he process of public administration consists of the actions involved in effecting the intent or

desire of a government. It is thus the continuously active, business part of government,

concerned with carrying out the law, as made by legislative bodies (or other authoritative
agents) and interpreted by courts, through the processes of organization and management.
The field of studyputatively a science or disciplineof Public Administration focuses upon
public administration as a process. (In this article, public administration is used to refer to the
relevant governmental phenomena; Public Administration, to refer to the study of these
phenomena.) Historically and conventionally, Public Administration has been primarily
concerned with problems of how to apply or effect law faithfully, honestly, economically, and
efficiently. More recently, Public Administration has become concerned with the processes by
which public administration participates in creating and interpreting lawwith how such creating
and interpreting can be done correctly, wisely, or in the public interest.
As a process, public administration is as old as government. That is, as soon as there is
sufficient institutional evolution and differentiation to enable one to speak of the government of a
society, there are actions by which law (as an expression of governments authoritative
allocation of values) is made and actions by which an attempt, more or less successful, is made
to carry the law into effect. In simple societies the objectives of public administration are simple,
limited to such matters as preserving order; and the institutions or organs by which
administration is carried on are simple, comparatively small, and often not completely
differentiated from institutions or organs with other purposes. As societies increase in size and
complexity, as governments grow larger and take on more functions, and as their institutions
become more differentiated and specialized, administrative processes become more specialized
and the institutions that carry on administration activitiesknown by such names as councils,
commissions, departments, bureaus, and agenciesbecome large, complex, and highly
differentiated.
As public administration becomes more specialized and complex, increasing attention is likely to
be given to the training of persons who are to perform administrative functions, training which
may be given either before or after entry into service. As the processes of administration
become more complex, considerable attention also may be given to means of improvement of
some part or process. Systematic education or training for performance in public administration,
however, is for the most part a development of the modern era. And systematic, continuous
study of ways to improve public administration and make it more efficient is an even more
recent development, associated with various modern developments such as the rise of the
nation-state as the dominant governmental form and the rise of science as an acceptable or
characteristic way of thought. In the United States during the past generation the study of public
administration has been especially intense, and this intensity of effort has resulted in a new level
of self-consciousness. This is reflected in the idea that the study of public administration is
sufficiently important and sufficiently autonomous to become a science or discipline in itself. The
conception of a more or less autonomous science or discipline called Public Administration is
primarily, if not indeed uniquely, an American idea.
Terminological difficulties. A note on terminology is in order. It is difficult to be either brief or
accurateand more difficult to be bothin speaking of Public Administration in the United
States. The key terms, such as administration, execution, and management, have no precise

and agreed meanings but rather overlap and conflict, and the differences in usage relate not
simply to carelessness and accident but to matters of disciplinary doctrine and methodological
and professional dispute. Centrally relevant is the fact that the U.S. constitution has established
a threefold separation of institutions and organs, legislative, executive, and judicial, yet relates
the three in a complicated fashion in which each of the three branches has functions that in a
logic of strict separation would belong to the other two; and this general scheme of construction
is repeated in the constitutions of the constituent states. Moreover, the word administration does
not occur in the federal constitution. Thus the general question of
how administration (or management) relates toexecutive as used in the constitution
particularly, what institutions and persons are to direct and control administrationis open to
dispute. Students in Public Administration have traditionally had and expressed an antilegal
bias. The preface of the first Public Administration textbook explicitly states the thesis that the
study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of
law (White 1926). It is vitally necessary to understand that the rise of Public Administration
represented an assertion that the traditional view of public administration as simply the
application of legal rules was quite inadequate.
The field in the United States
In the 1950s and 1960s Public Administration changed very greatly. But the nature and
significance of these changes can only be understood in terms of past doctrines and interests.
For this it is necessary to sketch out the historical and institutional context for the rise of the
discipline.
The first two general textbooks of Public Administration in the United States, written by L. D.
White and W. F. Willoughby, were published in 1926 and 1927 respectively. In a sense these
signified the birth of Public Administration as a discipline. Before these general textbooks
appeared, however, there had been several decades of preparation.

Origins
Some of the framers of the U.S. constitution and some early U.S. political leadersfor example,
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jeffersongave attention to problems of public administration
and wrote on them in ways that foreshadowed later developments. Indeed, there is no sharp
point in history where the story of Public Administration begins. However, an essay by the then
young Woodrow Wilson (1887) is often taken as the symbolic beginning. Certainly it was a
remarkable essay in its perceptiveness, persuasiveness, and influence [see the biography
ofWilson].
Wilsons basic postulate was that it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame
one ([1887] 1953, p. 67). Up to the nineteenth century, he noted, the predominant concerns of
the study of governmental affairs were political philosophy, constitutional arrangements, and
lawmaking. However, increasing complexities in economic and social life and a concomitant
increase in governmental size and activity were forcing a change of emphasis. European
countries, he observed, had begun taking very seriously the training of civil servants and the
scientific study of administration. The United States should do likewise. In fact, it should study
European methods, to learn from themtaking care in the borrowing of these efficient means
not to borrow their monarchical or autocratic ends. The United States should rather seek to
perfect its republican-democratic constitutional system through the new science: There should
be a science of administration which shall seek to straighten the paths of government, to make

