essay on evolution of public administration

5 Keys Stages of- Evolution of Public Administration

Table of Contents

The study of public administration has evolved over the past century, with different eras placing emphasis on distinct theories, approaches, and focal points. Though early notions of a strict separation between politics and administration laid the groundwork for the field of public administration, scholars have since sought to better integrate politics and administration in recognition of their interconnected nature. Broadly, the chronology of public administration can be divided into five stages:

1. The politics-administration dichotomy 2. Principles of administration 3. Era of challenge 4. Identity crisis 5. Public policy perspective

This progression reflects public administration’s growth from a fledgling field focused on the bureaucratic hierarchy to an interdisciplinary social science drawing on fields like political science, economics, sociology, and psychology. Through periods of turmoil and reinvention, public administration has matured into a dynamic discipline engaged with complex policy questions.

Looking back at the evolution of public administration provides insight into the field’s historical foundations and changing nature. Tracing major stages in its development contextualises current theories and allows us to anticipate future directions. This overview examines each chronological stage in turn, charting the discipline’s growth and refinement over more than a century.

Evolution of public administration as a discipline

Stage 1: Politics-Administration Dichotomy (1887-1926)

The first stage in the evolution of public administration is known as the politics-administration dichotomy, spanning from 1887 to 1926. This concept originated in an 1887 essay by Woodrow Wilson titled “The Study of Administration,” in which he argued for a separation of politics and administration. Wilson believed that administrative activities should be separate from political activities. He asserted that administration should be run on scientific principles that are autonomous from political influence. Politics, in Wilson’s view, was associated with policy making, while administration was concerned with policy execution. Under the politics-administration dichotomy, elected officials and policymakers handle the political process and make high-level decisions. Meanwhile, non-elected, professional administrators carry out day-to-day operations and implement policies in an apolitical, neutral manner. The dichotomy aims to isolate administrative decisions from the influence of political parties, interest groups, and electoral pressures. This theoretical separation of politics and administration was highly influential in the field’s early development. It established public administration as a science, lending it legitimacy and autonomy from political science. The dichotomy dominated discourse in public administration through the 1920s. However, it later came under scrutiny as an oversimplified and unrealistic representation of government functioning.

Stage 2: Principles of Administration (1927-1937)

This stage was dominated by efforts to identify the principles of public administration. Scholars sought to define the field and establish it as a science by determining its fundamental theoretical principles.

Key contributions include :

• – W.F. Willoughby’s Principles of Public Administration (1927) which presented ideas like unity of command, hierarchy, accountability, and personnel management.
• – Leonard D. White’s Introduction to the Study of Public Administration (1926) covered issues such as the separation of policies and administration, executive leadership, personnel management, and so on.
• – Luther Gulick and L. Urwick’s Papers on the Science of Administration (1937) put forth the POSDCORB acronym – Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting as the key principles of administration.

The principles approach aimed to provide public administration theory distinguishing it from political science and management. However, it was critiqued for overemphasizing rigid, hierarchical principles over adaptability to changing contexts. Still, this stage established public administration’s foundations as a field of administrative science.

Stage 3: Era of Challenge (1938-1947) There began stage 3 in public administration which is known as the era of challenge, the time being 1938 to 1947. It was a Challenge to the previous age, the challenge to the previous state. Challenge would mean the people who are formulators of this phase, are questioning the previous phase, that’s why the challenge. The challenge is that the previous phase had always been talking of all kinds of principles but this phase says that it is not possible just to go through any kind of understanding of an organization just by formulating and following principles there has to be more to it. The Significant publications in the 1940s, Harvard -Simons Administrative Behavior and Robert Dahl’s essay entitled The Science of Public Administration, Three Problems, were actually if one talks of what this phase talks about, these two publications talked of the entire phase in their entirety. Simon argued in his article, The Proverbs of Administration, 1946, that there are no principles of administration. So he’s trashed is essentially the principal phase that there can be nothing called principles in administration. He added that these proverbs were nothing more than general statements based on person-to-person experience and are always lacking in any kind of theoretical formulation or understanding. For instance, Robert Dahl raised a question about the claim of it being a science once more in 1947. Now the quest for principles of administration according to Robert Dahl, was obstructed by three factors.

