It is now fifty years since Woodrow Wilson wrote his brilliant essay on public administration. It is a good essay to reread every so often; there is so much in it that sounds modern, so much that … Expand. Toward a Historical-Comparative Perspective on Bureaucracies. In the discipline of public administration an ambivalent relation exists with the research object. On the one hand we train people to become civil servants, and as soon as they enter the … Expand. Administration "was a part of political life only as the methods of the countinghouse are a part of the life of society; only as machinery is part of the manufactured product.
Abstract The study of public organizations has withered over time in mainstream organization studies research, as scholars in the field have migrated to business schools.
This is so even though … Expand. What Is Philosophy of Administration. The idea of a philosophy of administration is difficult to convey to those students of public administration who have not studied philosophy. Although philosophical ideas seem to be abstract, they … Expand. Voter information What's on my ballot?
Where do I vote? How do I register to vote? How do I request a ballot? When do I vote? When are polls open? Who Represents Me? How do I update a page? Election results. Privacy policy About Ballotpedia Disclaimers Login. The weightier debates of constitutional principle are even yet by no means concluded; but they are no longer of more immediate practical moment than questions of administration. It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one.
Administration is everywhere putting its hands to new undertakings. The utility, cheapness, and success of the government's postal service, for instance, point towards the early establishment of governmental control of the telegraph system. Or, even if our government is not to follow the lead of the governments of Europe in buying or building both telegraph and railroad lines, no one can doubt that in some way it must make itself master of masterful corporations.
The idea of the state and the consequent ideal of its duty are undergoing noteworthy change; Seeing every day new things which the state ought to do, the next thing is to see clearly how it ought to do them. Let me expand a little what I have said of the province of administration. Most important to be observed is the truth already so much and so fortunately insisted upon by our civil service reformers; namely, that administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics.
Administrative questions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices. There is another distinction which must be worked into all our conclusions, which, though but another side of that between administration and politics, is not quite so easy to keep sight of: I mean the distinction between constitutional and administrative questions, between those governmental adjustments which are essential to constitutional principle and those which are merely instrumental to the possibly changing purposes of a wisely adapting convenience.
A clear view of the difference between the province of constitutional law and the province of administrative function ought to leave no room for misconception; and it is possible to name some roughly definite criteria upon which such a view can be built.
Public administration is detailed and systematic execution of public law. Every particular application of general law is an act of administration. The assessment and raising of taxes, for instance, the hanging of a criminal, the transportation and delivery of the mails, the equipment and recruiting of the army and navy, etc. The broad plans of governmental action are not administrative; the detailed execution of such plans is administrative.
Constitutions, therefore, properly concern themselves only with those instrumentalities of government which are to control general law. It is this even more reasonable preferencewhich im- pels us to discoverwhat there may be to hinderor delay us in naturalizingthis much-to-be-desired science of administration.
What, then,is thereto prevent? Well, principally,popular sovereignty. It is harder for de- mocracyto organizeadministration thanformonarchy.
The very completeness of our most cherished political successes in the past embarrasses us. We have enthronedpublic opinion; and it is forbiddenus to hope duringits reignforany quick school- ing of the sovereign in executive expertness or in the condi- tions of perfectfunctionalbalance in government. The very fact that we have realized popular rule in its fulnesshas made the task of organizing that rule just so much the more difficult. In orderto make any advance at all we must instructand per- suade a multitudinousmonarchcalled public opinion,- a much less feasible undertakingthan to influencea single monarch called a king.
An individualsovereignwill adopt a simple plan and carryit out directly: he will have but one opinion,and he will embodythat one opinion in one command. But this other sovereign, the people, will have a score of differingopinions.
They can agree upon nothing simple: advance must be made through compromise,by a compounding of differences,by a trimmingof plans and a suppression of too straightforward principles. There will be a succession of resolves running through a course of years, a dropping fire of commands run- ning through a whole gamut of modifications. Formerlythe reason for this was that the single person who was sovereign was generally either selfish, ignorant,timid, or a fool,-albeit there was now and again one who was wise.