its business less unbusinesslike, to strengthen and purify its organization, and to crown its
duties with dutifulness (ibid.).
The rise of Public Administration as a discipline, and the reforms and changes in public
administration that stimulated it and that it in turn stimulated and guided, must be understood in
relation to developments in national life. Public Administration, that is, represented a response
to threats to old values, an adjustment to new conditions of life. As a body of thought and
techniques it has been an attempt to preserve the essential parts of the republican-democratic
heritage, conceived and developed under comparatively simple rural conditions, under the
extremely complex conditions posed by a large industrial nation, itself situated in an
international setting of increasing complexity.
Also important to the rise of Public Administration was the rise to self-consciousness of the
discipline of political science, evidenced by the creation of the American Political Science
Association in 1903. It is important that almost without exception those who might be called the
founding fathers of Public Administration were trained as political scientists (rather than, say,
jurists or economists) and tended to view Public Administration as a part or subdiscipline of
political science. American higher education generallythe modern university with its
professional schoolswas developing swiftly in these decades. Specialization and expertise
were replacing amateurism in many realms, and the development of political science was but an
aspect of a movement; the other major social sciences also were achieving differentiation and
separate status in the same period.

The 1920s and 1930s

Public Administration acquired certain distinctive characteristics in the 1920s and 1930s.
Public Administration as a synthesis. As it emerged in the mid-1920s Public Administration was
a confluence and mixture of three main currents. One of these was the movement for
governmental reform, a movement that had been swelling for several decades, which sought to
purify government and adjust its institutions to the conditions of modern, industrial, urban
society. The second current was scientific management, or what often came to be called the
management movement: the attempt, centered in private industrial enterprise but extending
out from it, to apply the techniques of science to solving problems of organizing and
administering with economy and efficiency. The techniques and spirit of scientific management
began also to pervade governmental administration and to influence the thinking of those
interested in governmental reform and improvement. Its use of the increasingly honorific
term science, its promise to reduce cost and increase efficiency, and its aim of replacing
ignorance and conflict with knowledge and harmony were extremely appealing to the founding
fathers of Public Administration. Scientific management also influenced Public Administration
through the concurrently developing discipline of business administration. The third current was
the new discipline of political science, which inherited the political philosophies and
governmental knowledge of the centuries but was also trying to apply science in a new and
more rigorous way to politics and government. Other influencesforeign and domesticare
readily recognizable, but these three constitute the essential ingredients.
The core beliefs. The new Public Administration of the 1920s had certain core, orienting beliefs.
Centrally, its leaders thought of their enterprise as an attempt to achieve the republicandemocratic ends of freedom and equality by making government simultaneously strong and

efficient, responsible and responsive. A program of political reform as well as a mere science of
administration was involved. Against the nineteenth-century idea of dividing powers and sharing
functions widely among the citizenry was posed a new formula, necessitated by the need for
expertise and by modern conditions generally: concentrate power for effectiveness and then
watch it closely for responsibility. Indeed, the concentration is as necessary for achieving
responsibility as for effectiveness; for only if the citizens task is simplified and he knows whom
to hold responsible, through his vote and by other means, can he make his influence felt.
In the envisaged reconciliation of true democracy and true efficiency one postulate is very
important, namely, that government is analytically divisible into two different functions, or types
of action: first, to decide; and second, to carry out the decision. These two types of action are
identified with and by the words politicsand administration, respectively. The role of public
opinion, the activities of political parties, the functions of legislative bodiesthese are identified
with politics. Here the clash of opinion and the conflict of values are in order, and science can
have only a limited role, efficiency a limited meaning. But once a decision is authoritatively
made and a law enacted, then other values and techniques are primarily appropriate; this is the
realm of administration. For this, economy and efficiency are the central criteria, and science is
the proper method for developing the criteria.
This division of government between politics and administration had many sourcesincluding,
again, Wilsons essaybut one especially influential book must be mentioned: Frank
Goodnows Politics and Administration (1900). In the idiom of that day, Goodnow spoke of the
will of the state and identified politics with the expression and administration with
the execution of this will. The problem of government, as he viewed it, is to achieve harmony
between the expression of the will and its execution, the alternative being conflict or paralysis.
But while politics should have a certain control over administration, it should not extend to
certain levels and aspects thereof, which embrace fields of semi-scientific, gwasi-judicial and
gwasi-business or commercial activitywork which has little if any influence on the expression
of the true state will (p. 85).
Goodnow made recommendations for various reforms to achieve this necessary and desirable,
but limited, control of administration by politics. Goodnow himself did not identify politics simply
with the legislative organs or the lawmaking process, nor administration simply with the
executive branch or the process of law enforcement. However, as time passed, the student of
public administration tended to identify his subjectand indeed himselfwith executive
institutions and processes and to presume that his subject had qualities of hardness lacking in
politics and policy making, which made it possible to use science as the central method in study
and to take efficiency as the central criterion of success in operation. [See the biography
ofGoodnow.]
The period of orthodoxy. The expression orthodoxy is now often used with reference to Public
Administration in the 1920s and 1930s to indicate a quality of general agreement and selfassurance. To be sure, there were differences of seemingly great import among the scholars of
the day, but in retrospect certain general beliefs and interests predominated.
The early textbooks afford a summary view of the interests of the newly founded discipline. The
most widely used textbook in the period was Leonard D. Whites Introduction to the Study of
Public Administration(1926). In the first edition, Chapter 1 is entitled Administration and the
Modern State. Here are set forth some of what have been designated above as core beliefs:
the importance of administration in an increasingly complex and interdependent society, the

necessity for efficiency, the possibility and desirability of approaching administration

