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The first part of this chapter brings together the earlier analysis and considers combinations of public service bargains, suggesting there are many possible combinations, but also some elements that do not seem to mix effectively. It then goes on to show how the various dimensions of PSBs have combined over time in two state traditions, Germany and the UK. It shows how a PSB lens can be utilized in different historical perspectives, ranging from the long-term perspective covering two centuries to the analysis of the past two decades.

In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed; here the cultural‐theory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as hierarchist (Ch.. 4), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (Ch. 6), and fatalist (this chapter). Starts by asking whether there can be a fatalist approach to public management—cultural theorists have identified fatalism as a viable way of life, but it does not figure prominently in conventional accounts on the provision of public services; Banfield has stated that in fatalist societies (such as Montegrano) public management will be (only) narrowly bureaucratic and statist because only paid officials will be concerned with public affairs, and the citizenry at large will be cynical about the motives of public officials; in spite of this widespread belief, however, there are likely to be few effective checks on public officials in a fatalist society, and Banfield sees fatalism as a social pathology bound to produce social backwardness and stagnation. Cultural theory is ambiguous on whether fatalism can be a viable basis of organization in the sense that a Montegrano‐type society could survive and reproduce itself over time, nor is it clear from the work of cultural theorists exactly what fatalists’ focus on karma amounts to. The last possibility—that fatalism might link to how‐to‐do‐it ideas about organizational design, as distinct from a view of the world as ineluctably ruled by the fickle goddess of fortune—has had little attention: from conventional cultural‐theory accounts, it would seem the most appropriate role, for fatalist social science in public management would be like that of the chorus in classical Greek theatre—and the second section of the chapter examines such a perspective on public management, looking particularly at one influential strain of ‘new institutionalist’ literature, which portrays the functioning of organizations as a highly unpredictable process, involving eclectic decision‐making unavoidably dependent on chance connections. It then moves on to build on the recipe for contrived randomness, and argues that a fatalist perspective can at least in some sense be taken beyond commentary and criticism into a positive prescription for conducting management and designing organizations to operate on the basis of chance.

This chapter presents David Foster Wallace's argument against John Turk Saunders' criticism of fatalism in Richard Taylor's essay “The Problem of Future Contingencies.” The essay was a carefully argued defense of Aristotle's view that assertions concerning future contingent events are neither true nor false, in which Taylor stated that fatalists do not concern themselves of the future, which is deemed uncontrollable. Saunders criticized this argument, saying that a person has the power to do something for the future. Despite being a critic of fatalism himself, Wallace claimed that Saunders' argument did not really succeed in refuting the notion of fatalist intuition. Even though Saunders' claim points out that Taylor's argument has implications that oppose people's intuitions about the world and about language, fatalists have their own intuition about the world.

This chapter describes the similarity between fatalists and time travelers, and presents David Foster Wallace's opinion concerning the error within this comparison. Fatalists regard the future like the past while time travelers regard the past like the future. This mirroring of the fatalist and time traveler suggests that both positions seem counterintuitive about what one can and cannot do. Richard Taylor expounded on this similarity in his response to the “Ability Criticism,” where he noted that people are all fatalists about the past. In “Richard Taylor's ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality,” David Foster Wallace points out the flaw between the comparison of the two using System J., saying that if Taylor's fatalist conclusion (all actions and inactions are necessary) involves a different sort of modality than the modality operating in his fifth premise, then his argument is rendered invalid.