Reply to Kettl: Beyond Bureaucracy: Why AI Demands a Fourth Way in Public Administration

ABSTRACT

Kettl argues public administration faces a crisis rooted in widening gaps between scholars and practitioners and between the field's core ideas and current governance issues. We identify a critical example: artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in government. AI fundamentally transforms public organizations, redistributing tasks and discretion between humans and algorithms, embedding instrumental rationality into administrative processes, and reconfiguring authority structures. These developments challenge three longstanding pillars of public administration: bureaucratic neutrality, the politics‐administration dichotomy, and democratic governance. We argue that any proposed “Fourth Way” must center democratic resilience and technological stewardship, incorporating algorithmic transparency requirements and participatory governance structures that preserve public—and especially democratic—values.