The Second Minnowbrook Conference: Reassessing Public Administration

In September 1988, a small group of sixty-eight scholars gathered at Syracuse University’s conference centre in the Adirondack Mountains for a four-day retreat that would become a defining moment for public administration thought. Two decades earlier, the first Minnowbrook Conference had given birth to the New Public Administration movement, with its bold call for social equity, relevance, and a rejection of value-neutral bureaucracy. Now, in a radically changed world of Reaganomics, shrinking welfare states, and rising privatization, the question was urgent: could the ideals of 1968 still hold water, or did public administration need a complete rethink? The Second Minnowbrook Conference attempted to answer exactly that.

The context that shaped Minnowbrook II 🔗

To appreciate what happened at Minnowbrook II, one must first understand the world it was responding to. The 1960s had been an era of civil rights movements, anti-war protests, and demands for inclusive governance. By contrast, the 1980s were dominated by a very different political climate, one that celebrated markets, deregulation, and a slimmer state.

The conference convened on September 4, 1988, almost exactly twenty years after the first gathering. It was attended by sixty-eight scholars including practitioners of public administration and academicians from disciplines such as history, economics, political science and psychology. The deliberate inclusion of voices from outside traditional public administration signalled that the field was no longer willing to be parochial.

The intellectual backdrop was striking. By the late 1980s, the role of the state itself was being redefined. Privatization, contracting out, and the rise of non-state actors like community-based organizations and voluntary bodies had become dominant concerns. The Reagan-Thatcher era had ushered in a philosophy that treated government intervention with suspicion and private enterprise as the preferred engine of public service delivery.

A different mood, a different generation 🔗

H. George Frederickson, one of the architects of the original New Public Administration, coordinated Minnowbrook II at Syracuse University’s conference center in the Adirondack Mountains, using the four-day gathering to reexamine the impacts of Minnowbrook I on the field of public administration.

Observers have noted how dramatically the tone had shifted. The 1968 conference had been confrontational, revolutionary, and anti-behavioural in its dialogue. By 1988, the atmosphere was calmer, more civil, and markedly more receptive to contributions from behavioural science. The participants were older too, with many now in their forties or early fifties. Fourteen women attended compared to just one in 1968, a small but meaningful improvement in representation.

Revisiting social equity in a changed world 🔗

Social equity had been the intellectual heart of Minnowbrook I. It was Frederickson who had famously added it as the “third pillar” of public administration, alongside efficiency and economy. Yet at Minnowbrook II, the conversation around equity had become more muted.

Interestingly, social equity was reportedly far less discussed at the Minnowbrook II conference than at the first. This was not because the concept had lost importance, but because the context had shifted. The Reagan era’s emphasis on markets, individual responsibility, and reduced government was pushing equity concerns to the margins of mainstream policy debate.

Still, participants reaffirmed that achieving social equity looked far more plausible in 1988 than it had in 1968. The intervening two decades had seen the establishment of affirmative action, civil rights enforcement, and a generation of administrators trained in equity-oriented frameworks. The challenge now was not to articulate equity as an ideal, but to defend it against the rising tide of privatization.

The six new themes of Minnowbrook II 🔗

The deliberations produced six new themes that reflected the evolving vision of public administration. These were in addition to the five original themes carried forward from Minnowbrook I.

Democratic values at the centre 🔗

Public administration as a guardian of democracy: Participants agreed that public administration must serve as the central instrument for realizing democratic values such as ethics, accountability, and leadership. In an era when trust in government was eroding, administrators were called upon to be more than mere implementers. They had to embody and protect constitutional principles.

The normative versus behaviourist debate 🔗

Tension between philosophy and science: The old debate between normative and behaviourist approaches resurfaced. Should public administration be driven by values and ethics, or should it rest on scientific observation of what works? The conference acknowledged that this debate had not been resolved, but it had matured. There was greater willingness to accept that both traditions had something valuable to offer.

Diversity as a value 🔗

Recognizing multiple dimensions of diversity: Diversity was identified as a core value in its own right. This included the age-old tension between generalists and specialists, as well as racial, ethnic, and gender diversity. However, participants also acknowledged a gap: there was insufficient attention to conflict resolution strategies and arbitration skills needed to manage this diversity effectively.

Technology and administrative capacity 🔗

The digital shift begins: The rapid advance of technology in the 1980s raised profound questions about state capacity. Computerization was transforming how governments collected data, delivered services, and interacted with citizens. Administrators had to become comfortable with technology not just as a tool, but as something that reshaped the very nature of governance.

Innovative personnel practices 🔗

Rethinking the workforce: The traditional civil service model was coming under strain. Participants discussed the need for more flexible personnel practices, merit-based recruitment, and performance-oriented evaluation systems. The idea was to build a workforce capable of responding to complex challenges rather than simply following procedures.

Short-term vision over long-term prophecy 🔗

Humility about the future: Unlike Minnowbrook I, which had produced a bold long-term manifesto, Minnowbrook II was more restrained. Participants recognized that the external and internal environments of public administration had become so complex that charting a long-term vision was neither possible nor advisable. Their themes were framed as short-term goals, to be revised as circumstances changed.