Firstly , the an unavoidable need for normative factors in public administration due to objective grounds of efficiency that are based on the communication of necessities. Secondly , he spoke against the machine concept of organization because it was found out that principally the previous school just spoke of organization being something like a machine. Thirdly , Dahl criticizes this tendency to generalize and draw universal principles based upon a few examples drawn from narrow countries and times. So Simon and Robert Dahl once said that there is going to be some kind of principle in administration. One is trashing it. On the other hand, the other person was of the opinion that this can never be public administration, this can never be a science because of certain specific factors.

Overall, the Era of Challenge marked an intellectual turning point for the field of public administration. What had previously been accepted wisdom – the clear separation between politics and administration – was now under serious debate and skepticism. This helped lay the groundwork for new theories and philosophies that would emerge in subsequent stages of the evolution of public administration.

 Stage 4: Identity Crisis (1948-1970)

After World War II, the principles-based approach championed by the scholars at the Brownlow Committee began to receive criticism. Public administration struggled to establish its own identity as an academic discipline during this stage. The rigidity of the principles outlined previously failed to account for the complex realities involved in managing large public bureaucracies.Scholars challenged the idea that management principles should be value-neutral. The relevance of private sector practices for public sector management was questioned. Thinkers argued that the unique responsibilities of public administrators demand different principles suited for advancing democracy and the public interest. The politics-administration dichotomy that dominated the field’s early years was heavily critiqued. The intertwined nature of policy making and administration made their clean separation unrealistic in practice. Calls grew for public administration research to become more problem-oriented with direct relevance to the issues facing governments. Overall, the identity crisis of public administration during this period stemmed from the difficulties of applying fixed scientific principles to the ever-changing needs of public bureaucracies. Finding a coherent conceptual framework to guide research and teaching remained elusive. This spurred efforts to redefine the field’s purpose and approach in the following decades.

Stage V-Public Policy Perspective (1971-continuing)

The main theme that has emerged in this final stage of evolution is to ensure that public policy analysis is a central concern. Several fields are demonstrating much interest among public administration scholars, such as policy science, political economy, policy making, policy analysis, etc., which are linked to the field of public administration. With the abandonment of the traditional notion of a politics-administration dichotomy, the public policy approach gained acceptance in administrative analysis. As a result of the separation between politics and administration, Dwight Waldo concluded that the concept had become an “outworn credo”. In the view of Robert T. Golembiewski, there are two basic themes that are woven into the public policy approach stage of the evolution of public administration. The first is the interpenetration of politics and administration at all levels or at a number of different levels, and the second is the programmatic character of every aspect of administration. In general, all of these themes tended to focus attention in public administration on the political or policy-making process as well as on specific public programs or initiatives. By adopting a public policy approach to public administration, public administration has gained social relevance, become more interdisciplinary, and expanded the scope of its activities.

Current Trends

Since the 1970s, there have been several major trends in the evolution of public administration theory and practice:

• New Public Management – This approach aims to make the public sector more efficient by borrowing management techniques from the private sector. There is a focus on performance management, contracting out services, and increasing competition.
• Digital Governance – The rise of information technology has led to e-government initiatives, digitization of public services, big data analytics, and new opportunities for public participation. Many governments are utilising technology to be more responsive, transparent, and efficient.
• Collaborative Governance – There is a greater emphasis on horizontal and vertical collaboration between government agencies, non-profits, private companies, and civic organisations to address complex policy problems. Networks, partnerships, and co-production are becoming more common.
• Evidence-Based Policy making – Policy decisions are increasingly informed by objective evidence and data analysis. Scientific methods, experimental designs, and impact evaluations are used to determine the effectiveness of public policies and programs.
• Participatory Governance – Citizens are participating more actively in public administration through means like open government data, crowd sourcing, participatory budgeting, and social audits. The boundaries between administrators and citizens are blurring.
• Sustainability – Issues like climate change, environmental justice, and social equity have led to greater emphasis on sustainable development approaches in the public sector. Concepts like the triple bottom line (social, environmental, economic) are gaining prominence.

