PSL Quiz #1

–federalism

–separation of powers

–periodic elections

–enumerated powers

• –Bill of Rights (ratified in 1791)
• Aimed at negating power to secure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

• -The Founding Fathers: Framed the American Constitution -> night watchman-style of gov.
• -Social contract with the people: to provide only defense, courts, foreign affairs, trade relations and coin money
• -16th century Calvinist religion; 17th century Lockean politics; 18th century enlightenment-inspired Constitution
• -Antistatism: “The State is not only evil but unnecessary”
• -Common law tradition

• -Geographic isolation
• -Self-supportive rural populace
• -Absence of significant external threats
• Little need for sizable armed forces or social services
• Frontier mentality
• 1830s-1840s: 3/4 of all federal employees were postal workers

Change in contextual forces -> forced Americans to build an administrative enterprise:

–Closing the frontier

–Massive migration from abroad

–Rapid urbanization and technological change

–Jarred economic booms and busts

–Clashes between management and labor

–The drive for international markets abroad

• Develop a professional civil service, a military and diplomatic corps
• American P.A.: haphazardly from grassroots reforms (“moral uplift” & “democratic idealism”)
• Experimentation by local reform groups (the bureau movement):

–National Civil Service League

–National Municipal League

–New York Bureau of Municipal Research

Study and practice of PA in the USAà built from the ground-up by creating a structure as-needed; adding

–a civil service system here,

–an executive budget over there,

• –a council-manager plan there
• Moving upward to the federal level
• Very different from the continental European P.A. (top-down rationalized administration)
• Order: 1st: Constitution; 2nd: State; 3rd: study!

• Progressive Era and reform movementsà change to government affairs
• Limit the spoils systems of rewarding political party members with government job appointments (patronage)
• Pendleton Act of 1883à created a federal civil service system based on merit

–Civil service commissionà hires to be based on competitive examinations. Reform based entirely on merit.

Appointments & tenure based on merit (not on favoritism)

• Sought to embrace principles of:
• Political morality
• Social obligation
• Equal rights
• Common justice in government

Progressive Reform movement—Context and PA foci:

–First Phase, before World War I: Evils of patronage and spoils systems; eliminate corruption in municipal gvt.

Second Phase: Growth of public spending ; “new management” in gvt.

–Key reform areas: city managers; executive budget systems; centralized and accountability-driven administrative systems

–Goals: raise standards & honesty in gov.; raise levels of public service provision

• Dawn of the 20th century -> expansion of democracy in all phases of public life
• Challenges to “boss rule” & machine politics by:

–Passage of women’s suffrage (1920)

–Direct election of senators (Amend. XVII; 1913)

–Initiative, referendum & recall measures

• –Rising public demands for government regulation of business, social services, etc.
• Heightened demands for more administrative thought, research & training -> bring together an increasingly fragmented society

• - Evolved & still remains “a handmaiden of constitutional and democratic values”
• -U.S. administrative thought can’t be defined as a fixed doctrine
• -It stays in flux, always chasing the constitutional-democratic priorities of each new American generation
• -P.A.: transforms itself into a new intellectual construct -> to respond to the pressing demands of the moment
• -Four Eras of Public Administration

• First American textbook of P.A.: Leonard White’s Introduction to the Study of P.A. (1926)
• Brought together: Functional specializations, Taylor’s scientific management and Goodnow’s politics-administration dichotomy
• Principles later developed by Luther Gulick in The Papers on the Science of Administration (1937) à P.O.S.D.C.O.R.B.

• -Logical sequence of stepsà to practice “good” administration
• -Ideally in the order in which they should be accomplished: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, Budgeting
• -Reflected an efficient military model of “good management”à promote the twin Es of “efficiency” & “economy”
• -Context: Unprecedented emergenciesà Great Depression followed by World War IIà how to plan, organize, staff, etc. became crucial

• -Stiff “cure” based on a sharp politics-administration separation & non-sense Taylorism
• -Raised to the highest levels of government, for organizing the presidency
• -Brownlow Report (1937): The Report of The President’s Committee on Administrative Management
• -PA reached high visibility at all levels of gvt. Solidified the field through education, study & research

• -Context: U.S.à post-war free world leader; Cold War with communism
• -Self-protectionism frenzy of administrative state-building:

–Massive military-industrial complex (Pentagon)

• –Domestic administrative activities for the sake of national security:
• the space program,
• educational assistance,
• scientific research,
• largest public works project in the nation’s history (the National Defense Highway Act of 1955)