scientifically, and so forth.
The second textbook, W. F. Willoughbys Principles of Public Administration (1927), differs
significantly from Whites in regard to the constitutional authority to control public administration:
White regards the president as the chief administrator by constitutional right, whereas
Willoughby regards Congress as holding the administrative power by constitutional right,
delegating it to the president or other officers at its discretion. In terms of subject matter the
chief difference lies in the fact that Willoughby devotes a large part of his book to financial and
budgetary aspects of administration and has a section as well dealing with materiel
purchasing, storage, and so forth. Textbooks appearing in the 1930sa revision of White, and
othersincluded treatment of governmental financial-budgetary matters and at least touched
lightly on materiel.
The word principles in the title of Willoughbys book indicates an important doctrinal aspect of
the older Public Administration that has not yet been mentioned: It was customary to speak of
principles of (public) administration. A principle was what one arrived at by proper and diligent
study; it summed up what had been learned. At the same time, it was a guide to good and
efficient administration, a light thrown by research and logic on present and future problems.
The core beliefs may now be summarized. Government is divisible into two functions or
processes, decision and execution. Making decisions is the realm of politics and policy making.
It is the area in which the processes of democracy are relevantexpression of opinion, voting,
organization of political parties, and so forth. Executing decisions, however, which is the realm
of administration, presents other problems and needs other criteria. To the processes of
administration the methods of science, proved so powerful elsewhere, are relevant. The criteria
here are economy and efficiency; and economy can on close analysis be viewed as an aspect
of efficiency. Through scientific research of the phenomena of administration we can derive
principles of administration, which simultaneously summarize what we have learned and provide
formulas for the efficient conduct of administration. By this process of analysis and division we
can reconcile the values of democracy with the necessities of efficiency and science in the
modern world.

Criticism and transitionthe 1940s

Roughly speaking, the period of so-called orthodoxy in Public Administration coincided with the
years between the two world wars. In the 1940s the discipline was subjected to searching
criticism of its core beliefs, and heterodoxy came to replace orthodoxy. The criticism and new
orienting ideas were clearly foreshadowed in the 1930s. In 1937 a work appeared that is
commonly regarded as the epitome of orthodoxy,Papers on the Science of
Administration, edited by Luther H. Gulick and Lyndall Urwick. But this work not only
represented orthodoxy in its most cogent and influential form; it presented papers dealing with
the psychological dimensions of administration, which were to become so important in the
postwar years. Moreover, in 1936 there had appeared The Frontiers of Public Administration, a
series of essays by John M. Gaus, Leonard D. White, and Marshall E. Dimock, in which these
prominent figures of the orthodox period introduced points of view later to become important.
Other works of the prewar period criticizing old ideas or introducing new could be cited, but
World War II diverted normal streams of scholarly activity, and it was not until the second half of
the decade of the 1940s that the most influential critical works appeared. At the same time,

however, it should be recognized that the war itself was important in stimulating dissatisfaction
with old perspectives and encouraging new ones. Most of the university students and teachers
of Public Administration either were engaged in some form of emergency administrative activity
or were in some military organization, and they concluded that the textbooks of the day did not
adequately describe organization and administration as they had experienced it.
The critical ideas of the younger students were indicated by Robert A. Dahl in 1947, in an essay
entitled The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems. The first problem arises from
the frequent impossibility of excluding normative considerations from the problems of public
administration (p. 1), as had been the intent or tendency with the politics-administration
dichotomy and the accompanying focus upon scientific means to achieve efficiency. Dahl
argued that we must recognize that the study of public administration must be founded on
some clarification of ends (p. 3). The second problem arises from the inescapable fact that a
science of public administration must be a study of certain aspects of human behavior (p. 4).
He criticized the prevalent tendency to treat organization in formal, technical terms and to
regard the human beings that constitute organizations more or less as material. The study of
administration must, he argued, embrace the whole psychological man and must not presume
that man is a simple machine responding only and fully to goals of self-interest narrowly
conceived. The third problem concerns the conception of principles of administration. The study
of Public Administration in the United States, he argued, has been too narrow, too parochial. We
have hoped, he said, indeed presumed, that we were enunciating universal principles, but our
study has, after all, been limited to a few examples in a few national and historical settings, and
we presume too much. The study of public administration inevitably must become a much more
broadly based discipline, resting not on a narrowly defined knowledge of techniques and
processes, but rather extending to the varying historical, sociological, economic and other
conditioning factors (p. 11).
Herbert A. Simons Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in
Administrative Organization (1947) was probably the most important work of the 1940s. It
contained a searching critique of the older Public Administration, particularly of its use of
principles. These so-called principles, he observed, are similar to maxims of folk wisdom and,
in fact, given the loose and unscientific way in which they have been derived and stated, cannot
be regarded as more than proverbs.
Administrative Behavior represents the direct and vigorous impact on Public Administration of
the perspectives and methodology associated with behavioralism (a movement in the social
sciences aimed at a higher level of achievement by more careful study of actual behavior, using
techniques whose value has been demonstrated in the physical sciences ).
According to Simon, the founders of the older Public Administration failed to appreciate many of
the rigorous requirements of true scientific method, but their fundamental deficiency lay in their
lack of understanding of the distinctions they had drawn. They failed to appreciate that their
rough separation of politics from administration did not preclude a valuational component in
many things they presumed they were treating scientifically. In fact, their principles typically
represented a conflation and a confusion of the two elements of fact and value.
The philosophical-methodological concerns of the book and the more purely substantive
materials (on such subjects as communication and authority) are joined centrally through the
concept of decision making: If any theory is involved, it is that decision-making is the heart of

