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The Contributions of Herbert J. Storing 621
Hindy Lauer Schachter, Editor
Douglas F. Morgan
Portland State University
Kent A. Kirwan
University of Nebraska at Omaha
John A. Rohr
Virginia Tech
David H. Rosenbloom
City University of Hong Kong and American University
David Lewis Schaefer
College of the Holy Cross
Retrospective
Review
Douglas F. Morgan is professor emeritus of
public administration at Portland State University
and director of the Hatfi eld School of Government’s
Executive Leadership Institute. He is the coauthor of
Foundations of Public Service
(2008) and has written
more than two dozen articles on local government
leadership and ethics. He has served on numerous
government boards and advisory committees,
including the Portland School Board. He is currently
undertaking several leadership development projects
in Southeast Asia, including the creation of a
Leadership for Sustainable Development curriculum
funded by the Ford Foundation for the Ho Chi Minh
Academy in Vietnam.
E-mail: morgandf@pdx.edu
Kent A. Kirwan is professor emeritus of political
science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His
primary research interests include political philoso-
phy, constitutional law, and public administration.
His work has been published in Polity, Publius,
Interpretation, Administration & Society,
American Journal of Public Administration,
Political Science Reviewer, and The Annals,
among others. He has written on Storing’s contribu-
tions to public administration, as well as articles on
Woodrow Wilson, separation of powers, federalism,
the Supreme Court, and the political leadership of
George Washington.
E-mail: kentakirwan@gmail.com
John A. Rohr is professor emeritus of public ad-
ministration and policy in the College of Architecture
and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech. He is the author
of seven books and dozens of articles on public
administration, ethics, and the role of the American
Constitution in shaping governing institutions
and practices. He has received the Distinguished
Research Award from the American Society of
Public Administration and the National Association
of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. He
was awarded the prestigious Dwight Waldo Award
from the American Society for Public Administration
in 2002 for contributions to the literature and
leadership of public administration. He is a fellow of
the National Academy of Public Administration and
has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in
Washington, D.C.
E-mail: jrohr@vt.edu
David H. Rosenbloom is Chair Professor of
Public Management at City University of Hong Kong
and Distinguished Professor of Public Administration
at American University. He specializes in public
administration and democratic constitutionalism.
He is the author of more than 300 publications
and the recipient of several awards, including the
American Political Science Association’s Gaus Award
for exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of
political science and public administration and the
American Society for Public Administration’s Waldo
Award for outstanding contributions to the literature
and leadership of public administration. He was
editor in chief of Public Administration Review
(1991–96), coeditor of the Policy Studies Journal
(1985–90), and currently serves on the editorial
boards of about a dozen public administration
journals.
E-mail: rbloom313@hotmail.com
David Lewis Schaefer is professor of political
science at College of the Holy Cross, where he
teaches courses on political philosophy and American
political thought. A three-time fellow of the National
Endowment for the Humanities, he is author of The
Political Philosophy of Montaigne (1990) and
Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American
Political Tradition (2007), coeditor of Sir Henry
Taylor’s The Statesman (1992), and coeditor of
and contributor to The Future of Cities (1996)
and Active Duty: Public Administration as
Democratic Statesmanship (1998). He is
currently editing a book of essays on democratic
decision making.
E-mail: dschaefe@holycross.edu
Recovering, Restoring, and Renewing the Foundations of
American Public Administration: e Contributions of
Herbert J. Storing
Public administration continues to face an identity crisis
that turns on the question of whether the animating
principles of the discipline are to be discovered in the
political foundations of a given regime, or whether they
are to be found in more universal and transcendent
principles of scientifi c management. Herbert J. Storing
reframed the identity crisis as a problem arising
from America’s constitutional system of governance.
In doing so, he created an important role for public
administration in democratic governance. is role
took the form of “closet statesmanship” and, in practice,
requires the exercise of prudential judgment that looks
more like judicial decision making than scientifi c
management. In summarizing Storing’s writings, the
authors convincingly argue that he has much to teach
us about the ongoing debate regarding the role of
the bureaucracy within America’s 87,576 systems of
government.
Prologue
e elegant banquet was over, a sure sign that the
2007 conference of the National Academy of Public
Administration had ended as well. ere would be
the usual ill-attended business meeting the following
morning, but for all practical purposes, the confer-
ence had come to an end. As the academy fellows and
their guests made for the exits, they braced themselves
for the cold blast of November air that awaited them.
Well fortifi ed, however, both in body (the banquet)
and in soul (David Broder’s words of wisdom as prin-
cipal speaker), they knew the weather would not be a
serious problem.
But not all the fellows headed for the exits. ere
was a corporal’s guard of fellows sprinkled generously
throughout the banquet hall in groups of twos and
threes. ese lingering fellows continued their conver-
sations unabated. One could be forgiven for assuming
that the stern head busboy did not care a fi g for the
latest insights of policy analysts and their colleagues.
I was one of those who lingered, risking the wrath of
the busboys and their leader. I had the opportunity
of carrying on an extended one-on-one conversa-
tion with the editor in chief of Public Administration
Review, Richard Stillman.
