Public Administration research a South African Masquerade

Abstract

This article attends the South African masquerade of scientific contributions to Public Administration, trying to distinguish contributions with true scientific spirit from ones with no scientific spirit. As these distinctive characteristics do not seem to be so obvious, this article tries to identify some of these characteristics and apply them as a password to identify the true scientific spirit behind the masks. As the author has realised that these characteristics are only of limited assistance in distinguishing the guests who deserved to be there from those who had sneaked in by virtue of their convincing masks, he starts using what Polanyi calls his skill of "tasting like a connoisseur". This allows him to "taste" the conversations of co-guests and to draw a boundary between the tastes of the conversations of those with a true scientific spirit and those with very convincing masks.