administration, and that the vocabulary of administrative theory must be derived from the logic
and psychology of human choice (Simon [1947] 1961, p. xiv). As for the psychology of human
choice, Simon selected what seemed to him relevant theories from psychology and various
social sciences.
Administrative Behavior was paradoxically a radical and a conservative work with respect to
Public Administration. It was radical in its rejection of the politics-administration dichotomy and
the simultaneous injection of the perspective of logical positivism in approaching questions of
policy making and the relation of means and ends, in its proposal to adopt what was becoming a
very fashionable term and set of concepts in the social sciences, decision making, into Public
Administration; and in its insistence that standards of scientific rigor in Public Administration be
sharply raised. At the same time, Administrative Behavior was faithful to some essential beliefs
of the older Public Administration. At a time when its claim to be a science was under attack as
pretentious, Simon argued forcefully that administrative phenomena are indeed the proper
subjects of scientific studyif properly conceived and executed. At a time when the concept of
efficiency was under criticism as too narrow and unimaginative a criterion, he carefully defined
and refined the concept, made a distinction between pure and practical sciences, and argued
that efficiency is a proper criterion as applied to the factual aspects of a practical science of
administration. Even the sharp distinction between fact and value, while a much more subtle
matter than the distinction between politics and administration, resembles the latter in the formal
sense that it is a sweeping twofold division of the universe of administrative phenomena.

Main currents of recent years

Since the critical analyses of the 1940s, Public Administration as a discipline has lacked the
self-confidence and coherence of the interwar period. Various approaches or emphases have
competed, but none has succeeded in winning the general acceptance of scholars identified
with the discipline. No new synthesis has been achieved; no new orthodoxy has replaced the
old. In general, Public Administration has grown tremendously in the sense of accepting data,
concepts, and perspectives from many sources, chiefly the various social sciences; but it has
discarded little, and no organizing framework into which everything will fit has been achieved
or, if achieved, has not been recognized and accepted as such. There are several major
currents and emphases, but these often overlap and mingle and, while separated for purposes
of discussion, are not necessarily separated in particular books, courses of study, and so forth.
Continuation of the traditional. First, it should be noted that although the 1940s undoubtedly
mark a period of criticism and even rejection of the discipline as it emerged in the interwar
period, still there has been much continuity with the older Public Administration. Scholars and
teachers have naturally varied in their rejection of the traditional and their acceptance of the
new. New data and concepts were added to the old; traditional points of view were presented
but qualified and criticized. Most teachers, for example, would present the organization theory of
the 1930s because of its wide acceptance and practical importance, whatever criticism they
might make or whatever other concepts of organization they might introduce in addition. No
teacher would speak confidently of principles of administration. Still, faced with teaching
students interested in careers in public administration, he would likely find himself falling back
upon some of the managerial, efficiency-oriented attitudes and materials of his predecessors.
Politics and policy making. The belief that the practice of administration is a technical problem
focused upon efficiency in operation was characteristic of the older Public Administration. The

leading students and writers of the postwar period have adopted sharply different attitudes
whatever their other differenceson this matter. It has been generally agreed that while the
phenomena of politics and the amount of policy making may decrease as one moves from the
top of an administrative agency to its bottom, or into some of the technical processes or
functions, still they are generally present in significant degree; and at the level of chief executive
or top management, where so much interest is focused, they are important matters indeed.
The results of this recognition have manifested themselves in a variety of approaches. For
example, Simons decision-making schema attempts to include the valuational as well as the
factual. Some writers, for example Paul H. Appleby (1952), have written searchingly on the
interaction of politics and administration in a democracy. Some, for example Norton E. Long
(1962), have concentrated more sharply on politics-in-administration, on the power factor in
administration. Some, for example Emmette Redford (1958), have reflected on how the ethical
or public-policy component is brought to bear on the technical component.
Development of a case method. One important development of the postwar period, closely
related to the abandonment of the politics-administration dichotomy, has been the development
of a case method of study and teaching. There had, indeed, been case programs earlier, but in
the mid-1940s at Harvard University there were new beginnings and a development of new
objectives and new techniques. An interuniversity program followed the Harvard initiative, and
since 1951 the enterprise, further expanded, has operated under the title Inter-University Case
Program.
Essentially, those who developed the new case style and format were dissatisfied with older
Public Administration as doctrinaire and limited, failing to present and deal adequately with real
public administration. As developed, the case is a narrative, an account of a particular, real
administrative episode, as written after the events from information gathered from all possible
sources. The perspective of the writer might be characterized as interested but impartial
observer, but he often tries to re-create the perspective of an important participant (or
participants) in the episodea man in a situation having to make a decision. There is an effort
to present the entire situation, i.e., everything that is relevant to the decision; and the
emphasis is more on personal interaction, politics, and policy making than on technical factors.
The production of such cases has been and continues to be a major enterprise of the group of
scholars who produce much of the literature in the field. Since in an important sense the focus in
case writing is decision making, this might seem to join them to, or at least bring them into
relationship with, Simons proposal to center the study of administration on decision making. In
fact, however, serious philosophical-methodological differences have separated the two despite
the formal use of the same term.
Human relations, psychology, sociology. In the late 1920s a series of famous experiments
focusing upon work groups was carried out at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric
Company (see Roethlisberger & Dickson 1939). The impact of these experiments was very
great on both the study of business administration and that of public administration, though in
the case of the latter the full effect was not felt until the postwar period.
The Hawthorne experiments demonstrated not only the limitations of the scientific-management
approach to increased efficiency by concentration upon monetary rewards and the physical
aspects of the work situation but also the importance of psychological and, more broadly, social