As the conversation moved from one topic to an-
other, I was caught off guard by Stillman’s earnest
query as to how and why the late Herbert J. Storing,
my mentor at the University of Chicago, seem-
ingly had such remarkable infl uence on his former
students, even though he did not have much impact
on the fi eld of public administration as a whole.
Stillman told me that he had quickly scanned back
issues of PAR, looking almost in vain for contribu-
tions to the literature by my erstwhile mentor. His
diligent search yielded only one major article. He
conceded that because his search was conducted with
considerable haste, he might have missed one or two
articles or reviews by Storing. Nevertheless, one or
two or three contributions to PAR over a lengthy
career represents rather “slim pickings” for a leader
in the fi eld.
For well over a week, Stillman’s question haunted
me. My mood changed from puzzlement to an-
ger—from “How did Storing manage to hide his
light under a bushel so well that his contributions
to public administration are practically unknown to
the accomplished scholar who now heads the fi eld?”
to “Why doesn’t Stillman know more about Stor-
ing?” My anger soon yielded to remorse. I had to ask
myself, “Why haven’t I done more to enable scholars
like Stillman to know what I know about Herbert
Storing’s infl uence on our fi eld?” I decided to round
up the usual suspects, former students of Storing
who had studied at Chicago around the same time
as I and then went on to make solid contributions to
public administration on their own. e following
colleagues came immediately to mind: Kent Kirwan,
Douglas Morgan, David Rosenbloom, and David
Schaefer. We agreed to write a joint article under
the leadership of Douglas Morgan, which we would
submit, with only a sly hint of mischief, to Public
Administration Review. e article would restore our
dear friend and mentor to his rightful place in the
fi eld of public administration.
Here follows, dear reader, the fruit of our labor.
—John A. Rohr
622 Public Administration Review • July | August 2010
[A]ll interesting administrative questions are political questions . . .
Age-old political and constitutional problems now present themselves
as problems of (or in) public administration.
—Storing (1964b, 147; 1965, 48)
It is not “common sense” versus “science.” Virtually no one claims
that common sense proverbial wisdom is suffi cient either as a guide
to action or as a means of understanding human behavior. e ques-
tion is whether the admittedly necessary transcendence of common
sense is to be achieved by science as understood by Simon, or by an
exploration of human ends, to which common sense points but which
it alone is not competent to undertake.
—Storing (1962, 126)
Public administration continues to face an “identity crisis” that has
been at the center of the discipline since its inception. e crisis
turns on the following question: Are the animating principles of
public administration to be discovered in the political founda-
tions of a given regime, or are they to be found in more universal
and transcendent principles of scientifi c management? e debate
over the proper connection between politics and administration
manifests itself today in numerous ways: whether the National As-
sociation of Schools of Public Aff airs and Administration can and
should accredit programs in other countries; how we should design
culturally appropriate programs for international students who are
interested in the study of public administration in the United States;
what the role of American scholars should be in assisting China,
Vietnam, and other countries that have made a national commit-
ment to “scientifi c development.”
According to Dwight Waldo (1968, 5), it was
Herbert Simon who created the discipline’s
“identity crisis” in public administration by
destroying confi dence in the validity of early
administrative science. But Simon (1947)
resolved that crisis by off ering the prospect of
a pure science of administration. Herbert J.
Storing, by contrast, rejected the prospect of
fi nding the identity of public administration
in some kind of science. Instead, he outlined
a resolution to the identity crisis by traveling
back in time, beyond the fi eld, to the Ameri-
can founding. In doing so, he reframed the
identity crisis and transformed the study and
practice of public administration into statecraft.
Storing argued that the politics–administration dichotomy stems
from the eff orts of the American founders to
create the conditions necessary for securing the
long-term vitality of America’s system of or-
dered liberty. eir eff orts resulted in tensions
between the administrative and political activi-
ties that are necessary to protect American
democracy from the inherent dangers to which
it is liable. In the process of illuminating the
politics–administration dichotomy, Storing
made four signifi cant contributions to public
administration theory:1 (1) He reframed the politics–administration
debate; (2) in doing so, he resolved the “identity crisis” in American
public administration by stressing the central governing role of
career administrators; (3) he introduced the “judicial approach” to
administrative decision making and, in the process, restored pruden-
tial judgment as the centerpiece of administrative practice; and (4)
through the height, depth, and breadth of his perspective, he revealed
the vital importance of the bureaucracy, and not just its limitations.
Correspondingly, he opened our minds to the nobility of the life of
the civil servant by clarifying its potential for statesmanship. By shar-
ing his vision, he enabled us all, teachers and practitioners of public
administration alike, to better see what we are doing.
In this article, we will revisit Storing’s contributions to the study and
practice of public administration. We do so for two reasons. First, as
former students, we believe Storing has received inadequate credit
for and attention to the signifi cant contributions he has made, large-
ly because his teaching and writings were presented in collections of
essays and compilations of writings rather than in a monograph for-
mat.2 Second, we believe the unresolved debate over the proper role
of administration in governing can benefi t from Storing’s insights.
