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The Science of Public Administration: Three ProblemsAuthor(s): Robert A. DahlSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter, 1947), pp. 1-11Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/972349 .Accessed: 04/10/2013 18:59

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h e c i e n c e o u b l i c Administration

T h r e e r o b l e ms

By ROBERT A. DAHLDepartment of Political ScienceYale University

T XHE ffort to create a science of publicadministration has often led to the for-mulation of universal laws or, more com-

monly, to the assertion that such universallaws could be formulated for public adminis-tration.l In an attempt to make the science ofpublic administration analogous to the natu-ral sciences, the laws or putative laws arestripped of normative values, of the distor-tions caused by the incorrigible individualpsyche, and of the presumably irrelevant ef-fects of the cultural environment. It is oftenimplied that principles of public administra-

tion have a universal validity independentnot only of moral and political ends, but ofthe frequently nonconformist personality ofthe individual, and the social and cultural set-ting as well.

Perhaps the best known expression of thiskind is that of W. F. Willoughby. Although herefused to commit himself as to the proprietyof designating administration as a science, Wil-loughby nevertheless asserted that in admin-istration, there are certain fundamental prin-ciples of general application analogous to thosecharacterizing any science .. . 2 A more re-cent statement, and evidently an equally influ-

I See, for example, F. Merson, Public Administra-tion: A Science, i Public Administration 220 (1923);B. W. Walker Watson, The Elements of Public Ad-ministration, A Dogmatic Introduction, lo Public Ad-ministration 397 (1932); L. Gulick, Science, Values andPublic Administration, Papers on the Science of Ad-ministration, ed. by Gulick & Urwick, (Institute of Pub-lic Administration, 1937); Cyril Renwick, Public Ad-ministration: Towards a Science, The AustralianQuarterly (March 1944), p. 73.

2Principlesof Public Administration

(TheBrook-

ings Institution, 1927), Preface, p. ix.

ential one, is L. Urwick's contention thatthere are certain principles which govern the

association of human beings for any purpose,just as there are certain engineering principleswhich govern the building of a bridge. 3

Others argue merely that it is possible to dis-cover general principles of wide, although notnecessarily of universal validity.4 Surely thismore modest assessment of the role of publicadministration as a study is not, as an abstractstatement, open to controversy. Yet even thediscovery of these more limited principles ishandicapped by the three basic problems of

values, the individual personality, and the so-cial framework.

Public Administration and Normative Values

THE first difficulty of constructing a scienceof public administration stems from the

frequent impossibility of excluding normativeconsiderations from the problems of publicadministration. Science as such is not con-cerned with the discovery or elucidation ofnormative values; indeed, the doctrine is gen-

erally,if not

quite universally, accepted thatscience cannot demonstrate moral values, thatscience cannot construct a bridge across thegreat gap from is to ought. So long as thenaturalistic fallacy is a stumbling block to

philosophers, it must likewise impede the

progress of social scientists.Much could be gained if the clandestine

See fn. 12, infra, for the full quotation and citation.4This I take to be Professor Leonard D. White's posi-

tion. See his The Meaning of Principles in Public Ad-ministration, in The Frontiers

ofPublic Administra-

tion (University of Chicago Press, 1936), pp. 13-25.

1

I

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

smuggling of moral values into the social sci-ences could be converted into open andhonest commerce. Writers on public adminis-tration often assume that they are snugly insu-lated from the storms of

clashingvalues; usu-

ally, however, they are most concerned withends at the very moment that they profess tobe least concerned with them. The doctrine ofefficiency is a case in point; it runs like a half-visible thread through the fabric of public ad-ministration literature as a dominant goal ofadministration. Harvey Walker has stated that

the objective of administration is to securethe maximum beneficial result contemplatedby the law with the minimum expenditure ofthe social resources. 5 The term social re-

sources is sufficiently ambiguous to allow foralmost any interpretation, but it suggests thatthe general concept involved is one of maxi-mizing output and minimizing cost. Like-wise, many of the promised benefits of admin-istrative reorganization in state governmentsare presumed to follow from proposed im-provements in efficiency in operation. And

yet, as Charles Hyneman has so trenchantlyobserved, there are in a democratic societyother criteria than simple efficiency in opera-tion.6

Luther Gulick concedes that the goal of effi-

ciency is limited by other values.

In the science of administration, whether public or

private, the basic good is efficiency. The fundamental

objective of the science of administration is the ac-

complishment of the work in hand with the least ex-

penditure of man-power and materials. Efficiency isthus axiom number one in the value scale of admin-istration. This brings administration into apparent con-flict with certain elements of the value scale of politics,whether we use that term in its scientific or in its pop-ular sense. But both public administration and politicsare branches of political science, so that we are in theend compelled to mitigate the pure concept of efficiencyin the light of the value scale of politics and the socialorder.

He concludes, nevertheless, that these inter-ferences with efficiency [do not] in any wayeliminate efficiency as the fundamental value

upon which the science of administration may

6Public Administration (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937),p. 8.