These trends demonstrate public administration’s continuing evolution in response to changing technologies, societal demands, and governance challenges. More innovations will likely emerge in the future as administrators adapt to new realities and priorities.

View of Critiques on Evolution of Public Administration

The chronological evolution of public administration as a discipline has been critiqued in several ways:

• – The rigid periodization into distinct stages oversimplifies the complex and overlapping development of ideas over time. Key concepts emerged gradually through the interplay of various scholars and practitioners.
• – There is debate over the significance assigned to certain scholars, institutions, and publications in driving shifts in the field. Some argue individuals and texts have been unduly canonized at the expense of other influences.
• – The politics-administration dichotomy has been critiqued as an unrealistic separation of policy and administration. Practice shows implementation involves administrative discretion and political influence.
• – Principles of administration were accused of being vague truisms. The search for universal principles applicable across contexts faced doubts.
• – Challenges to the field’s scientific aspirations and quantitative techniques arose as the complex realities of public management prompted a rethink. However, some argue the nuances of administration cannot be captured through strict positivist social science.
• – The public policy orientation has been accused of downplaying important aspects of management, ethics, accountability, and democratic governance in public administration.
• – Throughout its evolution, the discipline has struggled with Insufficient diversity in perspectives encompassed. Critics point to the dominance of Western and particularly U.S. viewpoints.
• – Across stages, gaps persist between theory and practice. Administrators feel academic literature does not adequately capture the complex realities they face and offer limited practical guidance.
• – Calls persist for expanded interdisciplinary engagement to address wicked problems. However, progress remains slow due to disciplinary boundaries and fragmentation.

The critiques highlight areas for improvement and show the chronological narrative alone provides an incomplete picture. More holistic, nuanced perspectives recognizing the field’s ongoing complexity are needed.

 Conclusion

There have been various phases in the development of public administration as a subject since the beginning of the last century. The field began with the politics-administration dichotomy in the late 19th century to establish its legitimacy and its independence from political influences. In the 1930s, the next stage of development involved principles of management and administration. The following decades posed challenges to the principles outlined above, as the complexities of public administration became clear.Public administration underwent an identity crisis after World War II as it sought to define its objectives and direction of travel. It is more recently that public administration has adopted a public policy perspective, in recognition of the fact that administration cannot be divorced from broader societal objectives and political process.

In the future, the interdisciplinary nature of public administration, politics, government, and democratic ideals will continue to be challenging issues. As public servants continue to confront transnational policy issues, the field may become more global. A few transformations have occurred in public administration thanks to new public management reforms, information technology, and big data. Diversity and pragmatism are expected to be the defining elements of tomorrow’s public administration theory and practice. However, the field’s ultimate aim to promote the public good through efficient and responsible governance will be unchanged.

Looking ahead, public administration will likely continue grappling with its interdisciplinary nature, relationship to politics, role in governance, and potential as an instrument for realizing democratic ideals. The field may become more globalized as public servants increasingly confront transnational policy challenges. New public management reforms have already transformed aspects of public administration, while information technology and big data will bring further changes. Rather than a single governing paradigm, diversity, and pragmatism will likely define the future of public administration theory and practice. However, the field’s ultimate concern with promoting the public good through effective and accountable governance will remain unchanged.

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Woodrow Wilson: The Father of Public Administration

Learn why woodrow wilson was called the “father of public administration” and how his views on policy and administration formed the backbone of the field..

In a campaign event at Madison Square Garden in 1912, future President Woodrow Wilson said something that could be considered a mission statement for his life’s work: “There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of a people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity.” 1 After living a life devoted to the public, both in practice and as a scholar, Wilson was uniquely qualified to discuss matters of public service. Twenty-six years earlier, Wilson had published “The Study of Administration,” an essay that served as the foundation for the study of public administration, and which caused Wilson to be enshrined as the “Father of Public Administration” in the United States.