Nowadays the reason is that the many,the people, who are sovereignhave no single ear which one can ap- proach,and are selfish,ignorant,timid,stubborn,or foolishwith the selfishnesses,the ignorances,the stubbornnesses,the timid- ities, or the folliesof several thousand persons,-albeit there are hundreds who are wise. Once the advantage of the re- formerwas that the sovereign's mind had a definitelocality, that it was contained in one man's head, and that consequently it could be gottenat; thoughit was his disadvantage that that mind learned only reluctantlyor only in small quantities, or was under the influenceof some one who let it learn only the wrong things.
Now, on the contrary,the reformeris be- wildered by the fact that the sovereign's mind has no definite locality,but is contained in a votingmajorityof several million heads; and embarrassed by the fact that the mind of this sov- ereign also is underthe influenceof favorites,who are none the less favoritesin a good old-fashionedsense of the word because they are not persons but preconceived opinions; i. Wherever regard for public opinion is a firstprinciple of government,practical reformmust be slow and all reformmust be fullof compromises.
For whereverpublic opinion exists it must rule. This is now an axiom half the world over,and will presentlycome to be believed even in Russia. Whoever would effecta change in a modern constitutionalgovernmentmust firsteducate his fellow-citizensto want some change. That done, he must persuade them to want the particular change he wants. He must firstmake public opinion willingto listen and then see to it that it listen to the right things.
He must stir it up to search foran opinion,and then manage to put the rightopirnion in its way. The firststep is not less difficultthan the second. With opinions,possession is more than nine points of the law. Institutions which one generation regards as only a makeshiftapproximationto the realization of a principle,the next generation honors as the nearest possible approximationto that principle,and the next worships as the principle itself.
It takes scarcely three gen- erations for the apotheosis. The grandsonaccepts his grand- father's hesitating experimentas an integralpart of the fixed constitutionof nature. Even if we had clear insight into all the political past, and could formout of perfectlyinstructedheads a few steady,in- fallible, placidly wise maxims of government into which all sound political doctrine would be ultimatelyresolvable,woulld the countryact otnthem?
That is the question. The bulk of mankind is rigidlyunphilosophical,and nowadays the bulk of mankindvotes. A truth must become not onilyplain but also commonplace before it will be seen by the people who go to theirworkveryearly in the morning,;and not to act upon it must involve great and pinching inconveniencesbefore these same people will make up theirminds to act upon it. And where is this unphilosophical bulk of mankind more multifariousin its compositionthan in the United States?
To know the public mind of this country,one must know the mind, not of Americans of the older stocks only,but also of Irishmen, of Germans, of negroes. In order to get a footingfor new doctrine,one must influenceminds cast in everymould of race, minds inheritingeverybias of environment,warped by the his- tories of a score of differentnations,warmed or chilled,closed or expanded by almost everyclimate of the globe. So much,then,forthe historyof the studyof administration, and the peculiarly difficultconditions under which, entering upon it when we do, we must undertake it.
What, now, is the subject-matterof this study,and what are its characteristic objects? The field of administrationis a fieldof business. It is a part of political life only as the methodsof the counting-houseare a part of the life of society; only as ma- chineryis part of the manufacturedproduct.
But it is, at the same time,raised veryfar above the dull level of mere techni- cal detail by the fact that throughits greater principles it is directlyconnectedwith the lasting maximsof political wisdom, the permanenttruthsof politicalprogress. The object of administrativestudyis to rescue executivemeth- ods fromthe confusionand costliness of empiricalexperiment and set them upon foundationslaid deep in stable principle.
It is forthis reason that we must regard civil-servicereform in its presentstages as but a prelude to a fuller administrative reform. We are now rectifyingmethods of appointment; we must go on to adjust executivefunctionsmore fitlyand to pre- scribe better methods of executive organization and action. Civil-servicereformis thus but a moral preparationforwhat is to follow. It is clearingthe moralatmosphereof officiallife by establishingthe sanctityof public officeas a public trust,and, by making the service unpartisan,it is opening the way for making it businesslike.
