The science of administration,the founders,and theories of political association

Drawing on the work of Michael Oakeshott, this paper seeks to examine the theory of political association underlying Luther Gulick and L. Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration and to contrast this theory with that underlying the Constitution. It is argued that the authors of the Papers clearly viewed the state as a form of purposive association whereas the Founders of the Constitution in large part saw the state as a form of civil association. This explains the difficulties that reformers such as Gulick faced in realizing their vision of administration within our constitutional framework.

Luther Gulick and L. Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration (1) represent one of the most important attempts at a synthesis of doctrines in the field of public administration prior to World War II. While the Papers exhibit a variety of approaches and views, they are best known for those authors who, like Gulick and Urwick themselves, took a more classical approach to administration. Such an approach rests on a belief in the virtues of hierarchy and centralization of authority and power in the chief executive; a belief in efficiency as the central value of administration; a belief that there must exist certain principles for good administration applicable to all organizations, regardless of institutional setting; and a belief that such principles are susceptible to empirical scientific discovery and verification. These doctrines, expounded so forcefully in the Papers, formed the basis for the administrative reform movement of the time including the President's Committee on Administrative Management, of which Gulick himself was a member. Indeed, the Papers continue to strongly influence modern efforts at administrative reform.(2)

The purpose of this article is to examine the particular vision of political association which seems to underlie the Papers, and to compare it with the vision of political association which guided the Founders of the Constitution. In doing so, the article will draw upon the political thinking of the late Michael Oakeshott, a British political theorist and philosopher. I shall argue that there is a tension between the vision of political association held by the authors of the Papers and that held by the Founders, and that this tension explains the failure of administrative reformers to reshape the administrative state along the lines of classical public administration doctrines.     

Luther gulick,public administration and classical management

The late Luther Gulick (1892-1993), often known as the dean of U.S. public administration, left behind him an enormous and wide-ranging literary corpus, but no single systematic work. This essay presents both a personal and an intellectual portrait of Gulick. The personal portrait is accomplished primarily through Gulick's own words derived from relevant published works, autobiographical fragments, and a series of interviews with the author. The intellectual portrait concentrates on a single stream. of thought--classical organization theory and design--and outlines the evolution of Gulick's thought through time, with comments here and there.     

The other “papers on the science of administration”: a search for common themes

The Papers on the Science of Administration are almost exclusively Gown for the opening and closing articles by Luther Gulick. This article explores the intervening nine articles to test some of Gulick's assertions about them. First, despite Gulick's somewhat unclear claim to the contrary, the “other” papers did not present many unfamiliar arguments to impress informed readers. Second, despite Gulick's explicit claim, the articles offered little consensus except on the most general and unusable “principles” of administration. Third, there were hints throughout the papers that the “principles” approach to management was collapsing because of the vague but indispensable issue of leadership. Hence, the “other” papers are neglected because they never offered the emerging consensus that Gulick promised.     

The unassailable principle: why luther gulick searched for a science of administration

Luther Gulick's two contributions to the Papers on the Science of Administration are often regarded as a statement of the “orthodoxy” in the field of public administration in the pre-war period. This paper challenges this view. It argues that the two basic claims in Gulick's work--the notion that public administration could be considered as a science, and that field could be studied without regard to politics--were widely contested throughout the 1920's and 1930's. Gulick adhered to these claims in part because they were useful in protecting a young and weakly-institutionalized field against powerful critics. By the late 1930's, academics in public administration may have confronted a dilemma: the position staked out by Gulick and others, while essential to the development of the field, was regarded by many within the field as being intellectually untenable.     

From reorganizing to reinventing: sixty years and “we still don’t get it”

Sixty years ago the “Brownlow Committee Report” was written by some of the most prominent members of the emerging field of public administration. Its recommendations had serious consequences for the way both our democratic republic and the field of public administration have evolved. In developing principles in which to anchor the recommendations, Luther Gulick, who was both the intellectual and political force behind the committee, contributed to a confusion of the concepts of organizations and the polity and those of management and governance.

