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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)  相似文献   

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煤?霉? 媒?     
起名字确实不该掉以轻心,譬如:煤。煤“霉”同音,它的那些奇遇要不怨“倒霉”的名字才怪呢。煤的长相实在也太难看,那些几十年一贯制的又脏又旧的煤店门面,与正忙着换成铝合金、茶色玻璃等新型材料的店铺相形见拙。专家认为,烧煤造成严重的大气污染,大气污染使广州人的癌  相似文献   

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邢少文 《南风窗》2011,(14):80-81
通胀高企、货币紧缩、增长放缓,中国经济的下一步走向是硬着陆还是软着陆?是一个引人关注的问题。6月11日,曾预测全球金融危机的"末日博士",纽约鲁比尼全球经济咨询公司董事长、纽约大学教授努里  相似文献   

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通胀?通缩?     
<正>策划人语当世界经济在复苏的上升螺旋中遭遇欧洲债务之刀,面临二次探底危险的时候,中国经济的形势变得更加扑朔迷离。从去年官方承认存在"通胀预期",煤电油涨价,到今年前段时间玉米、绿豆、大蒜价格飞涨,人们惊呼"通胀来了"。但余音未绝,物价却开始掉头向下,内需严重不足、大量产能过剩的担忧再次抬头,中国经济似乎又开始面临通缩的危险。中国官方更是声明,绿豆等的价格暴涨是有不法分子暗中操纵,囤积居奇。只是刚刚打击了不法分子,不仅绿豆的价格再次上涨,小麦的价格也开始水涨船高。  相似文献   

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甘肃大佛寺,寺外土台上,老头老太太们在喝茶,有些年轻的姑娘在唱秦腔。树荫浓,乡音重,好一幅风俗图。几位外地记者见状,不禁掏出相机捕捉镜头。镜头中突然出现了五个指头的特写。记者面前站了个老头,面部皱纹令人想起那幅名画《父亲》。只是,这一位涎着张老脸,逼上来说:  相似文献   

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