Reframing the Politics–Administration Dichotomy: The
Problem of American Democratic Governance
Storing regarded the politics–administration dichotomy as the
unfortunate result of collective memory loss among both prac-
titioners and students of American politics. e dichotomy did
not originate with the writings of Woodrow Wilson and Frank
Goodnow. Instead, it originated from the “problematic nature” of
the American regime. “ e preoccupation of Herbert Storing’s
professional life was the genesis and meaning of the American
regime” (Cropsey 1981, xv), which was to be found in the
Federalist–Anti-Federalist debate. Both
parties to the debate agreed that the purpose
of government was to protect individual
rights. ey also agreed that liberty could not
be assumed to result simply from the election
of government offi cials by popular vote. For
the Federalists, popular elections entailed the
need for protections against majority tyranny
and foolishness and the capacity for compe-
tent administration. For the Anti-Federalists,
popular elections entailed the need to build
in protections to ensure that elected offi cials
would not become a ruling elite that used its
power to advance its interests at the expense
of protecting individual rights and preserving the local conditions
necessary for these rights to thrive. For both the Federalists and
Anti-Federalists, the purpose of democratic government was the
protection of individual rights, but there
was disagreement over how these rights
could best be secured. In Storing’s intro-
duction to his seven-volume collection
of Anti-Federalist papers, he observes
that “the nation was born in consensus
but it lives in controversy, and the main
lines of that controversy are well-worn
paths leading back to the founding
debate” (1981, 1:6).
Herbert J. Storing . . .
rejected the prospect of
fi nding the identity of public
administration in some kind
of science. Instead, he outlined
a resolution of the identity
crisis by traveling back in
time, beyond the fi eld, to the
American founding.
Storing argued that the politics–
administration dichotomy stems
from the eff orts of the American
founders to create the conditions
necessary for securing the long-
term vitality of America’s system of
ordered liberty.
The Contributions of Herbert J. Storing 623
In his study of the founding, Storing identifi ed four well-worn
sources of danger to the health and survival of democratic gov-
ernance: majority tyranny and foolishness, the loss of republican
virtue, the abuse of power by government offi cials, and ineff ective
and ineffi cient administration. For Storing, each of these problems
was foundational to understanding the nature of American politics
and institutions and the role of administrators in the governance
process.
Majority Tyranny: The Shays’s Rebellion Problem
Storing was struck by the agreement between Federalists and Anti-
Federalists that “[g]overnment by the people or, in practice, majority
rule was not . . . the very defi nition of free government, because it
can lead to unjust deprivations of individual liberty” by a tyrannical
majority (1981, 1:40). So what is the best guarantor against major-
ity tyranny? For the Federalists, it was a complex system of govern-
ment that included reliance on a multiplicity of the numbers and
kinds of factions generated by a large commercial republic, a system
of representation, and a set of governing structures and processes
that checked and balanced the exercise of governing powers. For the
Anti-Federalists, liberty could be secured only by cultivating a set
of republican virtues (further elaborated in the next section), which
they believed would be eroded by the commercialism of a large
republic. Storing observed that in the view of the Anti-Federalists,
[ e] Federalist solution not only failed to provide the moral
qualities that are necessary to the maintenance of republi-
can government; it tended to undermine them. Will not
the constitutional regime, the Anti-Federalists asked, with
its emphasis on private, self-seeking, commercial activities,
release and foster a certain type of human being who will be
likely to destroy that very regime?… It is a simplifi cation, but
not a misleading simplifi cation, to say that the crisis faced
by Abraham Lincoln seventy years later required a synthesis
of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist reservations. And if the
major element in the reservation was still the Federal one, yet
it is due the Anti-Federalists to say that it was they, more than
the defenders of the Constitution, who anticipated the need.
e Anti-Federalists saw, although sometimes only dimly, the
insuffi ciency of a community of mere interest. ey saw that
the American polity had to be a moral community if it was
to be anything, and they saw that the seat of that community
must be the hearts of the people. (1981, 1:73, 76)
In seeking to solve the majority tyranny problem, the Federalists
promoted the virtues of a large commercial republic, which seem-
ingly weakened the conditions needed for republican virtue and a
politically vigilant and engaged citizenry.
Republican Virtue: The Engaged Citizen Problem
Storing’s longest and perhaps most important labor of love dur-
ing his relatively short life was the compilation of an authoritative
seven-volume collection of Anti-Federalist writings. “ e aim of the
collection,” he explained, “is to make available for the fi rst time all
of the substantial Anti-Federal writings in their complete original
form and in an accurate text, together with appropriate annotation”
accompanied by an introduction, providing “for the fi rst time, in
my judgment, a full and adequate account of the main lines, the
principles and the grounds of the Anti-Federal position” (1981, 1:
xix). He undertook this work because he believed that the Anti-
Federalists had not received the credit they deserved for shaping the
American Constitution. More importantly, he argued, the Constitu-
tion “did not settle everything; it did not fi nish the task of making
the American polity. e political life of the community continues
to be a dialogue, in which the Anti-Federalist concerns and princi-
ples still play an important part” (1981, 1:3 [emphasis in original]).
