Practitioner Paper: After Iraq: Change, choice and paradox

Author: Tom Spencer

Source: Journal of Public Affairs, Volume 3, Number 2, May 2003 , pp. 186-189(4)

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Abstract:

When the co-editors of the Journal of Public Affairs invited me to write these regular essays, we agreed that I should write on the boundaries between academic consideration and practitioner reality, and between public affairs and politics. If journalism is ‘the first draft of history’, these essays were to live on the time boundary between journalism and research; identifying trends, challenges and questions facing the world of public affairs. Three years ago we had no idea how momentous the changes would be; how difficult the choices and how rich the paradoxes. Boundary writing of this kind had proved to be closer to living on the edge. The errors are mine. The insights flow from the discourse of the ECPA. I have tried to focus not only on what is happening, but on the much riskier business of what will happen next. The experience proves what I have always believed — public affairs is a frontier function. The readers of this journal may not think of themselves as the Davey Crocketts of the management world, all cooncaps and buckskin. However, as I finish this paper on a confident spring day in Washington DC, amidst the dogwood and the cherry, they had better get used to more seasons of life on the edge.

Document Type: Miscellaneous

Publication date: 2003-05-01

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