A Passion for Education

Born in Virginia at the tail end of the Civil War, Wilson demonstrated a well-developed passion for scholarship in his teens, and proved himself adept at logic, rhetoric and composition. In 1875, he enrolled at Princeton University where he got his first taste of administration as the editor of the Princetonian (the school newspaper), the president of the campus baseball association, secretary of the football association and as a member of theatrical productions, the glee club and debate club. 2

The Skills to Lead

After his undergraduate education, Wilson pursued law, though his interest laid primarily in politics. However, with his scholarly credentials, he soon found himself teaching political economy and public law at Bryn Mawr College, before accepting a professorship at Wesleyan University. Two years later, in 1892, he accepted a professorship at Princeton where he was a popular, well-liked member of the faculty. 12 years later, he became the president of Princeton, where he was noted for his sweeping administrative changes that doubled the staff of the university while shrinking class sizes and improving instruction. After that, he became governor of New Jersey before finally being elected President of the United States in 1912. 2

“The state exists for the sake of society.”

While he was still pursuing his graduate studies, Wilson published “The Study of Administration,” his landmark treatise on public administration. For Wilson, the object of administrative study was “...to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and the least possible cost either of money or of energy.” In so doing, Wilson laid out four key observations regarding public administration that still form the backbone of the discipline. 3

“Administrative questions are not political questions.”

The key observation around which Wilson structured his arguments is the distinction between the political and the administrative. He recognized that while the government sets policy and deals in matters “great and universal,” the administration handles “the activity of the state in individual and small things.” He believed that although policy sets tasks for administration, it is no good to subject the implementation of those tasks to the same forces of public opinion as policy making. Therefore, he was a passionate advocate for the study of public administration, so that the implementation of policy could be undergirded by stable principles.

“The field of administration is a field of business.”

Wilson likened the relationship between policy and administration to the relationship between a machine and the product it manufactures. Given this view of administration, he thus believed that it was best served in a “businesslike” fashion. He spoke of the sanctity of civil service, and envisioned administration as a nonpartisan pursuit, the best to serve all people, regardless of political affiliation.

“Three periods of growth...”

Wilson also identified the three periods of societal growth which eventually result in a mature government with a need for public administration. The first period is defined by absolute rule. Once the citizens of a state rise up to overthrow the absolute rule, they establish a new constitution to do away with absolute rulers and give control of the state back to the people. Finally, the sovereign rule of the people must contend with the need for administration of their new constitution.

“A body of thoroughly trained officials serving during good behavior...”

Above all, in order to conform to his precepts, Wilson believed that civil servants ought to be held to high standards. He believed that the practice of political appointments standard in his day and the patronage system it encouraged were antithetical to the aims of good public administration. Instead, he advocated for a well-educated, committed body of civil servants who advanced due to merit. Only in this way, he thought, could the administrative sphere be properly protected and run in a businesslike, efficient manner to serve all Americans.

The foundational principles of efficiency and ethics laid out by Woodrow Wilson in this landmark treatise are more vital today than ever, as our growing nation faces an ever more complex set of administrative tasks. If you think you’re up to the challenge of being the kind of thoughtful, dedicated civil servant that would make the “Father of Public Administration” proud, consider the online Master of Public Administration program from Kent State University.

• Retrieved on August 2, 2018, from wilsoncenter.org/about-woodrow-wilson#famous-quotes
• Retrieved on August 2, 2018, from millercenter.org/president/wilson/life-before-the-presidency
• Retrieved on August 2, 2018, from teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-study-of-administration/

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The classical definition

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Principles of public administration

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Throughout the 20th century the study and practice of public administration was essentially pragmatic and normative rather than theoretical and value free. This may explain why public administration, unlike some social sciences, developed without much concern about an encompassing theory. Not until the mid-20th century and the dissemination of the German sociologist Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy was there much interest in a theory of public administration. Most subsequent bureaucratic theory, however, was addressed to the private sector, and there was little effort to relate organizational to political theory.

A prominent principle of public administration has been economy and efficiency—that is, the provision of public services at the minimum cost. This has usually been the stated objective of administrative reform. Despite growing concern about other kinds of values—such as responsiveness to public needs, justice and equal treatment, and citizen involvement in government decisions—efficiency continues to be a major goal.

