definition of locus-the governmental bureaucracy-but
a corresponding loss of focus. Should
the mechanics of budgets and personnel procedures
be studied exclusively? Or should public
administrationists consider the grand philosophic
schemata of the "administrative Platonists," as one
political scientist called them such as Paul
Appleby? Or should they explore quite new
fields of inquiry, as urged by Simon as they
related to the analysis of organizations and decision
making? In brief this third phase of definition
was largely an exercise in reestablishing the
linkages between public administration and political
science But the consequences of this exercise
was to "define away" the field at least in terms of
its analytical focus, its essential "expertise Thus,
writings on public administration in the 1950s
spoke of the field as an "emphasis