6 Administrative Reorganization, i The Journal ofPolitics

62-65 (1939).7 Op. cit., pp. 192-93.

be erected. They serve to condition and to

complicate, but not to change the single ulti-mate test of value in administration. 8

It is far from clear what Gulick means to

implyin

sayingthat interferences with effi-

ciency caused by ultimate political valuesmay condition and complicate but do not

change the single ultimate test of effi-

ciency as the goal of administration. Is effi-

ciency the supreme goal not only of privateadministration, but also of public administra-tion, as Gulick contends? If so, how can one

say, as Gulick does, that there are...

highly inefficient arrangements like citizenboards and small local governments which maybe necessary in a democracy as educational de-

vices ? Why speak of efficiency as the singleultimate test of value in administration if itis not ultimate at all-if, that is to say, in aconflict between efficiency and the demo-cratic dogma (to use Gulick's expression) thelatter must prevail? Must this dogma prevailonly because it has greater political and socialforce behind it than the dogma of efficiency;or ought it to prevail because it has, in somesense, greater value? How can administratorsand students of public administration dis-criminate between those parts of the demo-cratic dogma that are so strategic they oughtto prevail in any conflict with efficiency andthose that are essentially subordinate, irrele-vant, or even false intrusions into the demo-cratic hypothesis? What is efficiency? Belsenand Dachau were efficient by one scale ofvalues. And in any case, why is efficiency theultimate test? According to what and whosescale of values is efficiency placed on the high-est pedestal? Is not the worship of efficiency it-self a particular expression of a special value

judgment? Does it not stem from a mode ofthinking and a special moral hypothesis rest-

ing on a sharp distinction between means andends?

The basic problems of public administra-tion as a discipline and as a potential scienceare much wider than the problems of mereadministration. The necessarily wider preoc-cupation of a study of public administration,as contrasted with private administration, in-

evitably enmeshes the problems of public

8 p. cit., p. 193.

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SCIENCE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

administration in the toils of ethical considera-tions. Thus the tangled question of the rightof public employees to strike can scarcely beanswered without a tacit normative assump-tion of some kind. A

pragmaticanswer is satis-

factory only so long as no one raises the ques-tion of the rights involved. And to resolvethe question of rights merely by reciting legalnorms is to beg the whole issue; it is to confessthat an answer to this vital problem of publicpersonnel must be sought elsewhere than withstudents of public administration. Moreover,if one were content to rest one's case on legalrights, it would be impossible to reconcile in asingle science of public administration thediverse legal and institutional aspects of the

right to strike in France, Great Britain, andthe United States.

The great question of responsibility, cer-tainly a central one to the study of public ad-ministration once it is raised above the level ofacademic disquisitions on office management,hinges ultimately on some definition of ends,purposes, and values in society. The sharpconflict of views on responsibility expressedseveral years ago by Carl Friedrich and Her-man Finer resulted from basically different

interpretationsof the nature and

purposesof

democratic government. Friedrich tacitly as-sumed certain values in his discussion of theimportance of the bureaucrat's inner checkas an instrument of control. Finer broughtFriedrich's unexpressed values into sharp focusand in a warm criticism challenged their com-patibility with the democratic faith.9

It is difficult, moreover, to escape the con-clusion that much of the debate over delegatedlegislation and administrative adjudication,both in this country and in England, actuallyarises from a concealed conflict in objectives.Those to whom economic regulation and con-trol are anathema have with considerable con-

9C. J. Friedrich, Public Policy and the Nature ofAdministrative Responsibility, in Public Policy (Har-vard University Press, 1940); Herman Finer, Adminis-trative Responsibility in Democratic Government, 1Public Administration Review 335 (1940-41). See alsoFriedrich's earlier formulation, which touched off thedispute, Responsible Government Service under theAmerican Constitution, in Problems of the AmericanPublic Service (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1935); andFiner's answer to Friedrich in

51 Political Science Quar-terly 582 (1936).

sistency opposed the growth of delegated legis-lation and the expansion of the powers ofadministrative tribunals-no doubt from a con-viction that previously existing economic

rightsand

privilegesare safer in the courts

than in administrative tribunals; whereasthose who support this expansion of adminis-trative power and techniques generally alsofavor a larger measure of economic regulationand control. Much of the debate that has beenphrased in terms of means ought more prop-erly to be evaluated as a conflict over generalsocial goals.

One might justifiably contend that it is thefunction of a science of public administration,not to determine ends, but to devise the best

means to the ends established by those agen-cies entrusted with the setting of social policy.The science of public administration, it mightbe argued, would be totally nonnormative,and its doctrines would apply with equal va-lidity to any regime, democratic or totalitar-ian, once the ends were made clear. Tell mewhat you wish to achieve, the public admin-istration scientist might say, and I will tellyou what administrative means are best de-signed for your purposes. Yet even this viewhas

difficulties,for in most

societies,and

par-ticularly in democratic ones, ends are often indispute; rarely are they clearly and unequivo-cally determined. Nor can ends and means everbe sharply distinguished, since ends determinemeans and often means ultimately determineends.10

The student of public administration can-not avoid a concern with ends. What he oughtto avoid is the failure to make explicit theends or values that form the groundwork of hisdoctrine. If purposes and normative consid-

erations were consistently made plain, a netgain to the science of public administrationwould result. But to refuse to recognize thatthe study of public administration must befounded on some clarification of ends is toperpetuate the gobbledygook of science in thearea of moral purposes.