In short, Storing believed that “the Anti-Federalists may have some-
thing to teach” us (1981, 1:4).
One of the most important teachings of the Anti-Federalists was
the need to ground democratic governance in what Storing called
“republican virtue” (1981, 1:24, 73). Republican virtue consists of
a set of political habits and dispositions that refl ect a constant love
of liberty. is love is cultivated by small, face-to-face government
and the life exemplifi ed by the yeoman farmer, which fosters the
essential republican virtues of moderation, vigilance, industry, and
thrift. Republican virtue contrasts with the virtue of the procedural
republic, which emphasizes the importance of structures, processes,
and formal rights to protect liberty (Kemmis 1990, chap. 2).
Storing’s belief about the centrality of the Anti-Federalists to the
American polity has obvious relevance to the increasing interest over
the last three decades in America’s communitarian roots (Etzioni
1993; Kemmis 1990; Putnam 2000). Whether it is concern about
the forces of globalization, reaction to the expanding powers of the
national government, dismay at what appears to be excessive greed
in the marketplace, or concern for the development of social capital,
the nature and kind of citizen virtue needed to sustain democratic
government is very much a part of our current political dialogue.
In his introductory essay to the seven-volume compilation, Storing
sympathetically summarized the Anti-Federalist “small republic”
vision of self-government that could not be satisfi ed by simply
protecting citizens from the abuses of rulers such as King George
or becoming more effi cient at performing government functions.
Small democratic communities were important not simply because
they provided better opportunities to maintain eternal vigilance over
suspicious rulers; they also mattered because they produced policies
and practices that were informed by local knowledge, and they
provided processes that enabled citizens to acquire the knowledge
and skills to be civically engaged in meaningful ways. To be so en-
gaged enhances one’s liberties and heightens the sense of self-interest
rightly understood. e Anti-Federalists believed that a constitution
that provides for a strong, professionalized central government and
encourages the private pursuit of material gain tends to discourage
civic engagement. Ultimately, this distracts the public from a proper
vigilance over their liberties as well as from civic-mindedness more
generally.
Abuse of Executive Power: The King George Problem
A recurring problem that Storing wrestled with in his teaching and
scholarship was how power could be centralized without endan-
gering the liberty of its citizens. His favorite text on the American
presidency was Charles ach’s book e Creation of the American
Presidency (1969), to which he wrote a preface for the reprinted
edition. Storing was especially interested in ach’s account of how
the antityrannical forces of the American Revolution resulted in the
adoption of new state constitutions that concentrated governmental
power in the popularly elected legislative branch (with New York
624 Public Administration Review • July | August 2010
as a notable exception), providing for a very weak executive branch
( ach 1969, chap. 2). is weak-executive model was embodied in
the Articles of Confederation, which resulted in a central govern-
ment that was too weak to collect taxes and provision an army dur-
ing the American Revolution, sowing the seeds for the model’s own
corrective in the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Storing’s concern for how executive power could be safely construct-
ed was also at the center of his critique of Herbert Simon’s admin-
istrative science. Storing argued that Simon’s model of rationality
and effi ciency “takes its bearings from the goals of top management”
(1962, 103), thus “radicalizing the claim for unity in administra-
tion.” ere are three reasons why Simon’s model promotes central-
ization: (1) “the crucial and governing activity is development of the
science itself, which can only occur (except derivatively) at the top”;
(2) “gaps in the science make it necessary to resort to central author-
ity to support the science”; and (3) “there remains a continuing need
to enforce the rational design of the science” (Storing 1980, 110).
Storing’s study of the American founding gave him pause about
these centralizing tendencies. e reasons for centralizing have to
be informed by the political ends that centralization is intended to
serve, and once these ends are fully revealed, it is not so clear that
centralization is the best means for achieving them. Centralization
must be judged by whether it promotes the primary purpose of
the American constitutional system: the preservation of individual
liberty.
The Need for Energetic, Effective, and Effi cient Government:
The George Washington Problem
Storing recognized in his study of the
founding debates that even the Anti-Feder-
alist opponents of the Constitution favored
a new kind of Union “to provide defense
against foreign enemies, to promote and
protect American commerce and to main-
tain order among the states” (1981, 1:24).
Storing observed that once the Anti-Fed-
eralists conceded the need for more power
at the center, they “simply could not meet”
the Federalist argument that suffi cient pow-
ers needed to be given to the new government in order to ensure
the achievement of its ends (1981, 1:29). But Storing pointed out
that the Anti-Federalists were right in warning that the desire for
effi cient government could easily fall prey to false concerns for the
status and riches of the nation-state within the larger global order.
“Indeed, the stress placed by the Federalists on national defense and
a vigorous commercial polity often seems to mask a radical shift in
direction from the protection of individual liberty to the pursuit of
national riches and glory” (1981, 1:30).
For Storing, the American founding generated two competing mod-
els of the executive function, which were embodied in the Whig and
Jacksonian positions regarding the role of the executive within the
American system of separation of powers and checks and balances.
e Jacksonians viewed administration as a “closed hierarchy lead-
ing to the top” or “residing crucially in the hands of the president.”