Some of the story of how the concepts promoted by Gulick and the Papers on the Science of Administration led to a misconception, which became public administration's living legacy is told in this article. We then discuss the Brownlow Committee Report as something which changed: our very conception of the Constitution; Gulick's rationale for cooperation with Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Report as a misplacement of organizational concepts upon a polity; the dimensions of constitutional change in the report; and the staying power of Gulick's and the Committee's ideas. In conclusion, we contend that if we are to move beyond Gulick's legacy, that the field must learn and act upon the distinctions between organizations and the polity and management and governance.

“The charge that the Brownlow Committee set in train the development of the “imperial presidency” can be advanced only by those who have not read the Committee's report.”

James Fesler, former staff member of the Brownlow Committee Public Administration Review (July/August, 1987)

“How interesting it is historically that we all assumed in the 1930s that all management, especially public management, flowed in a broad, strong stream of value-filled ethical performance. Were we blind or only naive until Nixon came along? Or were we so eager to ‘take politics out of administration’ that we threw the baby out with the bathwater?”

Luther Gulick, member of the Brownlow Committee From Stephen K. Blurnberg, “Seven Decades of Public Administration: A Tribute to Luther Gulick” Public Administration Review (March/April, 1981)

was as old in American politics as it was popular. Yet, before the end of his second term, Roosevelt, with the help of Charles Merriam, Herbert Brownlow, and Luther Gulick, would use such hoary symbolism towards ends that would fundamentally alter our perceptions of the constitutional order, the nature of the presidency, and public administration. How did this come to pass? Barry Karl says that “He (Roosevelt) had continued as President to look at reorganization through the eyes of those who saw in it a means of saving money, balancing the budget, and thereby giving security to the nation's economy.” But Karl adds, “By 1936, this viewpoint had undergone drastic revision.”⁽⁶⁾ The revision in his thinking replaced “saving money” with “managerial control” as the principal aim of reorganization. “Managerial control” by the president would enable him not only to manage New Deal programs but protect them against potential Republican counterattacks, i.e., in short, to strengthen his hand as president.

The impetus for this change apparently came directly from the President's experiences in seeking to administer the government's burgeoning and increasingly chaotic Executive Branch. Roosevelt was a skilled, intuitive, and flexible administrator. But, according to Karl, his experience in seeking to administer the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act with a loose arrangement, quickly dubbed “the five ring circus,” taught the President several lessons. First, “it demonstrated the growing dependence of the President on official staff, other than cabinet members, working exceedingly close to the President's own sphere of daily operation. “⁽⁷⁾ Second, the problems of administering the Act raised questions among the participants themselves as to whether or not the President could “administer and control so complex an operation as federal relief given the inadequate machinery in his possession.”⁽⁸⁾ In other words, the effort was not simply a “five ring circus” because of FDR's famed flexible and informal style, but also because of the inadequacy of the available structures. Karl notes that “despite the problems inherent in the fiscal machinery as it stood, a continued development of governments within governments could only lead to a dangerous chaos over which the President would have no control whatsoever.”⁽⁹⁾ The questions raised suggested to the President that perhaps there was some merit to the position of those urging that emergency agencies be absorbed into the existing framework. This could meet a very practical question by “placing agencies within the purview of budget and accounting procedures already in existence.”⁽¹⁰⁾

According to Gulick, FDR told Brownlow and him at a November 14, 1936, meeting “that, since the election, he had received a great many suggestions that he move for a constitutional convention for the United States” and observed that “with Coughlin and other crackpots about there was no way of keeping such an affair from getting out of hand. But,” he said, “there is more than one way of killing a cat, just as in this job I assigned you.”⁽¹¹⁾ Gulick also quotes FDR as specifically telling the Committee, “We have got to get over the notion that the purpose of reorganization is economy. . . . The reason for reorganization is good management.”⁽¹²⁾ Of course FDR meant management as in “presidential management.”

