"The analogy between management and engineering has the unwholesome effect of taking management one further step away from governance. Engineering, like science, music, and theology, knows no national boundaries, and this is why scientists, artists, and theologians— often to their credit— make statesmen uneasy. Such men and women operate from a different normative base from those who govern. Despite the salience of the NAFTAs, the WTOs, and the EUs of this world, governing remains overwhelmingly the business of nation-states."
John Anthony Rohr was an American political scientist who was Professor Emeritus at the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. Rohr is particularly known as a leading scholar of the U.S. Constitution in relationship to civil servants and public administration.
"The purpose of this book is to legitimate the administrative state in terms of constitutional principle... Because public administrators at virtually all levels of government take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, this neglect deprives the profession of the opportunity to consider an important normative foundation for its activities."
"The word "regime" is not used in the journalistic sense of the "Carter regime," or the "Reagan regime," and so on. Rather it is simply intended as the best English equivalent of what Aristotle meant by a "polity." More specifically by the American "regime," I mean the fundamental political order established by the Constitution of 1789."
"Alexander Hamilton spoke the language of legitimacy when, as Publius, he noted in Federalist 27 the connection between sound Public Administration and widespread popular support"
"The books focus is on the troubling questions of legitimacy that survive the resolution of a legal controversy. With constitutional issues, there are many such survivors, because the Constitution is more than a legal document; it is covenant as well as a contract."
"A "value" in the life of a person as well as a nation suggests a pattern of attitudes or behavior that recurs with some frequency. An attitude or a passion or a principle must have a history—either personal or societal before it becomes a "value."
"More directly related to the NPM is the impressive current literature criticizing it for its sometimes cavalier treatment of the rule of law, especially its free and easy slogans about eliminating red tape and letting managers manage"