p. ix
“

The analogy between management and engineering has the unwholesome effect of taking management one further step away from governance. Engineering, like science, music, and theology, knows no national boundaries, and this is why scientists, artists, and theologians— often to their credit— make statesmen uneasy. Such men and women operate from a different normative base from those who govern. Despite the salience of the NAFTAs, the WTOs, and the EUs of this world, governing remains overwhelmingly the business of nation-states.

— John Rohr

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The analogy between management and engineering has the unwholesome effect of taking management one further step away from governance. Engineering, like science, music, and theology, knows no national boundaries, and this is why scientists, artists, and theologians— often to their credit— make statesmen uneasy. Such men and women operate from a different normative base from those who govern. Despite the salience of the NAFTAs, the WTOs, and the EUs of this world, governing remains overwhelmingly the business of nation-states." in the context of "p. ix" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "John Rohr" (Quotes, Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002: John Anthony Rohr (2002), Civil servants and their constitutions, University Press of Kansas, 2002.) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

About John Rohr

John Anthony Rohr (July 31, 1934 – August 10, 2011) was an American political scientist and Professor Emeritus at the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. Rohr is particularly known as a leading scholar of the U.S. Constitution in relationship to civil servants and public administration.