In its concern with efficiency and improvement, public administration has focused frequently on questions of formal organization . It is generally held that administrative ills can be at least partly corrected by reorganization. Many organizational principles originated with the military, a few from private business. They include, for example: (1) organizing departments, ministries, and agencies on the basis of common or closely related purposes, (2) grouping like activities in single units, (3) equating responsibility with authority, (4) ensuring unity of command (only one supervisor for each group of employees), (5) limiting the number of subordinates reporting to a single supervisor, (6) differentiating line (operating or end-purpose) activities from staff (advisory, consultative, or support) activities, (7) employing the principle of management by exception (only the unusual problem or case is brought to the top), and (8) having a clear-cut chain of command downward and of responsibility upward.

Some critics have maintained that these and other principles of public administration are useful only as rough criteria for given organizational situations. They believe that organizational problems differ and that the applicability of rules to various situations also differs. Nonetheless, and despite much more sophisticated analyses of organizational behaviour in later decades, such principles as those enumerated above continue to carry force.

Public administration has also laid stress upon personnel. In most countries administrative reform has involved civil service reform. Historically, the direction has been toward “ meritocracy ”—the best individual for each job, competitive examinations for entry, and selection and promotion on the basis of merit. Attention has increasingly been given to factors other than intellectual merit, including personal attitudes, incentives, personality, personal relationships, and collective bargaining .

In addition, the budget has developed as a principal tool in planning future programs, deciding priorities, managing current programs, linking executive with legislature , and developing control and accountability. The contest for control over budgets, particularly in the Western world, began centuries ago and at times was the main relationship between monarchs and their subjects. The modern executive budget system in which the executive recommends, the legislature appropriates, and the executive oversees expenditures originated in 19th-century Britain. In the United States during the 20th century, the budget became the principal vehicle for legislative surveillance of administration, executive control of departments, and departmental control of subordinate programs. It has assumed a similar role in many of the developing countries of the world.

Recent interpretations

The classical approach to public administration described above probably reached its fullest development in the United States during the 1930s, although since that time, through educational and training programs, technical assistance , and the work of international organizations, it has also become standard doctrine in many countries. However, some of its elements have been resisted by governments with British or continental-legal perspectives, and even during the 1930s it was being challenged from several quarters. Since that time study of the subject has greatly developed.

The orthodox doctrine rested on the premise that administration was simply the implementation of public policies determined by others. According to this view, administrators should seek maximum efficiency but should be otherwise neutral about values and goals. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, and even more so during World War II , however, it became increasingly evident that many new policies originated within the administration, that policy and value judgments were implicit in most significant administrative decisions, that many administrative officials worked on nothing except policy, and that, insofar as public policies were controversial, such work inevitably involved administrators in politics. The supposed independence of administration from policy and politics was seen to be illusory. Since the 1930s there has thus been increasing concern with policy formation and the development of techniques to improve policy decisions. Although the concept of a value-free, neutral administration is regarded by many as no longer tenable, no fully satisfactory substitute has been offered. How to ensure that responsible and responsive policy decisions are made by career administrators, and how to coordinate their work with the policies of politically elected or appointive officials, remain key preoccupations, especially in democratic states.

It was with governmental efforts to combat the Depression that new informational devices were introduced, including national income accounting and the scrutiny of gross national product as a major index of economic health. The applied techniques of fiscal and monetary policy have become established specializations of public administration. Economists occupy key posts in the administrations of most nations, and many other administrators must have at least elementary knowledge of the economic implications of government operations. France, Sweden and other Scandinavian nations, Great Britain, and the United States were among the leaders in developing economic planning techniques. Such planning has become a dominating concern of public administration in many of the developing countries.

15.1 Bureaucracy and the Evolution of Public Administration

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define bureaucracy and bureaucrat
• Describe the evolution and growth of public administration in the United States
• Identify the reasons people undertake civil service

Throughout history, both small and large nations have elevated certain types of nonelected workers to positions of relative power within the governmental structure. Collectively, these essential workers are called the bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is an administrative group of nonelected officials charged with carrying out functions connected to a series of policies and programs. In the United States, the bureaucracy began as a very small collection of individuals. Over time, however, it grew to be a major force in political affairs. Indeed, it grew so large that politicians in modern times have ridiculed it to great political advantage. However, the country’s many bureaucrats or civil servants , the individuals who work in the bureaucracy, fill necessary and even instrumental roles in every area of government: from high-level positions in foreign affairs and intelligence collection agencies to clerks and staff in the smallest regulatory agencies. They are hired, or sometimes appointed, for their expertise in carrying out the functions and programs of the government.