In contrast, the Whigs, who held a more pluralist view of American
politics, saw administration as involving “loosely connected but
largely independent . . . pools of offi cial discretion.” As a result,
Andrew Jackson saw the meaning of responsibility as obedience to
the president, the Whigs as obedience to the law. is diff erence had
important implications for Storing’s view of the role of career ad-
ministrators in the governance process. He observed that the Whig
model emphasized “the exercise of experienced, informed, respon-
sible discretion . . . not [mere] obedience to higher command” as
the essence of good administration (1980, 110). It is this model that
Storing held up as the standard for assessing the role of professional
career administrators in the American system of governance. It is
a standard that encourages independence within a loosely coupled
hierarchy and the exercise of informed judgment similar to that
exercised by judges. Both of these qualities will be discussed more
fully later in this essay.
Storing’s study of the American founding brought to light sig-
nifi cant tensions among the prophylactics necessary to prevent
democracy from succumbing to the inherent pitfalls of popular
sovereignty. By giving all power to the people to prevent abuses by
the King Georges of the world, democracy could succumb to a lack
of power at the center to administer the powers of government with
competence and effi ciency (the Articles of Confederation problem).
Or it could succumb to majority tyranny (the Shays’s Rebellion
problem), or to economic excess and lethargy (the engaged-citizen
problem). From the perspective of the founding generation, the
public interest was problematic because of the diffi culty of address-
ing any one of the four major sources of danger to liberty without
making the others worse. For example, creating a more consolidated
government at the center with greater executive power to protect
against external threats and the tyranny of the majority potentially
endangers the liberty of citizens as a result
of internal abuses of power by governing
offi cials and limited civic engagement.
us, an irreconcilable tension exists
among the goals of competent govern-
ment, responsiveness, preservation of
minority rights, and civic engagement. For
the Federalists, the danger of insuffi cient
governmental power at the center and of
majority tyranny outweighed the Anti-
Federalists’ concerns about excessive power
at the center and the need to protect and cultivate the virtues of a
small civic republic.
While Storing recognized that the need for administrative com-
petence was one of the major reasons for creating a new Union,
this competence was one among several diff erent kinds of political
expertise necessary to secure individual rights. From the founders’
perspective, the administrative part of governance was a political
activity, which Storing argued gives administrators “a reasonable and
legitimate claim to share in rule” (1964b, 147). e political role
played by administrators, however, was diff erent from the politi-
cal role played by elected members of the legislative body. “It is a
distinction between broader and narrower political operations or
between two levels of politics that emphasizes their connection and
rejects a distinction between political and administrative questions”
(Kirwan 1981, 211 [emphasis in original]). By redefi ning the prob-
lem of democracy, Storing addressed the identity crisis in public
administration and in the process carved out a central role for the
bureaucracy and administrators in democratic governance.
. . . Storing pointed out that the
Anti-Federalists were right in
warning that the desire for effi cient
government could easily fall prey
to false concerns for the status and
riches of the nation-state within the
larger global order.
The Contributions of Herbert J. Storing 625
Resolving the Public Administration Identity Crisis: The
Role of Administrators in Democratic Governance
Herbert Storing propounded a pathbreaking reinterpretation of the
role of the public administrator, at least at higher levels, as one of
statesmanship. Prior to Storing’s work, scholars had long recognized
the insuffi ciency of the politics–administration dichotomy (as pro-
pounded by Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow) as an empirical
account of how government operates: civil servants inevitably exer-
cise considerable discretion in their daily work, above and beyond
the merely “technical” question of fi nding the most effi cient means
of carrying out the commands of their elected superiors. In fact,
questions of means are never entirely separable from choices among
ends. But scholars remained perplexed about how to legitimize this
political role within a democracy, so as to off er meaningful guidance
about how civil servants should go about their work, and hence to
design an education that would best equip them to fulfi ll their duty.
e root cause of the failure of contemporary political science and
public administration theory to provide an adequate account of the
work of civil servants, as Storing observed in the last essay he wrote,
“American Statesmanship: Old and New,” was the tendency to re-
duce it “into two simple elements: populism, or radical democracy,
and scientifi c management” (1980, 403). Because of their reluctance
to distinguish, as the authors of e Federalist did, between the
people’s immediate wishes and their true interests, contemporary
scholars saw no grounds to justify civil servants’ partial autonomy
from electoral direction except the claims of technical expertise (see
Friedrich 1940). Only on the grounds of expertise or “scientifi c
management” could the claim to administrative autonomy be up-
held without off ending the scholars’ hyperdemocratic sensibilities.
In this respect, public administration scholarship thus remained in
thrall to the Wilsonian dichotomy. Because contemporary scholars
had lost the founders’ appreciation of democracy as a problem—a
regime that, like all others, rests on a partisan principle that could
destroy it if it is not institutionally moderated—they failed to appre-
ciate the positive (and not merely technical) contribution that civil
servants (not despite but because of their nonelected status) might
make toward improving our system of government.