A science of public administration mightproceed, then, along these lines:

i. Establishing a basic hypothesis. A nonnormative0 See Aldous Huxley's discussion in Ends and Means

(Harper & Bros., 1937), and Arthur Koestler, The Yogiand the Commissar (Macmillan Co., 1945).

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science of public administration might rest on a basichypothesis that removed ethical problems from the areacovered by the science. The science of public adminis-tration would begin where the basic hypothesis leavesoff. One could quarrel with the moral or metaphysical

assumptionsin the basic

hypothesis;but all normative

argument would have to be carried on at that level, andnot at the level of the science. The science, as such,would have no ethical content.

Can such a basic hypothesis be created? To thiswriter the problem appears loaded with enormous andperhaps insuperable difficulties; yet it is unlikely that ascience of public administration will ever be possibleuntil this initial step is taken.

2. Stating ends honestly. Some problems of the publicservices, like that of responsibility, evidently cannot bedivorced from certain ends implied in the societyserved by the public services. If this is true, there cannever be a universal science of public administrationso

longas societies and states

varyin their

objectives.In all cases where problems of public administrationare inherently related to specific social ends and pur-poses, the most that can be done is to force all norma-tive assumptions into the open, and not let them lie halfconcealed in the jungle of fact and inference toslaughter the unwary.

Public Administration and Human BehaviorSECOND major problem stems from the in-escapable fact that a science of public ad-

ministration must be a study of certain aspectsof human behavior. To be sure, there are partsof public administration in which man's be-havior can safely be ignored; perhaps it is pos-sible to discuss the question of governmentalaccounting and auditing without much con-sideration of the behavior patterns of govern-mental accountants and auditors. But mostproblems of public administration revolvearound human beings; and the study of publicadministration is therefore essentially a studyof human beings as they have behaved, and asthey may be expected or predicted to behave,

under certain special circumstances. Whatmarks off the field of public administrationfrom psychology or sociology or political in-stitutions is its concern with human behaviorin the area of services performed by govern-mental agencies.1l

u See Ernest Barker's excellent and useful distinctionsbetween state, government, and administration, in TheDevelopment of Public Services in Western Europe,1660-i930 (Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 3. Admin-istration is the sum of persons and bodies who are en-gaged, under the direction of government, in discharg-

ing the ordinary public services which must be rendereddaily if the system of law and duties and rights is to be

This concern with human behavior greatlylimits the immediate potentialities of a scienceof public administration. First, it diminishesthe possibility of using experimental proce-

dures;and

experiment, though perhapsnot

indispensable to the scientific method, is ofenormous aid. Second, concern with humanbehavior seriously limits the uniformity ofdata, since the datum is the discrete andhighly variable man or woman. Third, be-cause the data concerning human behaviorconstitute an incredibly vast and complexmass, the part played by the preferences of theobserver is exaggerated, and possibilities of in-

dependent verification are diminished. Fourth,concern with human action weakens the relia-

bility of all laws of public administration,since too little is known of the mainsprings ofhuman action to insure certitude, or even highprobability, in predictions about man's con-duct.

All these weaknesses have been pointed outso often in discussing the problems of the so-cial sciences that it should be unnecessary to

repeat them here. And yet many of the sup-posed laws of public administration and muchof the claim to a science of public administra-tion derive from

assumptionsabout the na-

ture of man that are scarcely tenable at thislate date.

The field of organizational theory serves asan extreme example, for it is there particu-larly that the nature of man is often lost sightof in the interminable discussions over ideal-ized and abstract organizational forms. In this

development, writers on public administra-tion have been heavily influenced by the ra-tional character that capitalism has imposedon the organization of production, and have

ignored the irrational qualities of man him-self.

Capitalism, especially in its industrial form,was essentially an attempt to organize produc-tion along rational lines. In the organizationof the productive process, the capitalistic en-trepreneur sought to destroy the old restrictive

duly 'served.' Every right and duty implies a corre-

sponding 'service'; and the more the State multipliesrights and duties, the more it multiplies the necessaryservices of its ministering officials. See also Leon

Duguit, Law in the Modern State (B. W. Huebsch,1919), Ch. II.

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practices and standards of feudalism and mer-cantilism; to rid the productive process of theinherited cluster of methods and technics thatcharacterized the guilds and medieval crafts-

men;in

short,to

organize production accord-ing to rational rather than traditional con-cepts. Combined with a new acquisitive ideal,this rational approach to production trans-formed not only the whole economic processbut society itself. The rapid growth of mech-anization, routine, and specialization of laborfurther increased the technically rationalquality of capitalist production. It was per-haps inevitable that concepts should arisewhich subordinated individual vagaries anddifferences to the ordered requirements of the

productive process: for it was this very subor-dination that the replacement of feudal andmercantilist institutions by capitalism had ac-complished. The organization (though not thecontrol) of production became the concern ofthe engineer; and because the restrictive prac-tices authorized by tradition, the protectivestandards of the guilds, the benevolent regula-tions of a mercantilist monarchy, and even thenon-acquisitive ideals of the individual hadall been swept away, it was actually feasible to

organize productionwithout much

regardfor

the varying individual personalities of thosein the productive process. The productiveprocess, which to the medieval craftsman wasboth a means and an end in itself, becamewholly a means.

