The three ages of government: From the person, to the group, to the world. By Jos C. N.Raadschelders, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 2020. pp. 316. Paper: $29.95 Hardcover: $55. Also available online (free). <scp>ISBN</scp>: 978‐0‐472‐0

In a 1995 article in Public Administration Review, Robert Behn called upon the public administration community to identify and focus on “The Big Questions of Public Management.” His call has been sporadically answered in a variety of works incorporating “Big Questions” in their titles. In The Three Ages of Government, Jos C.N. Raadschelders also takes up the big question mantle, addressing what may be the biggest questions of all: What is government? What has it been? How and why has it developed and changed in the past 10,000 years? In Raadschelders' words, the “book is ambitious and audacious” (6) in breadth and scope. It is also highly informative, enlightening, very important, and multidisciplinary in drawing on public administration, political science, archeology, anthropology, biology, economics, history, and sociology. Raadschelders' purpose is to provide “a social ontology written for both scholars of public administration and for other scholars whose work includes attention to government, as well as for the educated public and elected and appointed public officeholders” (4). More specifically, Raadschelders seeks to explain “why government's role in society has changed [over the course of human history], and how the study of public administration can aid in the understanding of this phenomenon of change” (37). Chapter titles provide a snapshot of the book's framework and substance. After a brief Introduction on “What is Government?”, Chapter 1 is on “Understanding Government in Society: The Past 50 Years.” Chapter 2 addresses “Government in Society: The Conceptual and Historical Context for Understanding Government.” Chapter 3 takes up “Instinct and Intent: Origins and Elements of Human Governing Behaviors.” Chapter 4 focuses on the historical context of government development and change, “Tribal Community: Governing Humans in Ever Larger Sedentary Groups.” Chapter 5 considers globalization as a change agent, “Citizen and Government in a Global Society: Globalization and the Deep Current of Rationalization.” Chapter 6, “Governing as Process: Negotiable Authority and Multisource Decision-Making,” returns to more familiar public administration and political science themes. Chapter 7 on “Democracy: Thriving by Self-Restraint, Vulnerable to Human Instinct, Tribal Community, and Global Society,” ties much of the previous analysis together. Raadschelders' rich description and analysis of each of these ages is supported by his daunting command of a wealth of scholarship and is among the book's major contributions toward answering his big questions. Overall, the book is an instantiation of why big questions matter and often call for multidisciplinary research. If big questions spawn additional important questions, macro, meso, and micro, to his great credit, Raadschelders has created a research agenda that can deepen and broaden the study of public administration. If I were still teaching a doctoral level course on the intellectual history of US public administration at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs or at American University, The Three Ages of Government would be required reading with the expectation that it would encourage new lines of thought and noteworthy dissertations enriching our understanding of what government and public administration are.