A History of Public Administration

Volume I: From the Earliest Times to the Eleventh Century

E. N. Gladden

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367133085
• eBook ISBN: 9780429655142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1972, Gladden argues that, when more and more attention is being given to the history of particular activities, to specialist as opposed to general history, there is a case for attempting to redress the balance between government and administration. This book offers an investigation of the administrative context of earlier ages and raises the suspicion that administration, like human nature, may not have varied very much since human society began. It is an attempt to provide a highly selective introductory history of this vast subject, with special emphasis on its public aspects, including chapters on Medieval Europe, the Middle East, Early American Civilizations and more.

CHAPTER 1

IN THE BEGINNING : 20,000 to 600 B.C.

Since we are committed to begin at the beginning it is important to look at some of the milestones in the development of humanity, which are of course well enough known today. On the evidence of skeletal remains and primitive tools the anthropologist and the archaeologist have been pressing back the beginnings of man and his subsequent development along a number of experimental lines, with such labels at Neanderthal, Sinanthropus, Pithecanthropus, Rhodesian and Homo Sapiens, to as early as seven hundred thousand to a million years B.C., although it was not until about 35,000 B.C. that the infancy of mankind seems to have given way to the hunter stage, which lasted till the emergence of agriculture and settled communities about 6000 B.C. Only then does substantial evidence begin to accumulate of organized government and the existence of public officials. The first representative civilizations are already upon the scene somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C. (although recent discoveries at Jericho and elsewhere suggest that there was already a settled town on this site at least two thousand years earlier!). Written records are vital both to the recording of history and the expansion of administration. But writing was not invented before the fourth millennium B.C. and obviously evidence of administration before this is hard to come by.

THE NATURE OF ADMINISTRATION

First comes the initiator or leader to render society possible, then the organizer or administrator to give it permanence. Administration, or the management of affairs, is the middle factor in all social activity, unspectacular but essential to its continuance. In simple communities the headman, or ruler, is the wielder of power, able to perform, or at least personally to direct, all the activities involved in running the show, or government, as we call it. Very soon, however, the wielding of power, whether personally by a despot or on behalf of the community by less-autocratic authorities, becomes more than one man can cope with, however able he may be. Functions have to be shared, or delegated, and the first administrators or managers emerge to operate under the leader’s direction. Such administration long remains the prerogative of the leader and his family relations, but sooner or later others have to be brought in to participate, and the class of administrator emerges in which can be discerned the first public officials. Broadly such a community can now be divided into three class bands: at the top the governors or manipulators of power, in the middle the managers or administrators who see to the carrying out of the behests of the governors, and the large lower class of workers and slaves who undertake the productive work of the community. A hard and fast line cannot be drawn between the governor and the leading officials nor can the more menial official be excluded from the worker group, but in the main the public administrator figures in the middle band.

PRIMITIVE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: TWO MODERN EXAMPLES

Although history, as the story of human development, and our knowledge of public administration are largely a consequence of writing, whose invention made the permanent recording of human activity possible, it must be obvious that societies were developing and administration was being carried on before the making of permanent records. Government, an early theme of history, obviously predated it to the very beginnings of civilization and, although administration as its subsidiary activity may not have called forth a deal of comment it can be rightly assumed that it existed long before the written record.

An analogy of this early unwritten stage of public administration can be discovered in the organization and government of tribal societies which have continued to exist side by side with our modern highly organized states. Numerous studies exist of such systems, a comparative examination of which would bring to light some interesting facts. It is proposed to select two for brief consideration here.

The first, by Schapera, is an interesting study of certain South African tribes.¹ The chiefs’ duties cover much more than decision-making and leadership. The chief represents the people in his dealings with outsiders and attends to the organizing of important communal activities such as collective labour, ritual and war. In some instances he may act both as legislator and judge, organize agricultural activities and even care for the needy. In practice it soon becomes impossible for him to undertake all these functions personally and he may delegate powers on a geographical basis to sub-chiefs, members of his own family or others closely related who represent him in the areas. Apart from such local subordinates the chief will require personal assistants whose duties may be either advisory, i.e. to participate in the making of policy, or executive, to help him to carry out his routine tasks. Sometimes the two functions will be performed by the same person but it is upon the latter activity that the status of the official depends. Thus, although the evidence may be scanty the history of the public official can be traced back before the invention of writing.