Ultimately, of course, men like Taylor pro-vided an imposing theoretical basis for regard-ing function, based on a logical distributionand specialization of labor, as the true basis oforganization. Men like Urwick modified andcarried forward Taylor's work, and in the

process have tremendously influenced writerson public administration. Urwick, so it musthave appeared, provided a basis for a genuinescience of administration. There are prin-ciples, he wrote, which should govern ar-rangements for human association of any kind.These principles can be studied as a technicalquestion, irrespective of the purpose of the en-terprise, the personnel composing it, or anyconstitutional, political, or social theory un-derlying its creation. '2 And again, Whatever

1L. Urwick, Organization as a Technical Problem,Papers on the Science of Administration, p. 49. (Italics

the motive underlying persistence in badstructure it is always more hurtful to thegreatest number than good structure. '3

Sweeping generalizations such as these gave

promise of a set of universal principles : i.e.,a science. American students of public admin-istration could not fail to be impressed.

Aside from the fact that Urwick ignored thewhole question of ends, it is clear that he alsopresupposed (though he nowhere stated whatsort of human personality he did presuppose)an essentially rational, amenable individual;he presupposed, that is to say, individuals whowould accept logical organization and wouldnot (for irrelevant and irrational reasons) re-bel against it or silently supersede it with aninformal organization better suited to theirpersonality needs. Urwick must have supposedthis. For if there is a large measure of irration-ality in human behavior, then an organiza-tional structure formed on logical lines mayin practice frustrate, anger, and embitter itspersonnel. By contrast, an organization notbased on the logic of organizational principlesmay better utilize the peculiar and varyingpersonalities of its members. Is there any evi-dence to suggest that in such a case the logi-cal

organization will achieve its purposes insome sense better or more efficiently thanthe organization that adapts personality needsto the purposes of the organization?14 On what

added.) See also his Executive Decentralisation withFunctional Co-ordination, 13 Public Administration344 (1935), in which he sets forth some axioms oforganisation, among others that there are certainprinciples which govern the association of human be-ings for any purpose, just as there are certain engineer-ing principles which govern the building of a bridge.Such principles should take priority of all traditional,

personal or political considerations. If they are not ob-served, co-operation between those concerned will beless effective than it should be in realising the purposefor which they have decided to co-operate. There willbe waste of effort. (Italics added.) See also his criticismsof the practical man fallacy, p. 346.13Ibid., p. 85.

14 See John M. Gaus's excellent definitions: Organ-ization is the arrangement of personnel for facilitatingthe accomplishment of some agreed purpose throughthe allocation of functions and responsibilities. It is therelating of efforts and capacities of individuals andgroups engaged upon a common task in such a way asto secure the desired objective with the least friction

and the most satisfaction to those for whom the task isdone and those engaged in the enterprise.... Since

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kind of evidence are we compelled to assumethat the rationality of organizational structurewill prevail over the irrationality of man?

Patently the contention that one system of

organizationis more rational than

another,and therefore better, is valid only (a) if indi-viduals are dominated by reason or (b) if theyare so thoroughly dominated by the technicalprocess (as on the assembly line, perhaps) thattheir individual preferences may safely be ig-nored. However much the latter assumptionmight apply to industry (a matter of consid-erable doubt), clearly it has little applicationto public administration, where technicalprocesses are, on the whole, of quite subordi-nate importance. As for the first assumption, it

has been discredited by all the findings ofmodern psychology. The science of organiza-tion had learned too much from industry andnot enough from Freud.

The more that writers on public adminis-tration have moved from the classroom to theadministrator's office, the more Urwick's uni-versal principles have receded. As early as1930, in a pioneering work, Harold Lasswelldescribed the irrational and unconscious ele-ments in the successful and unsuccessful ad-

ministrator.1' Meanwhile, experimentsin the

Hawthorne plant of Western Electric Com-pany were indicating beyond doubt that indi-vidual personalities and social relationshipshad great effects even on routinized work inindustry. Increased output was the result of

the organization of human relations, ratherthan the organization of technics. '6 Urwickhad said (with little or no supporting evi-

organization consists of people brought into a certainrelationship because of a humanly evolved purpose, it

is clear that it should beflexible rather than

rigid.There will be constant readjustments necessary becauseof personalities and other natural forces and becauseof the unpredicted and unpredictable situations con-fronted in its operations. A Theory of Organizationin Public Administration, n The Frontiers of PublicAdministration, pp. 66-67.

