Administrative History and the Theory of Fields: Towards a Social and Political History of Public Administration

Abstract

This article explores how French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, by encouraging a critical analysis of what the state does and produces, can bring a new perspective to studying the history of public administration. To do so, it explains how the theory can be used to perform historical analysis of public administration, and examine the case of the introduction of the merit system in the Canadian federal public administration to illustrate its perspective. The article concludes that the interplay among the theory’s core concepts – capital, field, and habitus – offers a reconceptualization of the study of administrative history that integrates historical, social, and political elements.

The Logic of Simplifying Public Administration in Hungary, 1900–1910

“…Pierre Bourdieu calls for a necessary and difficult break with the state through, most of all, not using the state's vocabulary, 9 and the present paper chooses the option to study bureaucratic practices rather than the official discourse. 10 The paper also attributes a special emphasis to the »ordinary things of the state.« 11 These ordinary things include the registry stamp, forms, sheets, files, books, and the way they are filled in by administrators before and after the simplification law. The material side of public administration thus presents an opportunity to produce a narrative of the state devoid of the depersonalized and abstract nature of earlier accounts and one that provides a more varied view of the different agents active in public administration.…”