, working together, as Donald C. Stone encouraged throughout his career. A legacy that ASPA carries forward. And as my colleague Don Moynihan wrote just a few weeks ago: courage is contagious.[44] So, I hope that in coming together this week, we can help in some way to spread that around. We will all need it.
Thank you.
Footnotes
[1] Patrick Lucas, Tina Nabatchi, Janine O’Flynn, and Paul ‘t Hart (2024) Pathways to Positive Public Administration: An International Perspective, Edward Elgar.
[2] Anonymous (2025) An Open Letter to America from Career Civil Servants, Federal News Network, February 27.
[3] See Alfred Blumstein, Elmer Staats and James Kunde (1996). Tribute to Donald C. Stone. Public Works Management & Policy, 1(1), 96–990; Howard Rosen and Winifred J. Weizer (1996). Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Donald C. Stone. Public Works Management & Policy, 1(1), 10–18; Harvey L. White (2014). Remembering Donald C. Stone, Public Administration Review, 74(5), 559–560; Alfred M. Zuck (1996). Remembering Donald C. Stone: A Giant of American Public Administration. Public Works Management & Policy, 1(2), 195–196; Wolfgang Saxon (1995) Donald Stone, 92, A College Professor and Federal Planner, The New York Times, October 2.
[4] Donald J. Trump (2025) Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, Executive Order issued March 27, 2025, The White House.
[5] Tressie McMillan Cottom (2025). Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work, The New York Times, February 12.
[6] Hilary Clinton How Much Dumber Will This Get? The New York Times, March 28, 2025.
[7] Jess Bidgood and Nicholas Nehamas (2025) Social Security and Sex Robots: Musk Veers Off Script With Joe Rogan The New York Times, March 3. For the full interview see Joe Rogan Experience, released February 28, 2025.
[8] Posts by Elon Musk on X: We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper (February 3, 2025) and USAID is a criminal organization (February 3, 2025).
[9] Anthony Zurcher (2025) Musk Wields his DOGE chainsaw – But is a Backlash Brewing? British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC], February 22.
[10] Lisa Rein and Hannah Natanson (2025) Long Waits, Waves of Calls, Website Crashes: Social Security is Breaking Down The Washington Post March 25.
[11] Paul Krugman (2025) Smears, Sadism and Social Security: Why Elon Musk Wants to Make Seniors Suffer, Paul Krugman, March 19.
[12] Annie Gowen and Patrick Svikek (2025) USDA Cancels $500M in Food Deliveries, Leaving Food Banks Scrambling, The Washington Post March 21.
[13] Nicholas Kristof (2025) Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True, The New York Times, March 15.
[14] Pentagon History Purge Highlights Which Stories Are Told and Why Others Are Ignored, PBS NewsHour, March 18, 2025
[15] Don Moynihan (2025) Whitewashing American History, Can We Still Govern? March 16.
[16] Molly Redden, Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey (2024) “Put Them in Trauma”: Inside a Key MAGA Leaders’s Plans for. A New Trump Agenda, ProPublica, October 28.
[17] Anne Applebaum (2025) There’s A Term for What Trump and Musk Are Doing The Atlantic, February 13.
[18] Eli Murray, June Kim and Jeremy White (2025) The DOGE Playbook Targeting Federal Agencies, The New York Times, March 27.
[19] Hon. Patrick Gorman MP (2025) From Servant to Partner, speech to the Sydney Institute, February 24.
[20] Janine O’Flynn (2022) A Global Perspective on Public Administration: The Dynamics Shaping the Field and What it Means for Teaching and Learning. In Karin Bottom, John Diamond, Pamela Dunning and I. Elliot (eds.)
Handbook of Teaching Public Administration, Edward Elgar.
[21] Scott Douglas, Thomas Schillemans, Paul ‘t Hart, Chris Ansell, Lotte Bøgh Andersen, Matthew Flinders, Brian Head, Donald Moynihan, Tina Nabatchi, Janine O’Flynn, B. Guy Peters, Jos Raadschelders, Alessandro Sancino, Eva Sørensen and Jacob Torfing (2021). Rising to Ostrom’s Challenge: An Invitation to Walk on the Bright Side of Public Governance and Public Service. Policy Design and Practice 4 (4): 441–51.
[22] Patrick Lucas, Paul ‘t Hart and Janine O’Flynn (2025) Has the Time Arrived for Positive Public Administration? The Mandarin, February 24.
[23] Patrick Lucas, Tina Nabatchi, Janine O’Flynn, and Paul ‘t Hart (2024) Pathways to Positive Public Administration: An International Perspective, Edward Elgar.
[24] Patrick Lucas, Paul ‘t Hart and Janine O’Flynn (2025) Has the Time Arrived for Positive Public Administration? The Mandarin, February 24.
[25] Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2016) American Amnesia: How The War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper, Simon & Schuster.
[26] Mariana Mazzucato (2013) The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, Penguin Press.
[27] Michael Lewis (2018) The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy, Allen Lane.
[28] Michael Lewis (2021) The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, Allen Lane.
[29] Michael Lewis (2025 Who is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service, Allen Lane.
[30] Garrett M. Graff (2025) An Ode to the Remarkable People Who Make Up the Federal Government, the Washington Post March 20.
[31] Catherine Durose, Sarah Ayres, John Boswell, Paul Cairney, Ian Elliott, Matthew Flinders, Steve Martin, and Liz Richardson (2024) Positive Public Policy: A New Vision for UK Government, Academy of Social Sciences.
[32] Toby Lowe (2020) Human Learning Systems: A Complexity Friendly Approach to Public Services. Centre for Public Impact, 9 June.
[33] Beth Simone Noveck (2021). Solving Public Problems: A Practical Guide to Fix our Government and Change Our World. Yale University Press.
[34] Information at the What is PDIA? site, hosted by the Building State Capacity group at the Harvard Kennedy School.
[35] Information at the Agile Government Center, National Academy of Public Administration.
[36] Toby Lowe (2021) Public Service for the Real World. In Human Learning Systems Collaborative (eds.),
Human Learning Systems: Public service for the Real World. ThemPra Social Pedagogy, pp. 11‒25.
[37] Mikko Annala, Juha Leppänen, Silva Mertsola and Charles Sabel, C. (2020). Humble Government: How to Realize Ambitious Reforms Prudently, DEMOS Helsinki.
[38] Dvora Yanow and Hugh Wilmott (1999). Considering Passionate Humility. Administrative Theory and Praxis,
21(4), 450‒454.
[39] Toby Lowe (2020) Human Learning Systems: A Complexity Friendly Approach to Public Services. Centre for Public Impact, 9 June.
[40] Graeme Cooke and Rick Muir (eds) (2012) The Relational State: How Recognising the Importance of Human Relationships Could Revolutionise the Role of the State, Institute for Policy Research.
[41] Assel Mussagulova (2024) How is Empathy Used in Public Service? A Systematic Review, Public Management Review, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2024.2438891. See also Assel Mussagulova and Colette Enfield (2024) Moving into the Future of Public Service, With Empathy, The Mandarin, October 22.
[42] Patrick Lucas, Tina Nabatchi, Janine O’Flynn, and Paul ‘t Hart (2024) Pathways to Positive Public Administration: An International Perspective, Edward Elgar.
[43] Richard Kirlin (2021) Big Questions for a Significant Public Administration, Public Administration Review, 61(2), pp. 140-143.
[44] See LinkedIn post by Don Moynihan March, 2025.