15 Psychopathology and Politics (University of Chi-cago Press, g93o),Ch. 8 Political Administrators.IL. J. Henderson, T. N. Whitehead, and Elton Mayo,

The Effects of Social Environment, n Papers on theScience of Administration, op. cit., p. 149. It is worthnoting that this essay properly interpreted contradictsthe implicit assumptions of virtually every other essay

in that volume; and it is, incidentally, the only whollyempirical study in the entire volume.

dence): The idea that organizations shouldbe built up round and adjusted to individualidiosyncracies, rather than that individualsshould be adapted to the requirements ofsound

principlesof

organization,is . . .fool-

ish ... . The Hawthorne experiment dem-onstrated, on the contrary, that . . . nostudy of human situations which fails to takeaccount of the non-logical social routines canhope for practical success. '7

In 1939, Leonard White seriously qualifiedthe principle of subordinating individuals tostructure by adding the saving phrase of theneo-classical economists: in the long run.

To what extent, he said, it is desirable to

rearrange structure in preference to replacingpersonnel is a practical matter to be deter-mined in the light of special cases. In the longrun, the demands of sound organization re-quire the fitting of personnel to it, rather thansacrificing normal organizational relationshipsto the needs or whims of individuals. 'l Inthe same year, Macmahon and Millett went farbeyond the customary deductive principles ofpublic administration theory by making anactual biographical study of a number of fed-eral administrators.19 In the most recent texton

publicadministration, the

importanceof

personality is frankly admitted. . . . admin-istrative research, say the authors, does not

17 Urwick, op. cit., p. 85, and Henderson, et al., p. 155.Urwick has set up a false dilemma that makes hischoice more persuasive. Actually, the choice is not be-tween (a) wholly subordinating organizational struc-ture to individual personalities, which obviously mightlead to chaos or (b) forcing all personalities nto an ab-stractly correct organizational structure which might(and often does) lead to waste and friction. There is athird choice, (c) employing organizational structureand personalities to the achievement of a purpose. By

excluding purpose, Urwick has,in

effect,set

up organ-ization as an end in itself. An army may be organizedmore efficiently (according to abstract organizationalprinciples) than the political structure of a democraticstate, but no one except an authoritarian is likely tocontend that it is a superior organization-except forthe purposes it is designed to achieve. Yet once one ad-mits the element of purpose, easy generalizations aboutorganizational principles become difficult if not impos-sible; and the admission presupposes, particularly inthe case of public organizations, a clear statement ofends and purposes.

18Leonard White, Introduction to the Study of PublicAdministration (Macmillan Co., 1939), p. 38.

19A. W. Madmahon andJ.

D. Millett, Federal Admin-istrators (Columbia University Press, 1939).

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seek its goal in the formulation of mechanicalrules or equations, into which human behav-ior must be molded. Rather, it looks towardthe systematic ordering of functions and hu-

man relationships so that organizational deci-sions can and will be based upon the certaintythat each step taken will actually serve the pur-pose of the organization as a whole. 20 And onewhole chapter of this text is devoted to infor-mal organizations-the shadow relationshipsthat frequently dominate the formal structureof the organization.

Thus by a lengthy and circumspect route,man has been led through the back door andreadmitted to respectability. It is convenientto exile man from the science of public ad-ministration; it is simpler to forget man andwrite with scientific precision than to re-member him and be cursed with his madden-ing unpredictability. Yet his exclusion iscertain to make the study of public administra-tion sterile, unrewarding, and essentially un-real.

If there is ever to be a science of public ad-ministration it must derive from an under-standing of man's behavior in the area markedoff by the boundaries of public administra-tion. This

area,to be

sure,can

never beclearly separated from man's behavior in otherfields; all the social sciences are interdepend-ent and all are limited by the basic lack of un-derstanding of man's motivations and re-sponses. Yet the ground of peculiar concernfor a prospective science of public administra-tion is that broad region of services adminis-tered by the government; until the manifoldmotivations and actions in this broad regionhave been explored and rendered predictable,there can be no science of public administra-

tion.It is easier to define this area in space than

in depth. One can arbitrarily restrict the pros-pective science of public administration to acertain region of human activity; but one can-not say with certainty how deeply one mustmine this region in order to uncover its se-crets. Does concern with human behaviormean that the researcher in public administra-tion must be a psychiatrist and a sociologist?

0Fritz Morstein Marx, ed., Elements of Public Ad-

ministration (Prentice-Hall, 1946), p. 49. (Italicsadded.).

Or does it mean rather that in plumbing hu-man behavior the researcher must be capableof using the investigations of the psychiatristand sociologist? The need for specialization-

a need, incidentally, which science itself seemsto impose on human inquiry-suggests thatthe latter alternative must be the pragmaticanswer.

Development of a science of public adminis-tration implies the development of a scienceof man in the area of services administered bythe public. No such development can bebrought about merely by the constantly reiter-ated assertion that public administration isalready a science. We cannot achieve a scienceby creating in a mechanized administrativeman a modern descendant of the eighteenthcentury's rational man, whose only existenceis in books on public administration andwhose only activity is strict obedience to uni-versal laws of the science of administration.

Public Administration and the Social Setting

IF WE know precious little about administra-tive man as an individual, perhaps we

know even less about him as a social animal.Yet we cannot afford to

ignorethe relation-

ship between public adminstration and its so-cial setting.