factors. The Hawthorne experiments signaled a vogue: the human relations approach to
management. More recently, this term has lost its appeal, as associated with certain excesses
and naivete. However, the human relations movement set in train a vast amount of serious
scientific research on the psycho-sociological aspects of work and administration [SeeIndustrial
Relations].
The questions to which psychological research is directed are, for example: What is morale,
what factors affect it, and how is it related to work effectiveness? How do factors in a workers
perceptions and attitudes relate to the stimuli in the work situation? What factors affect the
formation of face-to-face work groups, and what is their significance in administration? How
does informal group life generally relate to the formal organization structure and to the official
organizational goals? What are the factors involved in the phenomenon of leadership, and how
do they relate to the important matter of authority? What makes for conflict, what for
cooperation, between groups or organizations? [SeeLeadership.]
Research in administration by sociologists has become increasingly important during the
postwar period. Only a small part of this research has taken public organizations as its focus,
but this part has a high scientific relevance; and all of it has a high potential relevance.
Sociology has brought many and varied concepts to administration, but most have clustered
about the term bureaucracy, an ideal type set forth by Max Weber. The research findings of
sociology have less obvious relevance to immediate problems of efficiency than do those of
psychology, but the range of interests and techniques embraced may hold greater promise for
coping with organizational problems as they relate to the whole of society. [SeeBureaucracy.] In
general, however, Public Administration stands to benefit from the research interests and
techniques of both psychology and sociology.
Theory of organization. In recent years there has been great scholarly and scientific interest in
organization, and a resultant outpouring of essays, books, and research reports designated by
the term theory of organization. It is the view of some that organization itself, as a widespread
social phenomenon, warrants the full concentration of many students. There is a widely held
belief that there are universals in organizational behavior, that organization can be studied
simply as organization, with a resulting body of valid theory of general applicability. One group
of students, identified with general systems theory, conceives of human organization as but a
type or representative of a still more general phenomenon: systems (which may be biological or
physical as well as social) [SeeSystems Analysis].
Some students of public administration are contributing to theory of organization; others, not
identified with Public Administration, focus their research effort on public organizations. To the
extent that there may be universals of organization, they are by definition relevant to public
organizations. In any event, theory of organization is one of the very active areas of
contemporary social science related to and contributing to Public Administration.
[SeeOrganizations.]
Comparative Public Administration. Within Public Administration proper, perhaps the area of
greatest current scholarly activityand some would say of greatest promiseis the
comparative study of public administration. This interest grows out of the fact that, beginning
with World War n, continuing into the postwar military occupations, and accelerating with the
many technical assistance programs of the United States, the United Nations, and private
foundations, American students and teachers of Public Administration by the hundreds have
found themselves engaged in professional work in foreign lands. This exposure to foreign, often

non-Western, governmental systems and cultures has stimulated a sense of compara-tiveness

in general, and in particular raised questions either about the appropriateness or the sheer
possibility of transferring familiar administrative devices or applying what had been presumed to
be good or scientific principles of administration.
The comparative study of administrative systems parallels the comparative study of political
systems comparative politics. Both movements are characterized by the comparative youth of
their participants, by a general commitment to the outlooks identified with behavioralism, by an
effort to be interdisciplinary in interests and techniques, and by an effort to arrive at concepts,
formulas, and theories that are truly universal, bridging and embracing all cultures.
[SeePolitics, Comparative.]
New technologies and techniques. Recent years have seen the rapid development of various
physical devices of significance for administration and a parallel development of various
systems of logical thought applicable to the practice of, and to research on, administration. The
former include a range of new machines, mostly electronic, that greatly extend the range ofor
replacethe hand and, particularly, the brain. These devices, of which the electronic computer
in its various forms is the best known, perform certain work, particularly the storage, retrieval,
and manipulation of data and the making of complex calculations, with such speed and
accuracy that they open up a new range of human experience and potentialities. The sys tems
of logical thought that have been newly developed for or applied in administration include
certain branches of mathematics and certain quasi-mathematical systems of precise statement
and reasoning.
The effect of these developments is to open new and enlarged opportunities for increasing
administrative efficiency and rationalityboth directly, through application of what is already
known or already exists, and indirectly, through opening opportunities for new types of research
on problems of organization and management. An example of direct application is operations
research, which combines various specialized competences to analyze systems and solve
problems. Developed in World War n as a technique for attacking certain problems in military
strategy and logistics, operations research is now a speciality with an independent professional
organization. Simulation is an example of the expanded potentialities for research. The new
physical inventions, plus new or improved systems of logical thought, permit an unprecedented
type and scale of simulation. Certain administrative situations (for example, decision-making
problems) can be reproduced (simulated) in their essentials, thus helping to solve a perennial
problem of social science: how to control and repeat experiments. [SeeOperations
Research; Simulation.]
Many of these machines, logical systems, and what might be called social technologies, such as
operations research, are now used in various branches of public administration; in some
branches, such as military logistics and tax administration, they are widely used. On the whole,
however, their development and use tends to center in business administration and schools of
business administration. Perhaps, on the whole, they are more applicable (both presently and
potentially) to business administration than to public administration. Nevertheless, increased
knowledge about and use of them is on the agenda of Public Administration.
The field outside the United States
As indicated above, wherever there is government there is public administration, but Public
Administrationin the sense of a more or less autonomous discipline of alleged general

