The Administrative State

A Study of the Political Theory of American Public Administration

Dwight Waldo

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351486330
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Categoría: Politik

This classic text, originally published in 1948, is a study of the public administration movement from the viewpoint of political theory and the history of ideas. It seeks to review and analyze the theoretical element in administrative writings and to present the development of the public administration movement as a chapter in the history of American political thought.The objectives of The Administrative State are to assist students of administration to view their subject in historical perspective and to appraise the theoretical content of their literature. It is also hoped that this book may assist students of American culture by illuminating an important development of the first half of the twentieth century. It thus should serve political scientists whose interests lie in the field of public administration or in the study of bureaucracy as a political issue; the public administrator interested in the philosophic background of his service; and the historian who seeks an understanding of major governmental developments.This study, now with a new introduction by public policy and administration scholar Hugh Miller, is based upon the various books, articles, pamphlets, reports, and records that make up the literature of public administration, and documents the political response to the modern world that Graham Wallas named the Great Society. It will be of lasting interest to students of political science, government, and American history.

PART I
THE RISE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Chapter 1
THE MATERIAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

If they are to be understood, political theories must be construed in relation to their material environment and ideological framework. The political theories of American public administration are not exceptions. For, despite occasional claims that public administration is a science with principles of universal validity, American public administration has evolved political theories unmistakably related to unique economic, social, governmental, and ideological facts.

The Material Background

Among the factors that clearly have affected the form and content of American literature on public administration are the advent of the Great Society, the closing of the frontier and the waste of our natural resources, our tremendous wealth and our Business Civilization, the "corporate revolution" and the evolution of new corporate forms, urbanization, our peculiar constitutional and political system, the "second phase of the industrial revolution," the increase in specialization and professionalism and the rise of American scholarship, and the Great Wars, the Great Prosperity, and the Great Depression.¹

The Great Society—Whatever else it may be, "public adminis-tion" is a response on the part of its creators to the modern world that Graham Wallas has named the Great Society.

The text of Woodrow Wilson’s early essay, "The Study of Administration," was that "it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one."² This classic of administrative writing appeared contemporaneously with the Interstate Commerce Act, and the coincidence is significant. The establishment of the Interstate " Commerce Commission signalized the passage of the United States from a simple, agricultural society into a highly complex and interrelated Great Society. This new society was based upon a highly advanced division of labor and specialization of skill, a highly developed system of transportation and communication, a vast, sprawling technology—all based upon a new method of controlling environment called "scientific method."

American writers on public administration have accepted the inevitability and the desirability of the Great Society—with minor differences and with reservations as to detail. The importance of this acceptance cannot be overestimated. The most significant facts about any era to subsequent generations are likely to be precisely the ones accepted as unquestioningly as the fish accepts water. The "acceptance" of the Great Society by writers on public administration is quite as important as their various assertions—more so, since their assertions flow from this acceptance. They have not only accepted the Great Society; they have accepted the obligation to remedy its deficiencies and to make it a Good Society. This need not have been the case. Jefferson or Thoreau, William Morris or Tolstoi, presumably would not find the arguments of the administrative writers compelling.

Closing of the Frontier.—The economic and social readjustments attendant upon the closing of the frontier, and the prodigious waste of our natural resources that continued into the new period of consolidation, stimulated writing on public administration and determined its direction. The economic and political formulae of classical economics became, perhaps, a useful Myth for the period in which they were elaborated; many people found them helpful and they produced some manifest blessings. But the postulate that there is a harmony of nature, which if undisturbed would be productive of the greatest good of the greatest number, lost its appeal for many thoughtful and sensitive people with the passing of time and the altering of circumstances. The increasing ratio of population to resources, the vastness of waste and confusion, the failure of the traditional ways to produce a tolerable life for large numbers of our population even in the midst of plenty—these led an everincreasing number of academic, literary, and civic-minded people to abandon the old faith in a natural harmony in favor of a new ideal: that of a man-made harmony. That eminent work of the Progressive period, Herbert Croly’s Promise of American Life, may be taken as the symbol of the decision of a considerable number of citizens that we could no longer rely simply upon great natural wealth and complete individual freedom to fulfill the American dream of economic independence. The validity of the ideal of a man-made harmony, created for the most part through the instrumentality of governmental bureaucracies, has almost universally been assumed by writers on public administration—else why should they write of public administration except to damn it?