So it was that President Roosevelt by 1936 was prepared to do something quite beyond “abolishing useless offices” in the words of his 1932 speech--something significantly more constitutional in nature. His other aim was no doubt to strengthen his hand significantly to protect the New Deal programs from Republican counterattack. But whatever his aim, the practical effect was to treat the executive branch as a hierarchical organization headed by a chief executive of corporate or city management conception. In so doing, the delicate constitutional balance among branches was altered. Recommending the reorganization of the executive branch as they did inevitably led to reorganization of the larger whole, the government, which was not an organization, but something qualitatively different.⁽¹³⁾     

IF THEY GET IT RIGHT: AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST OF THE EFFECTS OF THE APPOINTMENT AND REPORTS OF UK PUBLIC INQUIRIES

A number of arguments regarding the politics of UK public inquiries (PIs) suggest that the appointment of a public inquiry and its subsequent report affect public responsibility attributions in ways that could be beneficial to the appointing office holder. One claim refers to the effect of an appointment on responsibility attribution towards the appointer of a PI; another refers to the relative strength of the effects of PI reports on responsibility attributions compared with other public evaluations. This latter argument relies on the assumption that PIs are judged as more credible than other conveyors of public evaluations. To test these hypotheses, this research employs two web‐based experiments involving a sample of 474 UK citizens. The findings do not support the hypotheses. Instead, they reveal that the credibility of PIs is conditional upon acceptability of the report content.     

SHIFTING SANDS: TEACHING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CLIMATE OF CHANGE

This article analyses influences which in recent decades have changed the way in which public administration has been taught in British higher education. Focusing mainly on the former polytechnics, the article argues that a curriculum shift away from the social sciences and towards management, and changes in the nature of the British public sector, have profoundly influenced approaches to teaching public administration. It suggests that learning strategies are closely related to debate about the nature of the discipline and its location within the academic spectrum. The article also raises questions about the extent to which public administration teachers in British universities are equipped to present the more applied and skills-based teaching which has often been adopted in recent years, and the tensions which this might pose particularly in the‘new’universities with the increasing emphasis upon academic research.     

A NEW EPOCH OF INDIVIDUALIZATION? PROBLEMS WITH THE ‘PERSONALIZATION’ OF PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES

The paper discusses the role of the concept of ‘personalization’ in New Labour policy on the reform of public sector services. The analysis points to the contradictory ways in which the concept has been used in both policy statements, in the work of various authors, and in the think tank Demos, which has been closely associated with the diffusion of the concept. The correlative uncertainties with respect to implementation are discussed and related to the use of ‘epochal’ forms of argument in the justification of this latest instalment of public sector reform in the United Kingdom.     

Doing Things with Words: The Case of 'Management' and 'Administration'

Over the last two decades, management, rather than administration, has become the dominant category through which both academics and practitioners talk, write and argue the organization of public services. More recently, the discourses of leadership have also been increasingly deployed in this context. Based on interviews with UK National Health Service trust chief executives, the article examines these particular discursive changes, exploring what the distinctions do rather than what the categories might represent. It reminds us of some of the things we do (in reality and to reality) when we deploy such words, especially in the debate about control. It also suggests possibilities for disturbing the dominance of the terms that are generally axiomatic in constructing arguments about the public sector; a dominance that has come to favour the interests of some as it denies the interests of others.     

Introduction

In this Introduction, Larkin Dudley and Gary Wamsley reveal a dual intent in this project: to reprint the famous Papers on the Science of Administration and to celebrate critically Luther Gulick's contributions to public administration in order that the critique will help us understand ourselves and our conditions. Gulick's contributions as a man of action are praised, but his misplacement of an organizational conception upon a polity with a distinct constitutional design is questioned. In Dudley and Wamsley's view, American public administration is the study and practice of a key component of our governance process, misfounded on a concept of management in monocentric, hierarchical settings and on a focus of power of an elected executive. From the work of the other writers of this symposium, the authors tease out further some of the contradictions in hierarchy and democracy. Finally, they note that Gulick himself at the age of 93 published a repudiation of his early notions of organization based on hierarchy and, instead, called for a more democratic and participatory system in all agencies.     

Citizens' Learning,Involvement, and Participation in Decision-Making Under the Democratic Ethos: A Theoretical Framework and the Israeli Experience

Public administration literature usually assumes that citizens' participation in administrative decision-making (PDM) processes can improve public sector performance and trust. In this article, we question the universality of this assumption, arguing that PDM processes will have positive results in terms of performance and trust only when there are available channels to influence policy outcomes and democratic participatory behavior. We construct theoretical arguments based on a mechanism of social learning and illustrate them by reference to the case of Israel. The framework highlights the centrality and importance of culture and social characters for the study and planning of public administration reforms.     

NIGERIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS' PERCEPTION OF THE IMPORTANCE OF MANAGERIAL SKILLS

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes Nigerian public managers' perception of the importance of managerial skills and management principles. The study presents an argument that national and state governments in Nigeria should use management principles to “steer, not row” their respective societies. It outlines some of the major steps required to create a dynamic public management and governmental machinery capable of both planning and execution of comprehensive development plans in the future. The study addresses the question: How can Nigeria's government extract management resources from its society and deploy them to create and support a cohesive and innovative administration? It further suggests reasons why public management in Nigeria needs to be reformed to play a more developmental and accountable role in the future. New public management principles are also utilized in evaluating how the reform can be accomplished.     

A difference that is not a difference

This symposium illustrates a serious problem. There has been a great deal of fragmentation in the field of public administration in the last two decades. For three decades, from the 40's through some of the 70's, public administration was able to encompass many diverse approaches within its boundaries. However, dissatisfaction with traditional public administration content, methodology, incrementalism, and administrative management led to divisions in the field of public policy and public management that have separated themselves from public administration. The desire for separateness is seen in changed names of academic programs and degrees, different course content and separate professional associations. The symposium was designed to try to stimulate debate and discussion of the ties rather than differences in the field.

This article discusses the differences from the standpoint of the students, the practitioners of public administration, the faculty and the public. The conclusion is that there is much more which should join these programs than separate them and that the need to produce leaders for the public service requires strong places in the academic world for these programs. The field would be stronger if those who argue for public policy, public management and public affairs separate and unequal from public administration would engage in dialogue to take the best of all these approaches and merge into a stronger whole. The common concern with the public nature of the profession and the need to educate public leaders overrides most of the perceived differences. The weakness in the perception of the field generally and in the academic world caused by these splits will continue until more common efforts are undertaken.

Public policy has contributed a great deal to improving methodological rigor in the field. Public management has been important in making the leap from policy to implementation. These differences have changed public administration considerably. But the parts of the field are not sufficiently aware of each other. Analysis of all the programs finds more in common than is acknowledged and finds that these differences do not make a real difference.

It is time to begin discussion of how to make all parts of this field stronger, to improve the academic training, to increase the link between theory and practice, and to work together to improve the public image of public service. To do this, these divisions must be acknowledged and brought together into a stronger professional program for the public service.     

Character ethics and public administration

Character ethics addresses the conditions, values, and ideas that give shape to our ways of life - to our character as a people. It has formed an integral part of political life and thought throughout history. It has, however, fallen to neglect during much of this century. We ignore it at our peril. A growing communitarian movement has renewed attention to character or “virtue” ethics in recent years, much of it focused on local, grassroots initiatives. This essay introduces the reader to some basic aspects of character ethics, and then presents an argument for its relevance to public administration. The argument focuses on the application of character ethics to organizational-economic arrangements and conditions which form a great part of the public administration's responsibilities. The organizational economy constitutes a vital foundation for shaping civic character. Since public administration influences the organizational economy, our ethical responsibilities should include continually examining practices in this arena for their general effects on our habits and dispositions as a people.

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea.

James Madison⁽¹⁾     

AN INQUIRY INTO DIALOGUE,ITS CHALLENGES AND JUSTIFICATION

This article offers a socio-historical analysis of contemporary arguments favoring dialogue, with special emphasis on their relevance to public participation in governance and policy making. My argument begins with the historical roots of dialogue, and goes on to consider the variety of challenges to dialogue that emerged in the modern age. After considering the contemporary opposition, in light of these challenges, I portray dialogue's proponents as drawing on three families of arguments, each with a Classical legacy and response to modernity's challenges. The conclusion considers the significance of the arguments favoring public dialogue relative to recent changes in the political landscape in the U.S.     

WOMEN IN UK PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SCHOLARSHIP?

