Bureaucracy in Action: The Sociology of Public Administration

Abstract

This review articulates sociology's emerging approach to public administration, building on long-standing interest in bureaucracy. The sociology of public administration aims to understand how public administration perpetuates or mitigates inequalities through how well it performs (or does not) and for whom—balancing interest in performance and inclusivity. Sociological work on public administration has exploded in the past decade, illuminating the internal workings of the state apparatus and interrogating microlevel practices of governance, administration, and the chains by which policy comes to be enacted and experienced in the lives of citizens. This scholarship has concentrated around three themes: ( a ) public administration as a fragmented patchwork with high variation in performance, including administrative burdens that disproportionately affect marginalized groups; ( b ) public administration as a social arena with blurred boundaries, with unclear and negotiated jurisdictions for action, and where interpersonal and interorganizational connections have equivocal effects on the work of the state; and ( c ) understanding public administration as socially constituted, not only by rules on paper but by the people who do the work of the state, bringing identities, experiences, cognition, and cultural understandings to bear. The article also includes a supplemental appendix discussing public administration's role in institutionalizing categories that permeate everyday life, producing both legibility and illegibility.