The Path Not Taken: Leonard White and the Macrodynamics of Administrative Development

Leonard White , The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History ( New York: Macmillan , 1948).
Leonard White , The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801–1829 ( New York: Macmillan , 1951).
Leonard White , The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1861 ( New York: Macmillan , 1954).
Leonard White , The Republican Era, 1869–1901: A Study in Administrative History ( New York, Macmillan , 1958).
This is a review of four books by Leonard White: The Federalists (1948), The Jeffersonians (1951), The Jacksonians (1954), and The Republican Era (1958). In these books, White develops an approach to the study of administrative development that accounts for a broad range of considerations, including political and economic structure, the organization of the international order, popular culture, the stock of available communication and organizational technologies, and executive talent. White also offers an early argument about the significance of path dependence in institutional evolution. White's approach is largely concerned with the macrodynamics of administrative development. It has been neglected within the field of public administration over the last half century. A literature that builds on White's work would improve the field's ability to explain and anticipate failures in state building and administrative reform.     

UK policy coordination during the 1990-91 intergovernmental conference

Despite the importance of European Union negotiations, the majority of scholarly attention has not been directed towards the means by which policy is coordinated in member states. This article addresses one aspect of this gap by focusing upon the structures which existed for UK policy making during the 1990-91 IGC negotiations. Particular emphasis is attached to the key role of officials, who often proved crucial to the extraction of compromises at the European level, and the manner by which policy was constrained by the inability of the Prime Minister to dominate Cabinet.