The second study takes us much further. In his examination of tribal government in the area of Zaria in Northern Nigeria, during a century and a half from A.D. 1800 onwards, M. G. Smith provides a most interesting, in many ways, sensational, account of the extent to which administrative machinery can develop in the absence of efficient office facilities.² The period covers three successive regimes in the area: the Habe Abuja government, subject to the overlordship of the rulers of Bornu from 1800; the Fulani Zazzau government, vassals to the Emir of Sokoto, from 1865; and the modern Fulani phase under the British from 1900, during which the tribal system was retained and developed.

In all these systems the political and administrative sectors can be differentiated, specific administrative rules and procedures having been worked out. Government was ‘conducted through a system of ranked and titled offices known as sarautu, each of which can be regarded as an exclusive permanent unit, a sort of corporation sole. Relations between offices of subordinate and superordinate rank-orders are highly formalized, while those between offices of co-ordinate status are not clearly laid down’³. Only a few of these offices were hereditary and the appointive offices could be held by freedmen, members of the royal family, eunuchs or slaves, all categories that we shall meet in our examination of the outstanding historical administrative systems. The kingship was not hereditary, for the Fulani rulers were consecutively selected from different dynasties. The ruler’s power was thus restricted by custom and the specific division of responsibilities. As a counterbalance, it was necessary for him to keep as close a hold as possible on the administrative sectors, through which his instructions were implemented. He maintained close consultation with his senior officials, who had to see that his instructions were passed down the line. Informal councils of state were assembled, but their powers were limited. The local communities were controlled by chiefs, who were responsible to the king. He retained direct control of certain royal domains and his personal property, consisting mainly of slave-settlements. In addition to the large income from these sources the ruler received a large share of the state tax, a half-share of military-booty, tribute from vassal states and certain pagan tribes, death duties of office-holders and a portion of his predecessor’s estate. Outgoings were also multifarious, although there was usually a surplus for the founding of further slave-settlements.

Such a brief statement as the foregoing fails inevitably to do justice to our author’s remarkable study, but the subject cannot be left without a brief reference to the complex system of official positions that had already been worked out by the Habe and had left an impress upon their successors.⁴

At the top of the official hierarchy were Rukuni, or First Order Chiefs, who were known respectively as Madawaki, Galadima, Wambai and Dallatu. The Madawaki was greeted as Head of the Chiefs. He was military leader and had certain territorial controls. The king obtained his consent to all appointments and he acted as a sort of Master of Ceremonies. The Galadima’s main task was the administration of the capital in the king’s absence on campaign. He officiated at the marriage and naming ceremonies of the king’s children. The Wambai also officiated at naming ceremonies and was responsible for the cess-pits and urinals of the king and the women of the palace; he was virtually the royal sanitary engineer! The Dallatu supervised arrangements for the war camps and deputized for the Galadima.

Below the Rukuni was a second order, known as the Rawuna, or turbanned officials. They were more numerous and included the principal assistants of the top officials. Among these may be mentioned the Iyan Bakin Kasuwa whose job was to supervise the markets of the capital and the villages.

Then there were the numerous Fadawa, or officers of the King’s Household, under their chief, the Sarkin Fada. Of special interest among them was the Cincina whose duty was to spy out the news of the country so that he would be aware of any plots against the king. A number of these Fadawa had military functions.

The king’s Eunuchs acted as officials of the inner chamber, under the Makami Karami. They looked after the royal household and acted as messengers for the king. Among the latter was Sarkin Ruwa, or Chief of the Waters, who was the king’s messenger to the fishermen and responsible for all matters pertaining to water.

Three other groups of officials included the principal servants of the king, certain royal office-holders, and the chief Koranic scholars who carried out important priestly duties.