By sweetening its motives it is ren- dering it capable of improvingits methods of work. Let me expand a little what I have said of the province of administration.
Most importantto be observed is the truth already so much and so fortunatelyinsisted upon by our civil- service reformers;namely,that administrationlies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrativequestions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for ad- ministration, it should not be sufferedto manipulate its offices.
This is distinction of high authority; eminentGerman writ- ers insist upon it as of course. Bluntschli,lforinstance,bids us separate administrationalike frompolitics and from law.
Poli- tics, he says, is state activity "in things great and universal," while "administration,on the other hand," is "the activityof the state in individual and small things. Politics is thus the special provinceof the statesman,administrationof the techni- cal official. But we do not require German authorityforthis position; this discrim- inationbetween administrationand politics is now, happily,too obvious to need furtherdiscussion.
There is another distinctionwhich must be worked into all our conclusions, which, though but another side of that be- tween administrationand politics,is not quite so easy to keep sight of: I mean the distinction between constitutionaland administrativequestions, between those governmentaladjust- ments which are essential to constitutionalprinciple and those which are merely instrumentalto the possibly changing pur- poses of a wisely adapting convenience.
One cannot casily make clear to everyone just where admin- istrationresides in the various departmentsof any practicable governmentwithoutentering,upon particulars so numerous as to confuseand distinctionsso minute as to distract. No lines of demarcation,setting apart administrativefromnon-adminis- trativefunctions,can be run between this and that department of governmentwithout being run up hill and down dale, over dizzy heights of distinctionand throughdense jungles of statu- tory enactment,hither and thitheraround "ifs" and "buts," " whens" and " howevers,"untilthey become altogetherlost to the commoneye not accustomed to this sort of surveying,and consequently not acquainted with the use of the theodolite of logical discernment.
A great deal of administrationgoes about incog-nitoto most of the world,being confoundednow with polit- ical " management,"and again with constitutionalprinciple.
Perhaps this ease of confusionmay explain such utterances as that of Niebuhr's: " Liberty," he says, " depends incompar- ably more upon administrationthan upon constitution. Apparentlyfacility in the actual exercise of libertydoes depend more upon admin- istrative arrangements than upon constitutional guarantees; although constitutionalguarantees alone secure the existence of liberty.
But - upon second thought- is even so much as this true? The principles that rule withinthe man, or the constitution,are the vital springsof liberty or servitude. Because dependence and subjection are withoutchains, are lightened by every easy-workingdevice of considerate,paternal government,they are not therebytrans- formedinto liberty.
Liberty cannot live apart fromconstitu- tional principle; and no administration,however perfectand liberal its methods,can give men more than a poor counterfeit of libertyif it rest upon illiberalprinciplesof government. A clear view of the differencebetween the province of con- stitutional law and the province of administrativefunction ought to leave no room for misconception; and it is possible to name some roughlydefinitecriteria upon which such a view can be built.
Public administrationis detailed and systematic executionof public law. Every particularapplicationof general law is an act of administration. The assessment and raising of taxes, forinstance,the hanging of a criminal,the transportation and deliveryof the mails, the equipment and recruitingof the army and navy, etc.
The broad plans of governmentalaction are not administrative; the cle- tailed executionof such plans is administrative. Constitutions, therefore,properlyconcern themselves only with those instru- mentalities of governmentwhich are to control general law. Our federalconstitutionobserves this principlein saying noth- ing of even the greatest of the purely executive offices,and speaking only of that Presidentof the Union who was to share the legislativeand policy-makingfunctionsof government,only of those judges of highest jurisdictionwho were to interpret and guard its principles,and not of those who were merelyto give utteranceto them.
This is not quite the distinctionbetween Will and answering Deed, because the administratorshould have and does have a will of his own in the choice of means for accomplishinghis work.
