The final decade of this century is proving to be both ruthless and rewarding for all of us in public administration. A period of fractured meaning has displaced the narrative of unity and progress embedded in our modernist consciousness. Postmodernism burst full-tilt onto the public administration theory scene in the late 1980's and has reconfigured the intellectual ground in new and dynamic ways. Because of it, new space for discourse--albeit limited space for idealism and a perceived (perhaps misunderstood)1 greater space for cynicism exists.