Here surely was a remarkable quasi-bureaucratic structure developed by customary law and operating through a personal communications system. Its members were classified severally by function, rank-order and status and may be divided alternatively into public officials, household officials and slave officials, any of whom might hold either military or civil posts.⁵ It is instructive to observe how many of the universal characteristics of officialdom are to be found in this system, which seems to lack only the advantages of the modern recording techniques, office machinery and accountancy methods which have rendered large-scale administrative services possible.

This interesting system of tribal administration embodies the process of division of labour which characterizes the rise of the official as a specialist administrative agent of the governing power. At first there is little distinction between the directive, law-making, adjudicative, religious, military, and productive, or economic, activities of the leader. As chief he is responsible for many, perhaps all, of the vital activities of the tribe. With the growth of larger governmental areas — probably as a result of conquest — and the increasing complexity of governmental functions, the division of labour is manifested, at first by the departmentalization of administration on a geographical basis, subsequently by the separation of powers and duties through the process of specialization.

As the tribe grows bigger and the chief gradually acquires the prestige of kingship the tendency is for government itself to become a specialist activity and for the social and economic sectors of the community to be centred elsewhere. But the ruler may continue to be responsible for his own household on the old lines and also for certain social and economic matters in which he is personally involved. He is still religious and military leader, and his personal duties are of a mixed executive, legislatory and judicial nature. He may soon relinquish religious matters to the priests and military matters to the generals — while still retaining final responsibility for both as the wielder of ultimate power — and gradually the civil duties of government will be distributed to separate institutions dealing respectively with executive, legislative and judicial matters. In all these spheres the assistance of officials will be needed, but particularly in the executive sphere within which the main day-to-day activities of government are carried out. This specialization of function, seen at work in tribal societies, is characteristic of government at all times and the several functions mentioned figure under all types of government, although their actual allocation varies infinitely.

At every stage and in every form of organization the official is the subordinate of the reigning power whether it be chief, king or corporate body — high priest, magistrate, military leader, legislator or chief executive. He is not the manipulator of power — the Ruling Bureaucrat of press and legend — but the specialist in management and administration. Sometimes the line is not easy to draw, for the power-holder may continue to administer, while situations constantly arise where the ruler delegates political as well as administrative functions to his chief assistants, who in this case also act in a dual capacity. If in such a situation the ruler is weak and his chief executive overpoweringly strong the immemorial division between power and administration is upset, but this is usually a fluid and unstable situation. Even in tribal societies there may be assistants of this kind to whom the chief delegates wide powers. In the Bantu, for example, there is the Great Induna, who is the chief’s principal lieutenant in all his functions and who deputizes for him when he is ill or away. He is the intermediary between chief and tribe and his spokesman on many important occasions.⁶

Our glance at these modern examples of complex administrative systems developed by tribal societies — and there are many others available⁷ — imperatively warns us against assuming that there was no substantive development of administration before writing made history possible. Indeed, it seems probable that administration, and particularly public administration, had already experienced a long phase of incubation before that invention occurred to increase its scope a hundredfold.

THE OLDEST PROFESSION?

It is clear that the official ranked early among the first professionals. The popular claim of prostitution to be the oldest profession is not therefore likely to stand close examination. Certainly the normal customs of tribal society lend little colour to this popular euphemism. Coon has another and much more plausible suggestion:

‘The religious practitioner, the shaman, was the first specialist. His profession, not prostitution, is the oldest. There can be little doubt that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 In the Beginning (20,000 to 600 B.C.)
• 2 Ancient Egypt (3400 to 525 B.C.)
• 3 The Mediterranean City State (2000 to 146 B.C.)
• 4 Imperial Rome (146 B.C. to A.D. 330)
• 5 India and China (5000 B.C. to A.D. 1125)
• 6 Byzantium to A.D. 1025
• 7 Birth of the West (A.D. 500 to 1066)
• 8 The Official and His Administration to the Eleventh Century A.D.
• Index