He is not and ought not to be a mere passive instru- ment. The distinctionis between general plans and special means. The studyof administration,philosophi- cally viewed, is closely connected with the study of the proper distributionof constitutionalauthority. To be efficientit must discover the simplestarrangementsby which responsibilitycan be unmistakablyfixed upon officials; the best way of dividing authoritywithout hampering it, and responsibilitywithout ob- scuringit.
And this question of the distributionof authority, when taken into the sphere of the higher,the originatingfunc- tions of government,is obviouslya central constitutionalques- tion.
If administrativestudy can discoverthe best principles upon which to base such distribution,it will have done consti- tutional study an invaluable service. Montesquieu did not, I am convinced,say the last wordon this head. To discoverthe best principle forthe distributionof author- ity is of greater importance,possibly,under a democratic sys- tem, where officialsserve many masters, than under others where they serve but a few.
If that suspicion could but be clarifiedinto wise vigilance,it would be altogethersalutary; if that vigilance could be aided by the unmistakable placing of responsibility,it would be altogether beneficent. Suspicion in itself is never healthful eitherin the privateor in the public mind. Trust is strengthin all relations of life; and, as it is the officeof the constitutionalreformerto create conditionsof trustfulness,so it is the officeof the admin- istrativeorganizerto fitadministrationwith conditionsof clear- cut responsibilitywhich shall insure trustworthiness.
And let me say that large powers and unhampered discretion seem to me the indispensableconditionsof responsibility. Pub- lic attention must be easily directed,in each case of good or bad administration,to just the man deserving of praise or blame. There is no danger in power, if only it be not irre, sponsible. If it be divided,dealt out in shares to many,it is obscured; and if it be obscured, it is made irresponsible.
If to keep his officea manmustachieveopenand honest success,and if at thesame timehe feelshimselfintrusted with largefreedom ofdiscretion, thegreaterhis powerthe less likely is he to abuse it,the moreis he nervedandsoberedandelevated by it. It is a part of political life only as the methods of the counting-house are a part of the life of society; only as machinery is part of the manufactured product. Administrative questions are not political questions.
Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices. Politics is thus the special province of the statesman, administration of the technical official. Every particular application of general law is an act of administration. The assessment and raising of taxes, for instance, the hanging of a criminal, the transportation and the delivery of the mails, the equipment and the recruiting of the army and navy, etc.
The broad plans of governmental action are not administrative; the detailed execution of such plans is administrative. To him, if administrative study can discover the best principles upon which to base such distribution, it would have been a great service to constitutional study. According to Wilson, this sort of exercise is of utmost importance under a democratic system where officials serve many masters.
There is no denying the fact that all sovereigns are suspicious of their servants and the sovereign people is no exception to this rule. But the fundamental question is how to ally this suspicion? But he education thus imparted will go but a certain length. It will multiply the number of intelligent critics of government, but it will create no competent body of administrators….
It is an education which will equip legislators, perhaps, but not executive officials. If we are to improve public opinion, which is the motive power of the government, we must prepared better officials as the apparatus of government.
But at the same time administrators must adhere to the policy of the government they serve and that policy should be the creation of statesmen, whose responsibility to public opinion will be direct and inevitable. At the same time all governments alike have the same legitimate ends of administration. Comparative studies of different systems help in finding the best method of good administration which can be adopted by others after necessary modifications.
We have only to filter it through our constitutions, only to put it over a slow fire of criticism and distil away its foreign gases. They point out that on the one hand, Wilson considered politics and administration as separate disciplines while on the other hand he based administrative principles on politics. According to them, he failed to amplify what the study of administration actually entailed, what was proper relationship between politics and administrative realms and whether or not administrative studies could become abstract science akin to natural sciences.
In this regard Richard J. As such, he favored a balanced view regarding relations between politics and administration.
In this regard Dwight Waldo has pointed out that he has tried to link administration to business methods, instituted a civil service and so on, which really confuse any careful reader of the subject. Moreover, he aimed at discovering what should properly and successfully, an administrator can do but actually he dealt with the separation and non- separation of politics and administration and even on this problem his views are not clear. Wilson is also criticized on the ground that his view lack originality.
In this regard Daniel W.
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