Every development in public administration—no matter how thoroughly cloaked in the terms of apolitical progress—has power implications. Account-ability, efficiency, explicit standards are generally assumed by scholars of public administration to represent a way to restore legitimacy to systems under assault. Foucault's analysis would remind us to attend to the power component, perhaps considering alternatives that would alter power relations. In this sense, he is a theorist of power rather than a harbinger of negativism. In his view, it is modernism that imposes unrealistic expectations and carries insupportable assumptions, both in the name of an impossible escape from power. By recognizing this flaw in modernism, intellectuals could begin to find new ways to act. His presumed negativity turns out to expand possibilities and improve under-standings of our situation. Alternatively, public administration intellectuals could explicitly concern themselves with power, especially with its smaller features and mechanisms. Foucault's lasting admonition to professionals of every sort is this: These are inevitably partisan positions, much of whose effort goes to shoring up a specific kind of authority, which is neither inevitable nor above political struggle. Assuming that these "intellectual" considerations are unimportant in professional study and training is, in fact, more than an assumption; it is a judgment. And that judgment, Foucault showed us, risks missing the actual role of administration in contemporary society.