"The Study of Administration" (1887) is an article by American politician, academic, and university administrator Woodrow Wilson promoting the study of public administration in American universities and arguing for the implementation of administrative methods in American government. Wilson's article examines the history and subject matter of the study of public administration and argues for a particular understanding of administrative government and particular methods for implementing it.[1][2]
HIGHLIGHTS
Source: Political Science Quarterly, Volume 2, Number 2, June 1887
Abstract: In the introduction to his article, Wilson summarizes its purpose and contents, writing: "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 possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy. ... Before entering on that study, however, it is needful:
- I. To take some account of what others have done in the same line; that is to say, of the history of the study.
- II. To ascertain just what is its subject-matter.
- III. To determine just what are the best methods by which to develop it, and the most clarifying political conceptions to carry with us into it."[1][2]
Author
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was an American politician, academic, and university administrator who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 until 1921. Below is a summary of Wilson's education and career:[3][4][5]
- Academic degrees:
- Bachelor's degree, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
- Law degree, University of Virginia Law School, Charlottesville, Virginia
- Ph.D. in political science and history, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
- University lecturer and professor
- 1902-1910: President of Princeton University
- 1911-1913: Governor of New Jersey
- 1913-1921: President of the United States
The need for administrative government
Wilson's article argues that the increasing complexity of society and corresponding issues of public policy require administrative methods of government to deal with. He argues that questions of administration are of more practical importance to the function of American government than constitutional questions:
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The weightier debates of constitutional principle are even yet by no means concluded; but they are no longer of more immediate practical moment than questions of administration. It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one. ...
There is scarcely a single duty of government which was once simple which is not now complex; government once had but a few masters; it now has scores of masters. Majorities formerly only underwent government; they now conduct government. Where government once might follow the whims of a court, it must now follow the views of a nation. (p. 200)[6]
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Wilson's article contends that the application of administrative government to more areas of society is inevitable and desirable:
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Administration is everywhere putting its hands to new undertakings. The utility, cheapness, and success of the government's postal service, for instance, point towards the early establishment of governmental control of the telegraph system. Or, even if our government is not to follow the lead of the governments of Europe in buying or building both telegraph and railroad lines, no one can doubt that in some way it must make itself master of masterful corporations. ... The idea of the state and the consequent ideal of its duty are undergoing noteworthy change; ... Seeing every day new things which the state ought to do, the next thing is to see clearly how it ought to do them. (p. 201)[6]
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Administrative and political government and the Constitution
Wilson's article argues that administrative government is and ought to be separate from political government and that they are only connected when political officials set the tasks and broad goals for administrators to carry out and implement in detail:
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Let me expand a little what I have said of the province of administration. Most important to be observed is the truth already so much and so fortunately insisted upon by our civil service reformers; namely, that administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices. (p. 210)[6]
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Related to this distinction, Wilson's article identifies a difference between constitutional and administrative questions, in which issues within the discretion of administration are separate from issues determined by constitutional principles:
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There is another distinction which must be worked into all our conclusions, which, though but another side of that between administration and politics, is not quite so easy to keep sight of: I mean the distinction between constitutional and administrative questions, between those governmental adjustments which are essential to constitutional principle and those which are merely instrumental to the possibly changing purposes of a wisely adapting convenience. (p. 211)[6]
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Wilson's article then relates both of these distinctions, emphasizing the general nature of constitutions and the specific, detailed nature of administration:
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A clear view of the difference between the province of constitutional law and the province of administrative function ought to leave no room for misconception; and it is possible to name some roughly definite criteria upon which such a view can be built. Public administration is detailed and systematic execution of public law. Every particular application of general law is an act of administration. The assessment and raising of taxes, for instance, the hanging of a criminal, the transportation and delivery of the mails, the equipment and recruiting of the army and navy, etc., are all obviously acts of administration; but the general laws which direct these things to be done are as obviously outside of and above administration. The broad plans of governmental action are not administrative; the detailed execution of such plans is administrative. Constitutions, therefore, properly concern themselves only with those instrumentalities of government which are to control general law. Our federal constitution observes this principle in saying nothing of even the greatest of the purely executive offices, and speaking only of that President of the Union who was to share the legislative and policy-making functions of government, only of those judges of highest jurisdiction who were to interpret and guard its principles, and not of those who were merely to give utterance to them. (p. 212)[6]
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The historical transition to administrative government
Wilson's article divides the history of government in Europe and the United States into three parts, the first based on absolute sovereign rulers, the second on democracy and constitutions, and the third on administrative government implemented and approved through democracy:
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Judging by the constitutional histories of the chief nations of the modern world, there may be said to be three periods of growth through which government has passed in all the most highly developed of existing systems, and through which it promises to pass in all the rest. The first of these periods is that of absolute rulers, and of an administrative system adapted to absolute rule; the second is that in which constitutions are framed to do away with absolute rulers and substitute popular control, and in which administration is neglected for these higher concerns; and the third is that in which the sovereign people undertake to develop administration under this new constitution which has brought them into power. (p. 204)[6]
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According to Wilson, efficient and effective administration is neglected during the second, constitutional period of government. Wilson argues that, at the time the article was written, the United States had reached the third period of government but still needed to move beyond its constitutional mistrust of administration:
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There seems to be no end to the tinkering of constitutions. Your ordinary constitution will last you hardly ten years without repairs or additions; and the time for administrative detail comes late. ...
