Abstract
This article contains a reflection triggered by the arguable assumption that a decentered public administration (PA) is the kind of PA that we do today. Method will be treated as being-in-motion, consciously out of grace, dedicated not to seeking or speaking the truth, although its silence may be regretted. Agony will refer to the methodic impossibility of reconciling the theorist's sense of innocence lost with the inscrutable fate of the practitioner's quehacer (Spanish; literally "what to do," idiosyncratic duty and sense of obligation). Consequently, methodical agony may be understood as a tragic, nonredemptory faith in the capacity of dedicated wanderers, or skeptics, to produce answers while rethinking and reformulating the questions that motivate them.