No anthropologist would suggest that a so-cial principle drawn from one distinct cultureis likely to be transmitted unchanged to an-other culture; Ruth Benedict's descriptions ofthe Pueblo Indians of Zufii, the Melanesiansof Dobu, and the Kwakiutl Indians of Van-couver Island leave little doubt that culturescan be integrated on such distinctly differentlines as to be almost noncomparable.21 If the

nation-states of western civilization by nomeans possess such wholly contrasting culturesas the natives of Zufii, Dobu, and VancouverIsland, nevertheless few political scientistswould contend that a principle of political or-ganization drawn from one nation could be

adopted with equal success by another; onewould scarcely argue that federalism haseverywhere the same utility or that the uni-tary state would be equally viable in Britainand the United States or that the American

1Patterns of Culture (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934).

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presidential system would operate unchangedin France or Germany.

There should be no reason for supposing,then, that a principle of public administrationhas

equal validityin

everynation-state, or

that successful public administration practicesin one country will necessarily prove success-ful in a different social, economic, and politi-cal environment. A particular nation-state em-bodies the results of many historical episodes,traumas, failures, and successes which have inturn created peculiar habits, mores, institu-tionalized patterns of behaviour, Weltan-schauungen, and even national psycholo-gies. 22 One cannot assume that public admin-istration can escape the effects of this condi-

tioning; or that it is somehow independent ofand isolated from the culture or social settingin which it develops. At the same time, asvalue can be gained by a comparative study ofgovernment based upon a due respect for dif-ferences in the political, social, and economicenvironment of nation-states, so too the com-parative study of public administration oughtto be rewarding. Yet the comparative aspectsof public administration have largely been ig-nored; and as long as the study of public ad-ministration is not

comparative,claims for a

science of public administration soundrather hollow. Conceivably there might be ascience of American public administrationand a science of British public administrationand a science of French public administration;but can there be a science of public adminis-tration in the sense of a body of generalizedprinciples independent of their peculiar na-tional setting?

Today we stand in almost total ignorance ofthe relationship between principles of publicadministration and their general setting. Canit be safely affirmed, on the basis of existingknowledge of comparative public administra-tion, that there are any principles independ-ent of their special environment?

The discussion over an administrative classin the civil service furnishes a useful exampleof the difficulties of any approach that does

2 See the fragmentary but revealing discussion on na-tional differences in Human Nature and EnduringPeace (Third Yearbook of the Society for the Psycholog-ical

Studyof Social

Issues)Gardner

Murphy,ed.

(Houghton Mifflin, 1945).

not rest on a thorough examination of de-velopmental and environmental differences.The manifest benefits and merits of the Brit-ish administrative class have sometimes ledAmerican students of

publicadministration to

suggest the development of an administrativeclass in the American civil service; but propo-sals of this kind have rarely depended on athorough comparison of the historical factorsthat made the administrative class a successfulachievement in Britain, and may or may notbe duplicated here. Thus Wilmerding has vir-tually proposed the transfer to the UnitedStates of all the detailed elements in the Brit-ish civil service; although he does not explic-itly base his proposals on British experienceexcept in a few instances, they follow Britishpractices with almost complete fidelity.23White has likewise argued for the creation ofan administrative corps along the lines ofthe British administrative class. He has sug-gested that reform of the civil service in Brit-ain and creation of an administrative classwere accomplished in little more than twogenerations; profiting by British experience,he argues, we ought to be able to accomplishsuch a reform in even shorter time.24 Since the

questionof an administrative class is

perhapsthe outstanding case where American writerson public administration have employed thecomparative method to the extent of borrow-ing from foreign experience, it is worthy of abrief analysis to uncover some of the problemsof a comparative science of public adminis-tration. For it throws into stark perspectivethe fundamental difficulties of drawing uni-versal conclusions from the institutions of any

23 Lucius Wilmerding, Jr., Government by Merit (Mc-Graw-Hill Book Co.,

1935).24 The British civil service, which the whole worldnow admires, went through nearly twenty years oftransition before its foundations even were properlylaid. It went through another twenty years of gradualadjustment before the modern service as we know it to-day was fully in operation. ... In the light of Britishexperience, and by taking advantage of modern knowl-edge about large-scale organization, we can easily savethe twenty years in which the British were experiment-ing to find the proper basis for their splendid service.We shall, however, need ten years of steady growth,consciously guided and planned, to put a new admin-istrative corps into operation, and probably anotherten

yearsbefore it is

completelyinstalled. Government

Career Service (University of Chicago Press, 1935), p. 8.

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one country, and at the same time sharply out-lines the correlative problem of comparing theinstitutions of several nations in order to de-rive general principles out of the greater rangeof

experiences.The central difficulty of universal generaliza-tions may be indicated in this way: An admin-istrative class based on merit rests upon fourconditions. All of these prerequisites werepresent coincidentally in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century; and none of them is pres-ent in quite the same way here.

