The new ignorance and the future of public administration in Latin America

• Autor(a) principal: Ramos, Alberto Guerreiro
• Data de Publicação: 1983
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Administração Pública
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/rap/article/view/11293

It is not possible to provide a common theoretical framework to understand and deal with the issues and problems of public administration in Latin America in the coming years, for at the present historical turning point, where dissent rather than consensus prevails, there are so many singularities that the usual theoretical schemes seem poor or helpless. Rather than extrapolating speculations or the basis of available categories and cognitive habits it appears more useful to qualify our ignorance. A distinction should be made between two kinds of ignorance. There is the unguessed ignorance of those who do not realize the obsolescence of their intellectual schemes and structures in relation to new circumstances and try unsuccessfully to marshal them resorting to extrapolations. Their over commitment with an episodical frame of reference makes them insensitive to the uniqueness of unprecedented situations.