Storing’s most fundamental criticism of contemporary academic ap-
proaches to public administration was articulated in his 1962 essay
on Herbert Simon’s purported “Science of Administration.” In this
essay Storying demonstrated the impossibility of substituting an eval-
uatively neutral science comprising universally valid rules of behavior
for the administrator’s practical judgment, in which questions of ends
and means are inevitably intermixed. Subsequently, Storing set forth
his account of the proper political role of the bureaucracy in three
essays published in the mid-1960s: “ e Problem of Big Govern-
ment” (1963), “Political Parties and the Bureaucracy,” (1964b), and
“Leonard D. White and the Study of Public Administration” (1965).
In his essay on White, Storing showed how the work of a preemi-
nent scholar of public administration gradually moved away from a
belief in the uniformity of public and private administration, which
could be perfected through a neutral science, toward an apprecia-
tion of the unique political character of public administration. At
the same time, White’s work exhibits a gradual renunciation of the
Wilsonian assumption that it is possible to discover a set of rules for
public administration that are valid for all governments alike—that
is, without regard to diff erences among regimes. As Storing put
it elsewhere, the impossibility of strictly separating politics from
administration refl ects the fact that “all interesting administrative
questions are political questions” (1964b, 147). Precisely because
“administration is the heart of modern government,” as White
stressed, requiring civil servants to exercise quasi-legislative and
judicial functions (making and applying rules) as well as narrowly
“executive” ones, the “age-old political and constitutional problems
now present themselves as problems of (or in) public administra-
tion” (Storing 1965, 48)—contrary to Wilson’s claim that the
fundamental constitutional problems had been “settled” and hence
could be set aside. White’s scholarly turn in his last years of research
from pursuing administrative “science” to producing four volumes
of history tracing the development of American public administra-
tion over the fi rst century of the country’s existence demonstrated
a growing awareness that administrative systems both refl ect and
shape the political regimes that they serve.
To deny the possibility of severing politics from administration does
not mean, however, that the civil servant is to be understood merely
as a politician in the same sense as elected offi cials. e failure to
conceive a political role other than that of the party or partisan
politician was, in Storing’s view, the crucial failing of the civil service
reform movement, which aimed to cure the corruption of the spoils
system by insulating the civil service from politics as such, not
merely from partisanship. Storing stressed that the chief goal of the
original reformers was not administrative effi ciency but the elevation
of the moral tone of the country as a whole. Reformers believed that
treating public offi ces as spoils would encourage cynicism about
government and spread an attitude of selfi shness among the public
at large. Without denying the reformers’ achievement, Storing held
that they “grossly oversimplifi ed the problem of popular govern-
ment.” First of all, the idealism typifi ed by George Curtis’s forecast
that turning elections into “a contest of principle” rather than “a
fi ght for plunder” would make “the honest will of the people the
actual government of the country” represented a forgetting of the
founders’ lesson that politics will always be guided in part by the
pursuit of selfi sh interests, and that interest-based politics off ers cer-
tain advantages in terms of moderation and stability over one based
on unmitigated ideological confl ict (Storing 1964b, 142; cf. the ac-
count of the advantages of “small” over “great” parties in Tocqueville
2000, 1:ii. 2:166–70). Second, the reformers’ unqualifi ed populism
embodied a neglect of another key principle of the founding: the
fact that popular majorities as well as “elites” may be prone to acts
of injustice or folly—pointing toward the need to moderate pure
majoritarianism no less than elitism (Storing 1980, 103).
Despite the defi ciencies of their approach, Storing observed, the re-
formers left a lasting impression on the understanding of American
government through their infl uence on the “second generation of
reformer-political scientists” typifi ed by Wilson and Goodnow, who
“sought to state systematically the theory of government implicit
in the reform movement and to elaborate . . . its practical conse-
quences.” e model that emerged presented a quite diff erent view
of the problem of democratic governance from the view held by the
founders. For the second generation of reformers,
e ideal democracy consists, as it were, of two pyramids
joined at the top. e will of the people fl ows up through the
626 Public Administration Review • July | August 2010
pyramid of politics where it is collected by parties and formed
into programs of legislation. e programs of the majority
party then fl ow down through the administrative pyramid
where they are implemented in the most effi cient manner.
According to this theory the prime requisites of a civil service
are political neutrality and technical competence. (Storing
1964b, 143)
e legacy of this model can be seen in the demand for more
“responsible” (i.e., ideologically coherent)
parties as well as the scientifi c management
movement (Storing 1964b, 143–44).
By contrast with the approach of the civil
service reformers, Storing, using the British
civil service as both model and example,
articulated the conception of an adminis-
trative apparatus that remains “political” in
the sense of aiming to promote the funda-
mental ends of the regime it serves, without
being tied to the program of a given politi-
cal party (which would incapacitate it for
serving other parties). Storing argued in
“Political Parties and the Bureaucracy” that
the very qualities that distinguish the civil servant from the elected
politician, including his relatively long tenure in offi ce, professional
expertise, and partial insulation from direct accountability to the
electorate, enable him to serve a unique kind of political role, which
can complement the skills and practices of the latter. Borrowing a
term from Sir Henry Taylor’s classic e Statesman, which prefi g-
ured much of his discussion of this theme, Storing termed the civil
servant so understood a “closet statesman” (1964b, 152–54; Taylor
[1836] 1998, 125). For Storing, a statesman was someone who “is
carried beyond immediate practical issues by a need to understand
the deeper ground on which they rest” (1970, 9). is quality
not only was important for individual political leaders, but also
needed to be institutionalized in the formal structures and pro-
cesses of democratic governance. In “ e Problem of Big Govern-
ment,” Storing argued that the distinctive attributes of the national
bureaucracy equipped it to serve the moderating function that the
founders intended the Senate to perform—but which developments
culminating in the Seventeenth Amendment now prevented that
body from accomplishing (Storing 1980, 82).