WHAT DOES A BUREAUCRACY DO?

Modern society relies on the effective functioning of government to provide public goods, enhance quality of life, and stimulate economic growth. The activities by which government achieves these functions include—but are not limited to—taxation, homeland security, immigration, foreign affairs, and education. The more society grows and the need for government services expands, the more challenging bureaucratic management and public administration becomes. Public administration is both the implementation of public policy in government bureaucracies and the academic study that prepares civil servants for work in those organizations.

The classic version of a bureaucracy is hierarchical and can be described by an organizational chart that outlines the separation of tasks and worker specialization while also establishing a clear unity of command by assigning each employee to only one boss. Moreover, the classic bureaucracy employs a division of labor under which work is separated into smaller tasks assigned to different people or groups. Given this definition, bureaucracy is not unique to government but is also found in the private and nonprofit sectors. That is, almost all organizations are bureaucratic regardless of their scope and size; although public and private organizations differ in some important ways. For example, while private organizations are responsible to a superior authority such as an owner, board of directors, or shareholders, federal governmental organizations answer equally to the president, Congress, the courts, and ultimately the public. The underlying goals of private and public organizations also differ. While private organizations seek to survive by controlling costs, increasing market share, and realizing a profit, public organizations find it more difficult to measure the elusive goal of operating with efficiency and effectiveness.

Link to Learning

To learn more about the practice of public administration and opportunities to get involved in your local community, explore the American Society for Public Administration website.

Bureaucracy may seem like a modern invention, but bureaucrats have served in governments for nearly as long as governments have existed. Archaeologists and historians point to the sometimes elaborate bureaucratic systems of the ancient world, from the Egyptian scribes who recorded inventories to the biblical tax collectors who kept the wheels of government well greased. 1 In Europe, government bureaucracy and its study emerged before democracies did. In contrast, in the United States, a democracy and the Constitution came first, followed by the development of national governmental organizations as needed, and then finally the study of U.S. government bureaucracies and public administration emerged. 2

In fact, the long pedigree of bureaucracy is an enduring testament to the necessity of administrative organization. More recently, modern bureaucratic management emerged in the eighteenth century from Scottish economist Adam Smith’s support for the efficiency of the division of labor and from Welsh reformer Robert Owen’s belief that employees are vital instruments in the functioning of an organization. However, it was not until the mid-1800s that the German scholar Lorenz von Stein argued for public administration as both a theory and a practice since its knowledge is generated and evaluated through the process of gathering evidence. For example, a public administration scholar might gather data to see whether the timing of tax collection during a particular season might lead to higher compliance or returns. Credited with being the father of the science of public administration, von Stein opened the path of administrative enlightenment for other scholars in industrialized nations.

THE ORIGINS OF THE U.S. BUREAUCRACY

In the early U.S. republic, the bureaucracy was quite small. This is understandable since the American Revolution was largely a revolt against executive power and the British imperial administrative order. Nevertheless, while neither the word “bureaucracy” nor its synonyms appear in the text of the Constitution, the document does establish a few broad channels through which the emerging government could develop the necessary bureaucratic administration.

For example, Article II , Section 2, provides the president the power to appoint officers and department heads. In the following section, the president is further empowered to see that the laws are “faithfully executed.” More specifically, Article I , Section 8, empowers Congress to establish a post office, build roads, regulate commerce, coin money, and regulate the value of money. Granting the president and Congress such responsibilities appears to anticipate a bureaucracy of some size. Yet the design of the bureaucracy is not described, and it does not occupy its own section of the Constitution as bureaucracy often does in other countries’ governing documents; the design and form were left to be established in practice.

Under President George Washington , the bureaucracy remained small enough to accomplish only the necessary tasks at hand. 3 Washington’s tenure saw the creation of the Department of State to oversee international issues, the Department of the Treasury to control coinage, and the Department of War to administer the armed forces. The employees within these three departments, in addition to the growing postal service, constituted the major portion of the federal bureaucracy for the first three decades of the republic ( Figure 15.2 ). Two developments, however, contributed to the growth of the bureaucracy well beyond these humble beginnings.