First of all, an administrative class of theBritish type rests upon a general political ac-ceptance of the hierarchical idea. This accept-ance in Britain was not the product of fortyyears; it was the outcome of four centuries. Itis not too much to say that it was the four cen-turies during which the public service was theparticular prerogative of the upper classes thatmade a hierarchical civil service structure fea-sible in Britain. The Tudor monarchy hadrested upon a combination of crown poweradministered under the King by representa-tives of the upper middle and professionalclasses in the towns and newly created mem-bers of the gentry in the country; Tudor au-

thoritywas in effect derived from an alliance

of King and upper middle classes against thearistocracy. From the Revolution of 1688 un-til 1832, public service was the special domainof an increasingly functionless aristocracywhose monopoly of public office was tacitlysupported by the upper middle classes of thecities. Whatever the Reform Bill of 1832 ac-complished in terms of placing the urban oli-garchy overtly in office, no one in Britain hadmany illusions that a change in the hierarchi-cal structure of politics and public service was

entailed. The upper middle classes were nomore keen than were the landed gentry of theeighteenth century to throw open the doors ofpublic service and politics to the rabble.Out of this long historic background the ideaof an administrative class emerged. The un-spoken political premises of the dominantgroups in the nation reflected an acceptance ofhierarchy in the social, economic, and politi-cal structure of Britain; the contention, com-mon in the American scene, that an adminis-trative class is undemocratic played no realpart in mid-nineteenth century Britain. One

may well question whether it would be so easyto create an administrative class in any society,like the American, where egalitarianism is sofirmly rooted as a political dogma; howeverdesirable such a class

may be,and however

little it may actually violate the democraticideal, one is entitled to doubt that the overtcreation of an administrative elite is a practi-cal possibility in American politics.25 In anycase, the idea must be fitted into the peculiarmores and the special ethos of the UnitedStates, and cannot be lightly transferred fromBritain to this country.26

Second, the administrative class idea restsupon a scholastic system that creates the edu-cated nonspecialist, and a recruiting systemthat selects him. Too often, the proposal hasbeen made to recruit persons of general ratherthan specialized training for an administra-tive corps without solving the prior problemof producing such generalists in the univer-sities. The British public school system andthe universities have long been dominated bythe ideal of the educated gentleman; and forcenturies they have succeeded admirably inproducing the generalist mind, even whenthat mind is nourished on apparently special-ized

subjects.It is a

peculiarlyBritish

paradoxthat persons of high general ability are re-cruited into the civil service by means of ex-aminations that heavily weight such speciali-ties as classical languages and mathematics. In

5Significantly, the most recent study of reform of the

American civil service states, We do not recommendthe formation of a specially organized administrativecorps for which a special type of selection and trainingis proposed. Report of President's Committee on CivilService Improvement (Government Printing Office,1941), p. 57. Instead, the Committee recommends thatall

positionswhose duties are administrative in

nature,in grades CAF-i1, P-4, and higher . . . be identified asan occupational group within the existing classificationstructure. This is a noteworthy step in an attempt toachieve the advantages of an administrative class withinthe framework of American mores and institutions. Itis therefore a great advance over the earlier proposal inthe Report of the Commission of Inquiry on PublicService Personnel, Better Government Personnel (Mc-Graw-Hill Book Co., 1935), which recommended theoutright creation of a distinct administrative class (p.30).

:8 This was the essential point, stated in more specificterms, of Lewis Meriam's criticism of the administrative

corpsidea. See his excellent Public

Service and SpecialTraining (University of Chicago Press, 1936).

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so far as this country has an educational ideal(a question on which this writer speaks withconsiderable trepidation), it appears to be, orto have been, the ideal of the specialist. Muchmore is involved, too, than a

questionof edu-

cation; at base the problem is one of socialmores that give the specialist a prestige and asocial utility that no person of general educa-tion is likely to attain. That the recruitingprocess has been forced to adapt itself to theeducational specialization characteristic ofAmerican universities (indeed, one might sayof American life) is scarcely astonishing. Itwould be more astonishing if the Civil ServiceCommission were able to recruit nonexistent

generalists to perform unrecognized func-

tions within a corps of practitioners where al-most everyone regards himself as a subject-matter specialist.27

In the third place, the administrative classidea rests upon the acceptance of merit as thecriterion of selection. In Britain this accept-ance was no mere accident of an inexplicabletwenty-year change in public standards of mo-rality. If patronge disappeared in Britain, itwas partly because patronge had ceased tohave any real function, whereas efficiency had

acquireda new social and

political utility.Prior to the nineteenth century, patronagehad two vital functions: it provided a placefor the sons of the aristocracy who were ex-cluded from inheritance by primogeniture;and it placed in the hands of the King and hisministers a device for guaranteeing, under thelimited franchise of the eighteenth century, afavorable House of Commons. Both these fac-tors disappeared during the first decades ofthe nineteenth century. With the expansionof the electorate after 1832, the monarchy wasforced to withdraw from politics, or risk thechance of a serious loss of prestige in an elec-

2 It is noteworthy that the latest U. S. Civil ServiceCommission announcement for the junior professionalassistant examination (November, 1946) follows thesubject-matter specialist concept; junior professionalassistants will be recruited in terms of specialities un-thinkable in the British administrative class examina-tions for university graduates. See, by comparison,Specimen Question Papers for the Reconstruction Com-

petition for Recruitment to (i) The AdministrativeClass of the Home Civil Service, (2) The Senior Branch

ofthe

ForeignService,

(CS.C. 18) (H.M. StationeryOf-

fice 1946).