applicabilitywas conceived and developed in the United States and is still strongly identified
with its place of origin and greatest acceptance. This is not to assert, however, that in countries
in which the American idea and content of Public Administration is not accepted the matter of
training for public administration is not taken seriously or that there may not be an application of
science to the conduct of public administration.
Training for performance of some function in the governmental bureaucracy is a prime object of
the system of public education of any country, in some cases nearly the sole object. In all
advanced countries there is also some sort of special or differentiated training conceived as
preparation for the positions of greatest responsibility and power in public administration
although other factors, such as social class, wealth, party membership, ideological purity, and
religion, obviously are likely to enter in as selective criteria. In ancient China, as in modern
Great Britain, for example, the regular and officially preferred training for high administrative
positions was a humanistic education.
The most commonly accepted and approved training for high position, however, has been law
(at least after and apart from training in military pursuits, for military organization is often the
training ground for, and a source of supply of, governmental administrators for civil as well as
military functions, especially in preindustrial societies). Presumably, this practice grows naturally
from the fact that the making and enforcement of law are close to the heart of government; and
in widely separated times and places people who know the law and have had their minds
sharpened in its study have occupied the highest positions. In Anglo-American countries of the
common law, though there is an important private quality in law, there has been a notable
amount of this phenomenon; and in continental Europe, with its more immediate Roman
background and its civil-law experience, where law is more strongly identified with the idea of
the state, the predominant approach to preparation for high position is through study of law and
jurisprudence, more particularly, that branch or aspect of the law identified as administrative law.
This is not to say, again, that law and only law in a technical and formal sense is all that is
taught and regarded as important. While in some situations it is substantially true that public
administration is deemed to start and end with a reading and application of the book of detailed
legal regulations, in some countries and in some courses of study law is deemed to be only a
framework and is supplemented by other materials, including not only those from accepted
social sciences (particularly economics), but perhaps from the management science around
which Public Administration is formed.
Considerable discussion has taken place during the past generation between American and
Conti nental students on the question whether it is more correct and fruitful to think and speak in
terms of an administrative science or the administrative sciences. The American point of view
has been that it is proper to speak of a science of administration, or a science of public
administration (though the implications of these two expressions are rather different).
Continental students, while willing to concede the importance of administration, have tended to
see it rather as a place or process in which various disciplines or sciences closely interrelate.
To some extent, this controversy reflects a formal rather than a substantive difference:
curriculums prescribed by the two camps for the training of public administrators might be very
similarfor example, both might include sociology and economics, and perhaps administrative
law and social psychology as well. At some point, however, there would likely come a parting of

the ways, with the Europeans less likely than the Americans to include materials relating to
management science, more insistent upon materials closely related to their national
experiences and traditions, particularly in regard to law.
The communist countries share the Continental legal approach to the study and practice of
public administration, though their heritage was in large part through the second Rome of
Byzantium. This approach remains very strong, although the institutions and theories of
communism make for important differences in public administration, and there are other
influences, for example, the fact that some of the spirit and techniques of scientific management
have been absorbed into communist administration.
Trends, problems, and prospects
A review of the present situation in Public Administration should note some factors pertaining to
the conduct and direction of public affairs in the United States that presumably will, or should,
relate importantly to the development of the disciplineto the allocation of intellectual resources
and the development of doctrines.
One factor is a continuing gradual increase in both the absolute and relative number of public
employees. Approximately one in eight employed civilian persons is publicly employed, and
while large numbers of these (publicly employed teachers, for example) are engaged in line
functions, with little administrative responsibility, still the increase in numbers creates a growing
problem in public administration: the increase in scale itself poses new problems for those who
administer and teach administrators, and the problems are intensified by an increasingly
complex technology and an increasingly complex society. For example, to the extent that
functions become more differentiated, and specialization and professionalization more
advanced, in such fields as health, welfare, and education, the problem is posed of where and
how the teaching of administration of such functions should take place. This is a problem of
physical location and organizational arrangements; but it is also a problem in the evolution of
science, or at least doctrine, posing the theoretical question whether administration is a
universal, and the practical one whether it should be taught in general or as related to the
content of the various fields. [SeeAdministration; Civil Service.]
Other factors concern changes and trends in public administration. In its origins Public
Administration was concerned with certain problems of reform, conceptualized as problems in
honesty and competence, and with such problems as departmentalization, executive control,
and staff services, in which efficiency and economy were prime concerns. There has been much
change and addition: human relations, communications, and so forth. But it is questionable
whether recent and contemporary interests are as responsive as they should be to the content
and direction of present governmental activities. Taking money as the measure, we might say
that Public Administration pays relatively slight attention to two areas that represent more than
half of public administration, namely, education and defense. Other important developments are
inadequately represented in current professional attention; for example, the urbanmetropolitan
revolution in American life; the tremendous expansion of government by contract and grant,
which has blurred the lines between the public and private sectors and between the federal and
state spheres; and the rise of scientific research to the status of a pre-eminent national concern,
a rise in which government at every level is involved in ways that lack even simple description
and elementary understanding.