The first development was the rise of centralized party politics in the 1820s. Under President Andrew Jackson, many thousands of party loyalists filled the ranks of the bureaucratic offices around the country. This was the beginning of the spoils system , in which political appointments were transformed into political patronage doled out by the president on the basis of party loyalty. 4 Political patronage is the use of state resources to reward individuals for their political support. The term “spoils” here refers to paid positions in the U.S. government. As the saying goes, “to the victor,” in this case the incoming president, “go the spoils.” It was assumed that government would work far more efficiently if the key federal posts were occupied by those already supportive of the president and his policies. This system served to enforce party loyalty by tying the livelihoods of the party faithful to the success or failure of the party. The number of federal posts the president sought to use as appropriate rewards for supporters swelled over the following decades.

The second development was industrialization, which in the late nineteenth century significantly increased both the population and economic size of the United States. These changes in turn brought about urban growth in a number of places across the East and Midwest. Railroads and telegraph lines drew the country together and increased the potential for federal centralization. The government and its bureaucracy were closely involved in creating concessions for and providing land to the western railways stretching across the plains and beyond the Rocky Mountains. These changes set the groundwork for the regulatory framework that emerged in the early twentieth century.

THE FALL OF POLITICAL PATRONAGE

Patronage had the advantage of putting political loyalty to work by making the government quite responsive to the electorate and keeping election turnout robust because so much was at stake. However, the spoils system also had a number of obvious disadvantages. It was a reciprocal system. Clients who wanted positions in the civil service pledged their political loyalty to a particular patron who then provided them with their desired positions. These arrangements directed the power and resources of government toward perpetuating the reward system. They replaced the system that early presidents like Thomas Jefferson had fostered, in which the country’s intellectual and economic elite rose to the highest levels of the federal bureaucracy based on their relative merit. 5 Criticism of the spoils system grew, especially in the mid-1870s, after numerous scandals rocked the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant ( Figure 15.3 ).

As the negative aspects of political patronage continued to infect bureaucracy in the late nineteenth century, calls for civil service reform grew louder. Those supporting the patronage system held that their positions were well earned; those who condemned it argued that federal legislation was needed to ensure jobs were awarded on the basis of merit. Eventually, after President James Garfield had been assassinated by a disappointed office seeker ( Figure 15.4 ), Congress responded to cries for reform with the Pendleton Act , also called the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. The act established the Civil Service Commission, a centralized agency charged with ensuring that the federal government’s selection, retention, and promotion practices were based on open, competitive examinations in a merit system . 6 The passage of this law sparked a period of social activism and political reform that continued well into the twentieth century.

As an active member and leader of the Progressive movement, President Woodrow Wilson is often considered the father of U.S. public administration. Born in Virginia and educated in history and political science at Johns Hopkins University, Wilson became a respected intellectual in his fields with an interest in public service and a profound sense of moralism. He was named president of Princeton University, became president of the American Political Science Association, was elected governor of New Jersey, and finally was elected the twenty-eighth president of the United States in 1912.

It was through his educational training and vocational experiences that Wilson began to identify the need for a public administration discipline. He felt it was getting harder to run a constitutional government than to actually frame one. His stance was that “It is the object of administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost efficiency. . .” 7 Wilson declared that while politics does set tasks for administration, public administration should be built on a science of management, and political science should be concerned with the way governments are administered. Therefore, administrative activities should be devoid of political manipulations. 8

Wilson advocated separating politics from administration by three key means: making comparative analyses of public and private organizations, improving efficiency with business-like practices, and increasing effectiveness through management and training. Wilson’s point was that while politics should be kept separate from administration, administration should not be insensitive to public opinion. Rather, the bureaucracy should act with a sense of vigor to understand and appreciate public opinion. Still, Wilson acknowledged that the separation of politics from administration was an ideal and not necessarily an achievable reality.

THE BUREAUCRACY COMES OF AGE

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a time of great bureaucratic growth in the United States: The Interstate Commerce Commission was established in 1887, the Federal Reserve Board in 1913, the Federal Trade Commission in 1914, and the Federal Power Commission in 1920.

