Administrative reform as we have known it has been constrained by the ontological and
epistemological premises and assumptions of Newtonian physics and the positivism of
the early behavioral sciences, leaving constructs vital to a democratic polity impoverished
and problematized by power inequities and distorted communication. If public
administration could be liberated from those ontological limits through adoption of
concepts from the new sciences—quantum theory, chaos theory, complexity theory, and
today’s ecological sciences—it might be possible to restore to the practices of citizenship
and governance appropriate institutional structures which will preserve and nurture them.
This dissertation develops lessons and activities pertinent to the practices of citizenship
and governance drawn from the life work of John Dewey and Mary Parker Follett—
lessons clarified by the premises and assumptions of the new sciences and activities
congruent with those lessons.