The interdisciplinary turn 🔗

One of the most notable features of Minnowbrook II was the sheer diversity of disciplines represented. Unlike Minnowbrook I, where almost all participants had been trained in political science, the 1988 gathering brought in scholars from policy analysis, economics, planning, urban studies, and law. This was a tacit admission that public administration could no longer solve modern governance challenges with tools drawn from a single discipline.

Yet there was a lingering tension. Even as scholars acknowledged the utility of insights from other fields, many displayed what could be called “professional ethnocentrism.” They wanted to benefit from multidisciplinary perspectives without surrendering the distinct identity of public administration as a field. This paradox, embracing diversity while protecting disciplinary boundaries, remains a feature of the discipline even today.

Privatization and the role of the administrator 🔗

The defining policy reality of the 1980s was the retreat of the state. Privatization, outsourcing, and public-private partnerships were reshaping how governments delivered services. This had profound implications for administrators. If much of the actual work of government was being done by private contractors and non-profits, what was the role of the public administrator?

Participants at Minnowbrook II argued that administrators had to evolve into facilitators of dialogue and consensus. Rather than being command-and-control implementers, they needed to be skilled negotiators, network managers, and coalition builders. The administrator was no longer just a supervisor within a hierarchy; they had to orchestrate complex webs of actors across sectors.

Ethics and accountability in a decentralized landscape 🔗

This shift raised difficult ethical questions. When services were delivered by contractors, who was accountable if things went wrong? How could public values like equity and fairness be preserved when profit-driven actors were involved? The conference participants insisted that administrators retained a moral responsibility for outcomes, even when direct control was diluted. This was connected to a broader concern that public administration should not be concerned only with what has happened, but with what should happen, giving special emphasis to the normative aspects of administration.

Proactive, open, and participatory administration 🔗

A common thread through the conference was the call for a proactive administration. Reactive bureaucracies that merely responded to problems after they emerged were seen as inadequate for the challenges ahead. Administrators had to anticipate, innovate, and engage citizens as partners rather than passive recipients.

Openness was another imperative. In an age of growing public scepticism toward government, transparency was not just a democratic nicety but a survival tool. Administrators who operated behind closed doors risked losing the little legitimacy their institutions still commanded.

Participation was the third element. Real engagement with communities, civil society, and affected stakeholders was seen as essential. This was not tokenism but a genuine devolution of voice and influence to citizens who had traditionally been excluded from administrative decision-making.

The lasting significance of Minnowbrook II 🔗

The Second Minnowbrook Conference did not produce a dramatic manifesto in the way its predecessor had. Some scholars have even called it less bold, less radical, and more compromising. But this reading may miss the point. Minnowbrook II was less about revolution and more about adaptation.

The conference recognized that the grand narratives of the 1960s had given way to a more fragmented, complex, and market-oriented reality. Its contribution was to insist that public administration could still hold onto its normative core, its commitment to equity, democracy, and ethics, even while engaging seriously with privatization, technology, and interdisciplinary knowledge. The published record, Minnowbrook II: Changing Epochs of Public Administration, appeared as a special issue of the Public Administration Review in 1989, ensuring that the deliberations reached a wide academic audience.

In many ways, Minnowbrook II set the stage for later developments. The themes it articulated, collaborative governance, network management, technological transformation, ethical administration, continued to dominate the field into the 2008 Minnowbrook III conference and beyond. The Maxwell School has honored that conference every twenty years by gathering scholars to address important issues of the day, a testament to the enduring relevance of the Minnowbrook tradition.

Relevance for contemporary governance 🔗

For students and practitioners of public administration today, the lessons of Minnowbrook II remain strikingly relevant. The tensions the conference grappled with, between efficiency and equity, between privatization and public purpose, between disciplinary identity and interdisciplinary openness, have not disappeared. If anything, they have intensified in the era of platform governance, artificial intelligence, and climate-driven policy crises.

The conference’s emphasis on administrators as facilitators, on proactive and participatory governance, and on the moral weight of public service offers a useful compass. It reminds us that public administration is never a neutral technical exercise. It is always a contest over values, resources, and visions of the good society.

What do you think? In an era where governments increasingly rely on private contractors and digital platforms to deliver public services, how can administrators preserve the values of social equity and democratic accountability? And do you believe the interdisciplinary turn advocated at Minnowbrook II has genuinely transformed public administration, or has the discipline clung too tightly to its traditional identity?

References

1. https://gkbasic.blogspot.com/2013/08/second-minnowbrook-conference-1988_10.html
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._George_Frederickson
3. https://jpna.org/index.php/jpna/article/download/959/524/5048
4. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/jamia-millia-islamia/administrative-theory/minnow-brook-conference-and-new-public-administration/20953027
5. https://www.studocu.com/en-us/document/creighton-university/political-science/unit-1b-new-public-administration-h-george-frederickson-minnowbrook-ii-changing-epochs-of-public-administration/67546507
6. https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/research/conferences/minnowbrook/readings