With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the United States faced record levels of unemployment and the associated fall into poverty, food shortages, and general desperation. When the Republican president and Congress were not seen as moving aggressively enough to fix the situation, the Democrats won the 1932 election in overwhelming fashion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress rapidly reorganized the government’s problem-solving efforts into a series of programs designed to revive the economy, stimulate economic development, and generate employment opportunities. In the 1930s, the federal bureaucracy grew with the addition of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect and regulate U.S. banking, the National Labor Relations Board to regulate the way companies could treat their workers, the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market, and the Civil Aeronautics Board to regulate air travel. Additional programs and institutions emerged with the Social Security Administration in 1935 and then, during World War II, various wartime boards and agencies. By 1940, approximately 700,000 U.S. workers were employed in the federal bureaucracy. 9

Under President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s, that number reached 2.2 million, and the federal budget increased to $332 billion. 10 This growth came as a result of what Johnson called his Great Society program, intended to use the power of government to relieve suffering and accomplish social good. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was designed to help end poverty by creating a Job Corps and a Neighborhood Youth Corps. Volunteers in Service to America was a type of domestic Peace Corps intended to relieve the effects of poverty. Johnson also directed more funding to public education, created Medicare as a national insurance program for the elderly, and raised standards for consumer products.

All of these new programs required bureaucrats to run them, and the national bureaucracy naturally ballooned. Its size became a rallying cry for conservatives, who eventually elected Ronald Reagan president for the express purpose of reducing the bureaucracy. While Reagan was able to work with Congress to reduce some aspects of the federal bureaucracy, he contributed to its expansion in other ways, particularly in his efforts to fight the Cold War. 11 For example, Reagan and Congress increased the defense budget dramatically over the course of the 1980s. 12 After the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, which was an important symbol of East-West conflict during that time, the 1990s brought discussion of a "Peace Dividend"—that is, with the threat of global thermonuclear war significantly reduced, the U.S. could stand to reduce defense spending and direct resources to other areas. 13 However, after a decade of retrenchment in military and defense spending, the 9/11 attacks induced a new era of massive investment in defense and homeland security. Indeed, President Joe Biden's plans to withdraw from Afghanistan come twenty years after the fact. 14

“The Nine Most Terrifying Words in the English Language”

The two periods of increased bureaucratic growth in the United States, the 1930s and the 1960s, accomplished far more than expanding the size of government. They transformed politics in ways that continue to shape political debate today. While the bureaucracies created in these two periods served important purposes, many at that time and even now argue that the expansion came with unacceptable costs, particularly economic costs. The common argument that bureaucratic regulation smothers capitalist innovation was especially powerful in the Cold War environment of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. But as long as voters felt they were benefiting from the bureaucratic expansion, as they typically did, the political winds supported continued growth.

In the 1970s, however, Germany and Japan were thriving economies in positions to compete with U.S. industry. This competition, combined with technological advances and the beginnings of computerization, began to eat away at American prosperity. Factories began to close, wages began to stagnate, inflation climbed, and the future seemed a little less bright. In this environment, tax-paying workers were less likely to support generous welfare programs designed to end poverty. They felt these bureaucratic programs were adding to their misery in order to support unknown others.

In his first and unsuccessful presidential bid in 1976, Ronald Reagan, a skilled politician and governor of California, stoked working-class anxieties by directing voters’ discontent at the bureaucratic dragon he proposed to slay. When he ran again four years later, his criticism of bureaucratic waste in Washington carried him to a landslide victory. While it is debatable whether Reagan actually reduced the size of government, he continued to wield rhetoric about bureaucratic waste to great political advantage. Even as late as 1986, he continued to rail against the Washington bureaucracy ( Figure 15.5 ), once declaring famously that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Why might people be more sympathetic to bureaucratic growth during periods of prosperity? In what way do modern politicians continue to stir up popular animosity against bureaucracy to political advantage? Is it effective? Why or why not?

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• Authors: Glen Krutz, Sylvie Waskiewicz, PhD
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: American Government 3e
• Publication date: Jul 28, 2021
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/american-government-3e/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/american-government-3e/pages/15-1-bureaucracy-and-the-evolution-of-public-administration

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