Public Administration since the 1940s obviously presents a spectacle of travail and transition, of
controversy and confusion. The questions now are posed: Is Public Administration properly
regarded as a discipline? Will it continue to be spelled with capital letters in connection with the
organization of the intellectual life of the social sciences into curriculums, departments,
professional societies, and so forth? The answer to the first of these questions is both a matter
of definition and a matter of the unknowns of the future. The answer to the second is very
probably positive: Public Administration as an organizing concept will continue and probably
grow in importance, although there is presently discernible some tendency to merge its activities
and interests with related activities and interests under the broader term public affairs.
If discipline is defined very strictly as an intellectual enterprise with a body of consistent and
agreed theory, then Public Administration is not a discipline and almost certainly will not become
one. But few if any social sciences, or branches or disciplines thereof, fit this description.
Indeed, few if any of the physical sciences do. If discipline is defined in terms of what has been
called a core of unifying beliefs, then it is quite possible that in the future one of the now
competing perspectives will achieve dominance, or a new synthesis will be achieved.
Meanwhile, however, it should be emphasized both that there is no agreement on what
constitutes a discipline and that intellectual progress does not await tidy definitions and
agreements of opinion.
In regard to the question whether Public Administration will continue as an organizing concept,
present trends indicate that its extent and importance, at least in the United States, will almost
certainly increase. Concomitantly, there will certainly continue to be an increase in the
complexity and difficulty of the problems of public administration in an increasingly complex
society and a multiplication of new sciences and technologies bearing upon the processes and
problems of administration, as well as continued advances in the old. There is likely to be more,
not less, attention to the problems of organizing knowledge to bring it to bear on public
administration as well as more, not less, training for and in public administration; and Public
Administration will probably provide the organizing framework and the usual name for the
central aspects of these enterprises.
We may achieve more clarity of concepts, more agreement among opposing schools of thought,
or even a new synthesis; but it is clear that the value of Public Administration for designation of
a focus of inquiry and activity, for the organization of research and instruction, does not depend
on these eventualities. In fact, at the present stage of development, it may be better to regard
Public Administration not as a single thing, but as the customary and accepted collective term
to designate a focus of interest and activity, in the way that the plural term the administrative
sciences is used in Europe for a similar (but not identical) purpose. So used, it is analogous
to engineering and medicine in indicating a unifying focus for a wide array of sciences and
technologies.
The recent history of Public Administration, and its present problems and opportunities, should
be viewed from the perspective of the rejection in the 1940s of the division of politics and
administration. That the political process reaches deeply into public administration and that the
making of public policy is an important activity of public administration have since been all but
universally recognized. But the response has been varied: there is still no general agreement on
what conclusions follow, what the methodological implications are, what lines of inquiry are
indicated as most appropriate and fruitful, what the implications are for programs of education

and training. The discipline is presently trying to find its way through the tangle of issues. Many
of the issues are posed in putative dichotomies and verbal antinomies: politics and
administration, political science and Public Administration, science and art, pure science and
practical science, fact and value, prescription and description, administrative science and
administrative sciences, diversity and similarity, absolutism and relativism, universality and
uniqueness, generality and concreteness. Whether in general or in any particular case the
dichotomies are properly conceived, the antinomies properly opposed, is questionable, and they
undoubtedly present a tangled skein to the student. In the last analysis, however, it must be
universally conceded that important problems are involved.
The two most important immediate responses to the rejection of a separation between politics
and administration were the application of the case method to the study of public administration
and the reformulation presented in Simons Administrative Behavior. These two responses were
rather near the opposite ends of the spectrum of methodological possibilities.
The case approach has been motivated by a commitment to the objectives and methods of the
social sciences, to be sure, but it has been shaped also by a considerable sensitivity to
traditional concerns of the humanities and by a practical interest in pedagogy as against
research. It sought the truth about administration by trying, dispassionately and painstakingly, to
tell the story about what takes place in administration, in actual events, in context, and in all
relevant dimensions. A large number of the abler students of the postwar generation in Public
Administration were attracted to the case approach, and it continues to be of major importance.
The reformulation set forth in Administrative Behavior did not, paradoxically, attract many
students in Public Administrationto whom it was presumably addressedbut it was and is
highly regarded by students of business administration and apparently has been very influential
in research in that field. Simply put, students in Public Administration were inclined to feel that
Simons work did not describe the world of public administration as they had experienced and
observed it. To a generation emancipated from the politicsadministration dichotomy, Simons
separation of fact and value seemed but another artificial division of the universe into two
realms. Simons commitment to a hard interpretation of social science, his philosophical and
methodological program, were unappealing. However, younger students, more familiar with and
affected by behavioralism, probably find the formulations more meaningful and appealing, and it
is possible that the work thus may have a delayed, direct impact on the discipline, in addition to
the indirect influence that it has already exercised.
The most significant development in Public Administration, currently engaging the attention and
energies of a large number of students both young and mature, is the focusing of attention on
comparative public administration and the related problems of development administration.
This attention grows out of personal experience, is related importantly to world-wide
developments that are likely to continue, and is addressed to a wide spectrum of interests from
concrete policy questions to the abstractions of the pure social sciences.[SeeTechnical
Assistance; see alsoForeign Aid.]
For the most part, it is the younger students in Public Administration who are active in the
comparative movement, and certainly it is they who are chiefly interested in the theoreticalscientific questions. For the most part and in a general sense these younger students are
behaviorally oriented; they are knowledgeable about and have a concern with the central
problems of the social sciences. But the paradox noted above is further exemplified: They are