The importance of the conservation movement in hastening and confirming the adoption of this new viewpoint was apparently very great. The idea of saving natural resources soon developed into a social philosophy—saving human beings; and ultimately into the idea of a "planned" and "administered" human community. The ferment of the conservation idea is easily discernible in the early journals,³ and while "conservation" is no longer a popular word among writers on public administration, its meaning has been absorbed into new terminology.

Our Business Civilization.—Despite increasing pressure of population on resources and continuing prodigality in the use of resources, America remained a uniquely wealthy country, and ours became characteristically a Business Civilization. This has influenced our methods of administration and our literature of public administration.⁴ It has been generally "business" that- has given support to the study of public administration—in research bureaus, professional associations, the colleges and universities, and regular or ad hoc administrative agencies. Labor, agriculture, the older professions, and "consumers" have not been as much concerned about it. Naturally, therefore, the results reflect business beliefs and practices. ("Pressures" need not be presumed.) The paternalism, the "benevolent Feudalism" of business have been reproduced in public administration. Although the Report of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management was generally displeasing to the business community, future historians will record that it mirrored rather faithfully the form and spirit of current business thought on organization and management.

It is important also that the rise of public administration occurred during the golden age of private charity. In the past fifty years billions of dollars have been contributed, chiefly by the business community, to found and support dozens of activities which in other civilized countries are undertaken by the State. But for this golden flood and the opposition of the business community to the extension of governmental functions, many domains of activity would have fallen under public control much sooner than they have, or promise to be, and the problems of their administration thus posed and considered earlier. So, while business has stimulated and supported administrative study, it must be presumed that it nevertheless has reduced the amount and scope of speculation on the subject.

The Modern Corporation—The dependence of public administration on its business background has been furthered by the influence of the "corporate revolution" and the resulting emphasis on forms of organization characteristic of business corporations. Since the appearance of Berle and Means’ modern classic, The Modem Corporation and Private Property, we have become increasingly aware of the massive economic organizations that present the scene and even write the plot for the drama of our lives. Demonstrably, the corporation, both in its "private" and in its "public" varieties, has influenced our administrative thought, just as the institutions of the fief and the guild influenced medieval political thought.

As a device for managing municipal affairs or carrying out colonizing ventures the corporation has a long administrative history, but recent decades have witnessed the extension of its use to new fields and, to look no further than this country, a profusion of new types. Since 1900 the federal government has used the corporate form for dozens of differing activities, with the greatest variety in such matters as origin of charter, corporate powers and administrative organization; and states have pioneered in using the corporate expedient in interstate administration and in the building and management of such enterprises as toll bridges and roads. These developments have produced a considerable number of descriptive, legal, and evaluative writings.

The most interesting aspect of the influence of the corporate form lies in the fact that it has produced a literature of both centralization and decentralization. The example of private corporate practice has been one of the favorite weapons in the dialectic armory of those who have been interested in deprecating legislative or judicial influence and in aggrandizing executive power. On the other hand a number of persons have found in the practices of corporate interrelationships a hope that society can be planned and managed in the requisite degree without the disadvantages and dangers of great concentration of authority; that widespread public control and central direction can be combined with devolution in management and a democratic, "grass-roots" administration.

Coming of Urbanization.—The passing of the United States from a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban mode of life has recorded itself in the literature of public administration. This literature, in fact, is one of the forms in which the reconciliation of the old American ideal, Democracy, has been made with the new American condition, Urbanization. Democracy may not be as fervent an ideal today as it was in the Gilded Age, but the fear of great numbers of our citizens who surveyed the "City Wilderness" and were sick at heart at what was manifest from South End to Nob Hill, the fear that the destruction of democracy and its ideal was imminent, has been in considerable measure met and overcome by advances in administrative practice and by the assurances of administrative writers.⁵ The American ideal has, in fact, become predominantly an urban ideal, with its emphasis upon the material and spiritual satisfactions of a city civilization. American writers on public administration have not only accepted this interpretation of the Good Life but have zealously crusaded for it.⁶ To Reorganizers, those who prefer their state or county unreorganized are not only certainly mistaken and perhaps wicked: they are stupid and uncouth. Like Mill’s barbarians, despotism is a legitimate mode of dealing with them until they have advanced sufficiently to profit by rational discussion !