• New necessities for gov training programs to staff the civil service at all levels
• Expanded funding for scientific and applied administrative research
• Prewar POSDCORB ->ill-equipped to grasp and deal with new administrative realities (full of contradictions, value-laden, unscientific, rigid)

R. Dahl (1947) challenged pre-war P.A.

1.Its normative assumptions (pol-adm dichotomy)

2.Expand its conception of human behavior (beyond the technical “rational” man) toward the “whole” manà how humans act in organizations

• 3.Broader historical, economic & social conditions as influential in administrative results
• Stressed “Realism”, “behavioralism,” and “scientific rigor” as main values ->more dynamic and process-oriented
• “Effectiveness” (plus, efficiency and economy—the other two Es) ->“Institutional effectiveness”

H. Simon’s Administrative Behavior (1947)

–Attacked POSDCORB pples as unscientific (“folk wisdom” or “proverbs”)

• –“Bounded rationality” as new interdisciplinary decision-making model
• Rich infusion of social sciences into P.A. (1950s): economics, political sciences, psychology, comparative studies, decision-sciences, businessà field of PA: array of heterodoxies
• Other leading scholars: Frederick Mosher, Paul Appleby, Don Price, etc.

• Outbreak of rabid anti-statism in the literature
• Uncertain causes:

–Backlash to administrative misdeeds in Vietnam or Watergate, Irangate?

–Media criticisms of government?

–Assassination of charismatic figures (Pres. J. F. Kennedy & Rev. Martin L. King)?

–Program failures in the New Frontier & the Great Society?

• –Presidents Jimmy Carter & R. Reagan’s successful campaigns against Washington, D.C.?
• Democratic “surge”
• Egalitarianism, democracy and human values

• The New P. A. (Minnowbrook Conference, 1968; Marini, 1971)
• Public Choice Economics (Ostrom, 1973)à “the Democratic-Administrative Paradigm”

• End of Cold War; global economy prosperity; new information technologies; serious environmental threats
• Fundamental questions in P.A.:

–What is P.A.?

–What is the meaning of the “good life” and “good society”?

–Who should govern, and how?

–What are the criteria for proper and ethical administrative actions?

–What should be its size and scope in society?

– How should Public interest, Accountability, Responsibility, and Public welfare be reframed?

• W. Wilson: “The Study of Administration” (1887)
• First serious claim that PA should be a self-conscious professional field
• “It is getting harder to run a constitution than to frame one”
• Concerns: org. efficiency and economy (i.e., productivity)

Investigate the “organization and methods of our government offices,” to determine:

1.“What government can properly and successfully do, and

• 2.How can it do these proper things with
• the outmost possible efficiency and
• at the least possible cost either of money or energy”

• “There should be a science of administration”
• Politics-administration dichotomy:
• public administration should be based on merit, rather than partisanship
• “politics” is out of place in public service.

• PA: dilemmas involving political and administrative functions
• “legally separated functions”
• Politics & administration: clear-cut dichotomy
• Politics: “the expression of the will of the state”
• Administration: “the execution of that will”

• Principle of separation (and independence) of powers in orgs?
• Harmony between expression and execution of the will?

• Not just the management of “initiative and incentive”
• Development of time and motion studies (Philadelphia steel plant)

• Goal: Find the “one best way” to accomplish any given task
• Increase output à discover fastest, most efficient, least fatiguing production methods
• “the one best way”
• Once the one best way is foundà impose procedure to entire workforce

• Replace traditional rule-of-thumb methods of work accomplishment with
• systematic, more scientific methods of measuring and managing indiv. elements
• Study scientifically the selection and sequential development of workers
• ensure optimal worker placement into work roles

• Obtain the cooperation of workers
• Establish logical divisions within work roles and responsibilities between workers and management

• If there was one best way to accomplish any given production taskà
• there must also be one best way to accomplish a task of social organization.
• Principles of social org. assumed to exist
• and be waiting to be discovered by diligent and careful scientific observation and analysis.

• Conceptualization of people as mere extensions of machines
• Workers seen as calculable and predictable input in production process
• Managers set rules; workers obey
• Knowledge transference from workers to manager

• Goal: mgt attains full working knowledge from worker; calculates production and obtains maximum efficiency
• Revolutionary ideas in the early 1900s
• How would SM impact PA?
• It gave the emerging field both managerial methodology & “solid” scientific legitimacy to do “good” P.A.

• Developments that led to the rise of the Management movementà a response to:
• fragmentation of responsibilities; lack of unified leadership; political corruption and spoils
• Era of reform, progressivism, growing professionalism and occupational specialization; faith in rationality and applied sciences