This book explores the public service, indicating how early modern political concepts and theories of state, sovereignty, government, office, and reason of state can shed light on current problems, failings and ethical dilemmas in politics, government and political administration.

Paul du Gay is Professor and Director of Research Impact in the School of Business and Management at Royal Holloway, University of London, Professor in the Department of Organization (IOA) at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and Research Guest Professor at the Royal Danish Defence Academy. His research interests include organization theory, bureaucracy and the ethics of office. He is author, inter alia, of In Praise of Bureaucracy: Weber, Organization, Ethics (2000) and co-author of For Formal Organization: The Past in the Present and Future of Organization Theory (2016).

Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth is Associate Professor in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research interests include the history and status of organization theory, contemporary and historical problematizations of office-holding, bureaucracy and the state and - more recently - the organization of security. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Organization, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology and Journal of Cultural Economy.

Introduction 1. The State 2. On Office 3. The Bureaucratic Vocation 4. Whatever Happened to 'Administrative Statesmanship'? 5. Reason of State as an Official Comportment Conclusion: To Serve a State