Storing’s reform program for American public administration
was informed by his understanding of the problematic nature of
American democracy and the important role that the bureaucracy
plays in fulfi lling the purposes of democratic governance. In urg-
ing that higher civil servants and the bureaucracy as a whole be
understood as practicing statesmanship, Storing was not inventing
a role that they did not already perform, but trying to clarify the
nature of their work so as to encourage them to perform it better.
As he put it,
Nonpopulist, nonscientifi c concerns seem even in American
democracy to be at the heart of statesmanship; yet the Ameri-
can statesman is likely to believe that they are not really his
proper business, even when he spends most of his time with
them. e result is that these nonpopulist, nonscientifi c sides
of American statesmanship tend to be done poorly and, even
when done well, tend to be done under cover. (1980, 89)
Storing was not blind to the defects of bureaucracy—its potential
for ineffi ciency, indecision, and petty tyranny. But he maintained
that “random carping or wholesale condemnation of the bureau-
cracy” served only to divert attention “from the need to nurture
and strengthen its capacity for administrative statesmanship” (1963,
84–85). ese observations remain no less valid today.
Storing’s teaching about the political role of
public administrators as statesmen has spe-
cial importance for the more than 87,500
local government jurisdictions in the United
States. Nearly 75 percent of American cities
today are governed by a council-manager
form, with a part-time legislative body and
a full-time professional manager (Adrian
1999, 58). When originally created in the
early 1900s, the council–manager system
was intended to separate policy or politics
from administration. Recent studies have
documented that this “bright-line” distinc-
tion does not exist at the local government
level, in large part because the city manager plays a “statesmanlike”
role in facilitating both policy development and implementation
(Nalbandian 2000; Svara 2001, 2006, 2008). In undertaking this
role, managers must balance the competing needs for effi ciency,
responsiveness, community engagement, and the protection of indi-
vidual rights (Morgan and Kass 1993; Morgan et al. 2008, chap. 3).
ese needs are pushed down even to the middle management layers
of local government organizations (Morgan et al. 1996). Administra-
tors are successful when they are able to play the role of the British
civil servant in taking the initiative for problem solving without
displacing the leadership role of elected offi ceholders. is requires
“leading from behind,” taking initiatory leadership without engag-
ing in partisan political advocacy and, of course, looking “beyond
immediate practical issues … to understand the deeper ground on
which they rest” (Storing 1970, 9). Storing argued that playing this
role requires the skills and temperament of a judge rather than those
of a policy wonk or technical analyst.
Constitutional Law and the Judicial Model of
Administrative Practice: Restoring Prudential
Judgment to Administrative Work
Storing argued that the judicial model is the appropriate guide for
understanding the nature of administrative rationality and judg-
ment. is model was informed by two considerations. First, after
undertaking an extensive examination of Herbert Simon’s scientifi c
model, Storing was convinced that the fact–value distinction on
which it rested did not correspond to the reality of administrative
practice, nor could it. Worse, the distinction was dangerously mis-
leading, resulting in a failure to examine the ends of one’s adminis-
trative actions. Second, the judicial model was informed by Storing’s
extensive understanding of American jurisprudence and the consti-
tutional role that civil servants play in the modern administrative
state through their responsibilities for implementation, rulemaking,
and adjudication. Each of these infl uences will be elaborated more
fully in the paragraphs that follow.
Storing was not blind to the defects
of bureaucracy—its potential for
ineffi ciency, indecision, and petty
tyranny. But he maintained that
“random carping or wholesale
condemnation of the bureaucracy”
served only to divert attention
“from the need to nurture
and strengthen its capacity for
administrative statesmanship.”
The Contributions of Herbert J. Storing 627
The Defects of the Positivist Science Model
Storing undertook an extensive analysis of both the internal logic
and the consequences of Simon’s ambitious eff ort to ground public
administration in the principles of a “science of administration.”
is “true science,” Simon argued, required the development of
an entirely new vocabulary. Common wisdom, far from provid-
ing the basis of social science, is a diff erent language altogether.
Simon observed that he had not detected
“much progress in the ‘wisdom literature’ in
administrative theory during the past fi fty
years. Aristotle and the Hoover Commis-
sion sound much alike, except [that] the
former was a good deal more sophisticated
than the latter about the relation of politics
to administration.… You can fi nd the same
kinds of impassioned pleas for ‘wisdom’
in medicine a century ago as we fi nd in
administration today. Meanwhile the sale
of Lydia Pinkham’s vegetable compound
has fallen off ; the sale of thyroid extract has
increased” (1957, 62). Simon believed that
the principles of modern science could im-
prove public administration in much in the
same way that they had improved medicine.