Consequently, we have reached a time when administrative study and creation are imperatively necessary to the well-being of our governments saddled with the habits of a long period of constitution-making. That period has practically closed, so far as the establishment of essential principles is concerned, but we cannot shake off its atmosphere. We go on criticizing when we ought to be creating. (pp. 205-6)[6]
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Wilson's article argues that the progression from constituitonal to administrative government will be slow but necessary, and that it will be inhibited by the democratic instincts of the voting public:
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In government, as in virtue, the hardest of hard things is to make progress. Formerly the reason for this was that the single person who was sovereign was generally either selfish, ignorant, timid, or a fool,—albeit there was now and again one who was wise. Nowadays the reason is that the many, the people, who are sovereign have no single ear which one can approach, and are selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish with the selfishnesses, the ignorances, the stubbornnesses, the timidities, or the follies of several thousand persons,—albeit there are hundreds who are wise. ... The bulk of mankind is rigidly unphilosophical, and nowadays the bulk of mankind votes. (pp. 208-9)[6]
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Administrative power and its relationship with democracy
According to Wilson's article, administrators must be given great power and discretion in order to perform their roles effectively and efficiently. For Wilson, this is an essential feature of administrative government, and preferable to a system that minimizes or divides and thus limits the power of administrators:
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And let me say that large powers and unhampered discretion seem to me the indispensable conditions of responsibility. Public attention must be easily directed, in each case of good or bad administration, to just the man deserving of praise or blame. There is no danger in power, if only it be not irresponsible. If it be divided, dealt out in shares to many, it is obscured; and if it be obscured, it is made irresponsible. (p. 213)[6]
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Wilson argues that public opinion and democracy have a place and a say in administrative government, but that this influence ought to be limited, and administrators need to be trusted with a great degree of discretion:
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What part shall public opinion take in the conduct of administration? The right answer seems to be, that public opinion shall play the part of authoritative critic. But the method by which its authority shall be made to tell? Our peculiar American difficulty in organizing administration is not the danger of losing liberty, but the danger of not being able or willing to separate its essentials from its accidents. Our success is made doubtful by that besetting error of ours, the error of trying to do too much by vote. Self-government does not consist in having a hand in everything, any more than housekeeping consists necessarily in cooking dinner with one's own hands. The cook must be trusted with a large discretion as to the management of the fires and the ovens. ... The problem is to make public opinion efficient without suffering it to be meddlesome. (pp. 214-5)[6]
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Improving constitutional democracy with administrative methods
Wilson's article argues that constitutional democracy must be improved by the implementation of administrative methods of government, and by the hiring of an educated, qualified civil service based on competitive examinations:
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If we are to put in new boilers and to mend the fires which drive our governmental machinery, we must not leave the old wheels and joints and valves and bands to creak and buzz and clatter on as best they may at bidding of the new force. We must put in new running parts wherever there is the least lack of strength or adjustment. It will be necessary to organize democracy by sending up to the competitive examinations for the civil service men definitely prepared for standing liberal tests as to technical knowledge. A technically schooled civil service will presently have become indispensable. (p. 216)[6]
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Wilson's article argues that the detailed study of public administration and the use of administrative methods are necessary for the government of a complex industrial society. He suggests that the United States study and apply administrative methods employed by other governments, including undemocratic ones:
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The democratic state has yet to be equipped for carrying those enormous burdens of administration which the needs of this industrial and trading age are so fast accumulating. Without comparative studies in government we cannot rid ourselves of the misconception that administration stands upon an essentially different basis in a democratic state from that on which it stands in a non-democratic state. …
So far as administrative functions are concerned, all governments have a strong structural likeness; more than that, if they are to be uniformly useful and efficient, they must have a strong structural likeness. A free man has the same bodily organs, the same executive parts, as the slave, however different may be his motives, his services, his energies. Monarchies and democracies, radically different as they are in other respects, have in reality much the same business to look to.
It is abundantly safe nowadays to insist upon this actual likeness of all governments, because these are days when abuses of power are easily exposed and arrested, in countries like our own, by a bold, alert, inquisitive, detective public thought and a sturdy popular self-dependence such as never existed before. We are slow to appreciate this; but it is easy to appreciate it. (p. 218)[6]
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See also
Full text
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Academy of Political Science, "The Study of Administration," June 1887
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Teaching American History, "The Study of Administration," accessed December 5, 2017
- ↑ The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, "Biography," accessed December 5, 2017
- ↑ The White House, "Woodrow Wilson," accessed December 5, 2017
- ↑ Biography.com, "Woodrow Wilson," accessed December 5, 2017
- ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