not especially attracted by the formulations and interests of Simon, but find their inspiration,
models, and techniques in other parts of the contemporary social sciences, most notably in the
companion movement in political sciencecomparative politicsand in sociology.
From the point of view of the scientific study of public administration, the course of future
developments would seem to rest in large measure on the respective futures of the comparative
public administration movement and the administrative science point of view. By the latter is
meant the outlook and research interests (including but not limited to those of Simon) that are
identified in a general way with business administration: in a general way they grow out of the
old scientific-management movement as modified by the Hawthorne studies; are strongly
oriented historically toward efficiency and currently toward the related, but broader, rationality
(or the even broader decision-making schema); make considerable use of mathematics; include
but are not limited to the new technologies and techniques discussed above; and aspire to a
science of administration in every essential way as scientific as current physical science.
Administrative science as an approach or movement is closely joined with, but still
distinguishable from, the theory-of-organizations movement. Both movementsparticularly the
theory of organizationsare sometimes concerned with comparativeness in some aspect, but
their concern is largely with intracultural, not intercultural comparison.
In the broadest sense, the future of Public Administration is engaged with the future of political
science, on the one hand, and with administrative science, on the other. It has, from its
beginnings, represented a joining of certain interests of political science with the management
movement; and it still does, granted all the additional factors, the new developments, the
broadened spectra. What meaning and importance will be given to the Public in Public
Administration, whether it will evaporate or remain significant, perhaps even become more
significant, will depend in large part on what developments take place in political science and in
the social sciencesindeed in contemporary thoughtas a whole.
Dwight Waldo
[Directly related are the entriesAdministration; Civil Service; Decision Making; International
Organization,article onAdministration; Power; Public Policy. Other relevant material may be
found inBureaucracy;Government; Law; Organizations; Political Science.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Appleby, Paul H. 1952 Morality and Administration in Democratic Government. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State Univ. Press.
Dahl, R. A. 1947 The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems. Public Administration
Review 7:1-11. A brief, incisive critique of orthodoxy.
Davy, Thomas J. 1962 Public Administration as a Field of Study in the United
States. International Review of Administrative Sciences 28:63-78. -> An excellent review of
trends, in which the major contemporary orientations are treated under four headings:
managerial, political, psychological, and sociological.
De Grazia, Alfred 1960 The Science and Values of Administration. Administrative Science
Quarterly 5:363-397, 557-582. - Observations and conclusions by a leading behavioralist,
presenting an action schema for the understanding of administration.

Gaus, John M.; White, Leonard D.; and Dimock, M. E. 1936 The Frontiers of Public
Administration. Univ. of Chicago Press. -An outstanding work of the period, foreshadowing later
developments.
Goodnow, Frank J. 1900 Politics and Administration: A Study in Government. New York:
Macmillan. - A classic work in American political science and Public Administration.
Gulick, Luther H.; and Urwick, Lyndall (editors) (1937) 1954 Papers on the Science of
Administration. New York: Institute of Public Administration. -Regarded as the high-water mark
of orthodoxy; much of it still interesting and relevant to present concerns.
Heady, Ferrel 1966 Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall. -> Discusses the significance of comparative studies for Public Administration and
relates public administration to political systems.
Landau, Martin 1962 The Concept of Decision-making in the Fieldof Public Administration.
Pages 128 in Sidney Malick and Edward H. Van Ness (editors), Concepts and Issues in
Administrative Behavior.Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. -> An incisive essay, critical of
present intellectual orientations and urging a sharper scientific approach centered on decision
making.
Long, Norton E. 1962 The Polity. Chicago: Rand Mc-Nally.
Molitor, Andre 1959 The University Teaching of Social Sciences: Public Administration. Paris:
UNESCO. -> A valuable world-wide review, discussing among other matters the issue of
administrative scienceversus administrative sciences.
Molitor, Andre 1961 Public Administration Towards the Future. International Review of
Administrative Sciences 27:375-384. - Observations and estimates on present and future
developments, distinguishing between developed and developing countries.
Mosher, Frederick C. 1956 Research in Public Administration: Some Notes and
Suggestions. Public Administration Review 16:169-178. -Contains valuable reflections on the
status and problems of Public Administration.
Pittsburgh, University Of, Administrative Science Center 1959 Comparative Studies in
Administration. Univ. of Pittsburgh Press. See especially the Foreword and the Introduction for
a statement of the administrative science point of view.
Redford, Emmette S. 1958 Ideal and Practice in Public Administration. University: Univ. of
Alabama Press.
Robson, William A. 1961 The Present State of Teaching and Research in Public
Administration. Public Administration (London) 39:217-222. -A British view of current trends,
rather negative regarding American theories and hopes. The journal is the main source of
information on the British approach to the study of public administration.
Roethlisberger, Fritz J.; and Dickson, William J. 1939 Management and the Worker: An Account
of a Research Program Conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works,
Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. - A paperback edition was published in 1964
by Wiley.
Sayre, Wallace S. 1958 Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging. Public
Administration Review 18:102-105.
Simon, Herbert A. (1947) 1961 Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes
in Administrative Organization. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan. -> A seminal work, offering both a
critique of accepted doctrine and a program for reconstruction.

Waldo, Dwight 1948 The Administrative State: A Study of the Political Theory of American
Public Administration. New York: Ronald Press. -A thorough historical review of the rise of
Public Administration, containing also a critique of doctrines.
Waldo, Dwight 1955 The Study of Public Administration. New York: Random House; Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubled ay.
Waldo, Dwight 1965 The Administrative State Revisited. Public Administration Review 25, no.
1:5-30. - Discusses doctrinal developments and problems in Public Administration since the
publication of The Administrative State in 1948.
White, Leonard D. (1926) 1955 Introduction to the Study of Public Administration. 4th ed. New
York: Macmillan.
Willoughby, William F. 1927 Principles of Public Administration: With Special Reference to the
National and State Governments of the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Wilson, Woodrow (1887) 1953 The Study of Administration. Pages 6575 in Dwight Waldo
(editor), Ideas and Issues in Public Administration. New York: McGraw-Hill. -An interesting and
significant historical document in Public Administration.