torate that was now too large to control.28Meanwhile, the development of dissolution asa power available to the Prime Minister uponhis request from the Crown gave the executivea means of

party disciplineand control far

more effective than the promise of office. Fi-nally, the accession to power of the manufac-turing and trading classes by the reforms of1832 placed a new emphasis on efficiency, bothas a means of cutting down public expensesand insuring economies in government, and(especially after 1848) of warding off the revo-lutionary threat that might develop out ofgovernmental incompetence.29 All these condi-tions made possible, and perhaps inevitable,the substitution of merit for patronage. To

talk as if reform arose out of some change inpublic morality, obscure and mysterious inorigin but laudable in character, is to miss thewhole significance of British reforms. In thepresent-day politics of the United States, it isnot so clear that the utility of patronage hasdisappeared; under the American system ofseparation of powers, patronge remains almostas useful as it was under the British constitu-tion of the eighteenth century. And in anycase, it is self-evident that the problem herelies in a

distinctlydifferent

politicaland social

setting from that of Victorian England.Last, a successful administrative class rests

upon the condition that such a group pos-sesses the prestige of an elite; for unless theclass has an elite status, it is in a poor positionto compete against any other elite for thebrains and abilities of the nation. It is onething to offer a career in a merit service; it isquite another to insure that such a service hasenough prestige to acquire the best of the na-tion's competence. The argument that the

mere creation of an administrative class wouldbe sufficient to endow that group with pres-tige in the United States may or may not bevalid; it is certainly invalid to argue that thiswas the causal sequence in Britain. In assess-ing the ability of the British civil service torecruit the best products of the universities,one can scarcely overlook the profound signifi-

2 See D. Lindsay Keir, The Constitutional History ofModern Britain 1485-1937 (A. & C. Black, 1943), p. 405.

See J. Donald Kingsley, Representative Bureaucracy,An Interpretation of the British Civil Service

(AntiochPress, 1944), Ch. III.

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cance of the fact that for centuries the publicservice was one of the few careers into which amember of the aristocracy could enter withoutloss of prestige. Like the church, the army,and

politics, and unlike trade and commerce,public service was a profession in which thearistocracy could engage without violating themores of the class. Even during the eighteenthcentury and the first half of the nineteenth,when the burden of incompetence and patron-age in the public service was at its heaviest,government was a field into which the socialelite could enter without a diminution ofprestige, and often enough without even a lossin leisure. Throughout the age of patronage,the British public service succeeded in obtain-

ing some of the best of Britain's abilities.30The effect of the reforms after 1853 was tomake more attractive a profession that alreadyoutranked business and industry in prestigevalues. In Britain, as in Germany, the psychicincome accruing from a career in the civilservice more than compensates for the smallereconomic income. Contrast this with theUnited States, where since the Civil War pres-tige has largely accrued to acquisitive suc-cesses. It is small wonder that in the UnitedStates the

problemof

government competitionwith business for the abilities of the commu-nity should be much more acute.

If these remarks about the British adminis-trative class are well founded, then these con-clusions suggest themselves:

i. Generalizations derived from the operation ofpublic administration in the environment of one na-tion-state cannot be universalized and applied to publicadministration in a different environment. A principlemay be applicable in a different framework. But its ap-plicability can be determined only after a study of thatparticular framework.

Hiram Stout, Public Service in Great Britain (Uni-versity of North Carolina Press, 1938), pp. 25-26, 82-83.

2. There can be no truly universal generalizationsabout public administration without a profound studyof varying national and social characteristics impingingon public administration, to determine what aspects ofpublic administration, if any, are truly independent of

the national and social setting. Are there discoverableprinciples of universal validity, or are all principlesvalid only in terms of a special environment?

3. It follows that the study of public administrationinevitably must become a much more broadly baseddiscipline, resting not on a narrowly defined knowledgeof techniques and processes, but rather extending tothe varying historical, sociological, economic, and otherconditioning factors that give public administration itspeculiar stamp in each country.

The relation of public administration to itspeculiar environment has not been altogetherignored.31 Unhappily, however, comparativestudies are all too infrequent; and at best theyprovide only the groundwork. We need manymore studies of comparative administrationbefore it will be possible to argue that thereare any universal principles of public admin-istration.

In Conclusion

WTE ARE a long way from a science of publicadministration. No science of public ad-

ministration is possible unless: (1) the placeof normative values is made clear;

(2)the na-

ture of man in the area of public administra-tion is better understood and his conduct ismore predictable; and (3) there is a body ofcomparative studies from which it may be pos-sible to discover principles and generalitiesthat transcend national boundaries and pecul-iar historical experiences.

31 See, for example, Walter Dorn, The Prussian Bu-reaucracy in the Eighteenth Century, 46 Political Sci-ence Quarterly 403-23 (1931) and 47 Ibid., 75-94, 259-73(1932); Fritz Morstein Marx, Civil Service in Ger-

many, in Civil Service Abroad (McGraw-Hill BookCo., 1935); John M. Gaus, American Society and Pub-lic Administration, The Frontiers of Public Adminis-tration (University of Chicago Press, 1936).

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