Our Constitutional System.—Public administration has of course been conditioned in diverse ways by the peculiarities of our constitutional and political systems. For example, our unique interpretation and strong institutionalization of the theory of the separation of powers, and our federal system, have created administrative problems that administrative students have sought to deal with by developing a philosophy of integration and simplification. The need for integration, in fact, has seemed so urgent that with many the "canons of integration" gained the status of universais.

It may be noted also that the separation and division of power and the lack of a strong tradition of administrative action have contributed to the proliferation of organizations of private citizens, and of public servants acting more or less in their private capacities, in order that certain functions may be performed that are carried out directly by the bureaucracies in some other highly developed nations. This "private" nature of American public administration has posed problems of the proper division of function between public and private administration and of the proper relation between autonomous or semi-autonomous organizations and the state structure.

It may also be noted that our institutional framework was partly responsible for the rise of the "spoils system," which has retarded the advance of effective administration and the rise of a tradition of government service by the "best." The fact that we have not developed a strong tradition of service by any particular intellectual, social, or educational type has invited speculative writing on the nature of administrative functions; on the problem of who should perform them, how they should be selected, and how trained—a field of much controversy.

Second Phase of the Industrial Revolution.—What has been called "the second phase of the industrial revolution" has reflected itself in American writings on public administration. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, when productive capacity began to exceed the capacity of available markets to absorb goods at productive prices, emphasis shifted from securing capital and enlarging facilities to raising profits by more effective use of productive equipment—machines and men. The chief result of this change in emphasis was the "scientific management" movement. Beginning with Frederick W. Taylor’s attempt to overcome "soldiering" among laborers and his study of the variables involved in steel-cutting operations, scientific management spread upward under the spur of profit and the aegis of science, and outward under the prestige of American mass-production methods until it became an international philosophy with a vision of a New Order—one of the most interesting and distinctive social philosophies developed in modern times.⁷

About 1910 scientific management began to be introduced into some branches of public administration, and to percolate among the students in their bureaus and schools. Today, no realm of administration has been left untouched, however lightly, by the new spirit; and some bureaus give lessons in efficiency to business. Perhaps as much as any other one thing, the "management" movement has molded the outlook of those to whom public administration is an independent inquiry or definable discipline.

Advance of Specialization.—The course which American study of public administration has taken is also a function of the very great increase in specialization which has featured our recent national life; particularly the rise of American scholarship and the growth of professional spirit and organizations. Few social and intellectual events in the history of the world have been more remarkable than the change, in the space of a generation, from the jack-of-all-trades pioneer-yeoman as a general type and ideal, to the specialist, the expert, the man who "knows his job." The typical, middle-class American in the twentieth century is not the yeoman but the professional or "skilled" man. This is the type we honor and aim to produce in our schools. Especially if a man’s skill is in some way connected with "science," we accord him the deference that in some societies is accorded men of Church or State.

This change in national life has helped to force the issue of the "amateur" in government service and to blacken the reputation of the politician. The respect paid to the ideal of the expert—especially the scientist—has had as a by-product the fact that our public service is probably equal in quality to any other in these categories—and that these categories tend to dominate the service. The general movement toward specialization and professionalization has inspired much literature urging that public administration must be made a "profession"—or professions—to achieve high standards and gain prestige.

The fissiparous tendencies of specialization have made more difficult the integration of our national life and raised the question of the necessity for a new kind of "integrator"—an administrator who is a specialist in "things in general." On the other hand, some have found heterogeneity and indirection desirable, and we have had a pale image of British literature on Guild Soci...