The Listening Bureaucrat: Responsiveness in Public Administration

Abstract

The growing demand for responsiveness in government policy-making puts the survival of a professional outlook characterized by independence of judgment and indifference to political pressures increasingly at risk in the corridors of American bureaucracy. In public administration, "responsiveness" is a problematic concept. Skillful listening promotes the development of moral sensibilities because it models the reciprocity inherent in ideas of justice. Levin suggests that skillful listening can constitute a practice of the self, that is, a deliberate self-development that also develops society. Daniel Kemmis argues that not much "public hearing" goes on at the typical public hearing; therefore public officials must create alternative processes in which parties to contested issues can speak directly with, and listen to, one another. Listening offers the possibility for a real "reinvention" of agency policy and management processes, one that vivifies the common space occupied by citizens and bureaucrats and offers prospects of substantive community.

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