The promotion of gender equality has been adopted onto many national policy agendas with the introduction of legislation, public policies and regulatory duties. Yet, gender occupational segregation and discrimination persists. This paper examines the gendered nature of the UK public sector and questions the extent to which public administration scholarship addresses gender bias. The evidence, based on secondary and primary data, reveals that public administration scholarship tends to value masculinity. The intention of the paper is to stimulate a debate by providing a critical reflection of public administration scholarship, and concludes with some tentative suggestions on ways forward for the field of study.     

Mutual dependence or state dominance? Large private suppliers and the British state 2010–15

As public outsourcing has grown, the need to understand government's relations with supply side actors has become more important for public administration scholars. The article analyses the role of a small group of large contractors in the British outsourcing system during Britain's Coalition government. These ‘public service conglomerates’ have thus far received little attention in the public administration literature. The article compares two approaches for understanding the role of these corporations and analyses why the corporations faced sometimes severe disruption during the Coalition period in the form of multiple contract problems, conflict with ministers and financial problems. Over the period, the corporations became the objects of policy debate, and what had appeared to be a stable set of arrangements started to fracture. The case shows the value of analysing the political and organizational foundations of contracting arrangements.     

THE DIFFICULT TRANSFORMATION OF STATE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN PORTUGAL. EUROPEANIZATION AND THE PERSISTENCE OF NEO‐PATRIMONIALISM

Portugal has been characterized by a late discontinuous democratization process. This contribution discusses the case of state and public administration reform in Portugal by using approaches from democratization, modernization and Europeanization theories. In order to understand the Portuguese case, the concept of ‘neo‐patrimonialism’ is used. We characterize Portuguese public administration as still having ‘neo‐patrimonial’ features, and therefore is still in transition from old closed‐minded practices such as particularistic decision making or clientelistic relationships to new open‐minded ones. The ‘new’ governance agenda combines new public management instruments and a growing flexibilization of public administration towards networks with non‐statal actors and has certainly led to some improvement in the quality of the services associated with public administration. Although is still too early to assess, top‐down and horizontal Europeanization processes, particularly since the late 1990s, may have contributed to a more reflexive approach in moving towards a more endogenous strategic vision based on the needs of the Portuguese state and public administration.     

Are civil servants really public servants? a study of bureaucratic attitudes in the U.S., brazil,and korea

The proper role of civil servants in the development of public policy has been the subject of continuous commentary and debate. In the advanced industrial democracies the operation of increasingly complex programs in government has led many commentators to warn of the danger of “technocracy”-- a condition wherein professional career administrators more fully control the direction of public policy than do elected representatives of the people. Likewise, in less developed nations there is concern over the role of public administrators in the development of policy. The charge of indifference to and disregard for public involvement and sentiment is frequently heard. Using data from a survey conducted in the U.S., Korea and Brazil, this paper examines the extent to which civil servants in each country adhere to a technocratic outlook. We find that although societies that are more economically advanced are less likely to adhere to a technocratic view, there is considerable variation within each research setting. Specifically, we find that technocratic orientations are more likely to be held by men, those who hold more materialist value orientations and those holding managerial occupations.     

Debating demonization: in defence of politics,politicians and political science

In a previous edition of this journal, an argument concerning the demonization of politicians and the changing nature of democracy was raised. This, in turn, raised previously unconsidered questions about (inter alia): the discourse, language and symbolism surrounding politicians; the limits of democratic politics; the politics of public expectations; and whether political scientists have a professional duty to the public in terms of promoting the public understanding of politics. The aim of making this provocative argument – framed as it was around a reinterpretation of the MPs expenses scandal in the UK – was to provoke a debate about the existence of certain ‘self-evident’ truths, the fragility of democratic politics and the future of political science as an academic discipline. Phrased in these terms the initial article was successful as six respondents – Domonic Bearfield, Alastair Campbell, Martin Gainsborough, Peter Riddell, Klaus Segbers and Gerry Stoker – immediately entered the fray and sought to either finesse and develop my arguments or to offer a considered critique. This article discusses ‘debating demonization’ in the form of a reply to each respondent and a focus on (in turn): the politics of demonization; the politics of the media; the politics of social class; the politics of monitory mechanisms; the politics of performance; and the politics of political science.