Public administration, social progress, and the utopian null: Reconfiguring the hypothesis test for neopragmatist bureaucracy

Abstract: One way of conceptualizing a utopian society is through the liberal perspective, positing that policy should be cruelty-free and the role of governance is to facilitate social progress through improved justice. Public administration has implicitly supported this idea since the advent of New Public Administration and the inclusion of ‘equity’ as a pillar of governance. Justice serves as the foundation for determining a utopian notion of social progress, wherein our administrative decisions focus on moving us away from conditions of cruelty toward a fairer alternative. This article develops a path for public administration to approach an idea of utopia based on the neopragmatist philosophy of Richard Rorty. It envisions policy decisions framed as a ‘flipped’ hypothesis test, where the alternative hypothesis is the condition of cruelty we are currently experiencing and the null hypothesis is the policy aimed to alleviate conditions of cruelty and facilitate social progress.