Public Reason and Public Administration

The basic idea behind the influential framework of public reason is that a specific method for reflecting about political decisions is in order when persons approach those decisions in their capacity as public officials, as opposed, for example, to members of their families, communities of faith or other associations. However, public reason theorists have until now paid little attention to what it means to abide by the duty of public reason and, therefore, justify one’s decisions to the public specifically for public administrators. To fill this gap, this project tackles the questions, what does it mean to reason publicly at the level of public administration, and is it really possible? Moreover, the case of public administration effectively highlights how the ability of public officials to reason properly about the decisions they must make is shaped by decisions made at different levels of political decision-making, normally higher up in the democratic hierarchy. Consequently, this project also aims to investigate the ethics of the reform of administrative agencies and their relationship with other levels of political decision-making more in general. To pursue these goals, I intend to bring together normative political theory with other disciplines and the analysis of case studies from real-world public policy. Among others, the article entitled ‘The principle of restraint: Public reason and the reform of public administration’, published in Political Studies in 2020, falls under this project.