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Tenuous Legitimacy;The Administrative State, The Antigovernment Movement, And The Stability Of The United States Constitutional Democracy, Shelly L. Peffer

ETD Archive

The public administration literature is inundated with books and articles despairing about the legitimacy crisis in the field. There have been numerous bases proposed for legitimizing the administrative state, including expertise, virtue or public service, and leadership and vision. Yet the issue remains contested, and the lack of agreement has wide reaching implications. One under-examined implication is the role that this tenuous legitimacy has in weakening the administrative state's ability to temper anti-government sentiment. This dissertation explores the connections and patterns in the ideologies, actions, and philosophical foundations of strongly held views that the administrative state is an illegitimate democratic …