At the heart of the divide between common
wisdom and science is Simon’s separation
of facts from values. Factual propositions,
Simon argued, can be validated by deter-
mining their correspondence to the facts,
while value propositions are validated
through a process of intersubjective agree-
ment. e values on which this agreement
rests arise from the fi at of human will, not from any factual reality
(Simon 1957, 56). e earlier proponents of a distinct science of
administration (Wilson, Taylor, Goodnow, and White) had argued
that the separation between politics and administration turned on
the diff erence between ends and means. Politics was concerned with
determining ends, while administration was focused on how to best
achieve these predetermined ends. While starting with the means–
ends distinction, Simon ultimately abandoned it as an inadequate
foundation for a science of administration.
Storing cited two reasons why Simon abandoned his predeces-
sors’ starting point. First, administrators are unable to separate the
intermediate values that are imbedded in the subordinate means,
which are part of the chain of means–ends causality (Storing 1962,
73–81). For example, the practice of using successive stages of em-
ployee discipline as a means of corrective action in human resource
management is itself a value that may go beyond the instrumental
goal of improving organizational effi ciency and eff ectiveness. Giving
employees a fair chance to improve may be a value that stands on
a separate ground from the value of achieving results. e second
reason for abandoning the means–ends distinction is Simon’s recog-
nition that, in practice, it is impossible for administrators literally
to maximize the ends that are set by the political process. ere is
not enough time and money to calculate all of the possible alterna-
tives to accomplish the policy goals established by that process. For
that reason, Storing observed, Simon ultimately abandoned the
economic model of “maximizing decisions” in his earlier work and
substituted an organizational model of “satisfi cing” as the measure
of administrative success (Storing 1962, 109–23). “Good enough”
replaces the objective of maximizing the goals of a predetermined
set of policy initiatives.
Storing concluded that Simon’s attempt to replace common sense
with a new science of administration is
problematic because it rests on a fl awed
understanding of science. Science necessarily
begins with a common sense understanding
of the world, and the abandonment of this
anchor would leave us without the ability to
make rational choices about ends. Storing,
therefore, stood Simon’s approach on its
head and thereby restored common sense as
the necessary starting point for all gover-
nance work, making scientifi c knowledge
subservient to knowledge about the ends of
administrative activity.
Storing pointed out abundant examples
in Simon’s work of his reliance on practi-
cal opinions that are not validated by
Simon’s science. For example, Simon used
phrases such as “correct decision-making,”
“ rationality,” “pure” values, “eff ective,”
“appropriate,” “more fi nal ends,” “more
fi nal goals,” and so on, without giving an
account of how their meaning can be deter-
mined by and through his science (Storing
1981, 71–72). When Simon retreated to
the ground of “satisfi cing” as the measure
of administrative success, Storing pointed out, the term begs the
question, What is good enough? and exhibits the subservience of
Simon’s notion of rationality “to nonrational preferences” (Storing
1981, 71).
In addition to the incapacity of Simon’s eff orts to fashion a science
of problem solving to replace prudential judgment, Storing pointed
out that the adverse consequence of Simon’s model of rationality is
that it leaves us without any way of making rational choices about
ends. Without a model of rationality that deals with the ends of
human activity, we have no way of deciding what a problem is,
and whether it is signifi cant or urgent. “A decision about what is a
problem, as distinct from a decision about how to solve a problem,
is absolutely dependent on values” (Storing 1981, 147). Storing
illustrated the adverse consequences of Simon’s truncated notion of
rationality as follows:
One of Simon’s examples is the problem of the blind, which
Helen Keller helped to bring to the attention of the public.
Why was this a problem? Only because people held or ac-
quired certain non-rational preferences that defi ned a certain
situation as problematical? According to Simon’s assumptions,
if no one had held such values there are no “real” problems.
And if there are no real problems, the basis of the science of
problem solving is destroyed, as Simon himself comes very
close to admitting. (1981, 147)
[Herbert] Simon observed that he
had not detected “much progress
in the ‘wisdom literature’ in
administrative theory during the
past fi fty years. Aristotle and the
Hoover Commission sound much
alike, except [that] the former was
a good deal more sophisticated
than the latter about the relation
of politics to administration.…
You can fi nd the same kinds of
impassioned pleas for ‘wisdom’ in
medicine a century ago as we fi nd
in administration today. Meanwhile
the sale of Lydia Pinkham’s
vegetable compound has fallen
off ; the sale of thyroid extract has
increased” (1957, 62).
628 Public Administration Review • July | August 2010
e attempt to draw a bright-line distinction between facts and
values, with science serving as the arbiter of facts and common
opinion [Herbert] Simon observed that he had not detected “serving
as the repository of values, sets up a false dichotomy that is belied
by human behavior and experience. Worse, Storing believed, such a
view is dangerous. It cuts off rational discussion regarding the ends
of government and turns politics into a “might makes right” aff air.
As Storing observed,
It is not “common sense” versus “science.” Virtually no one
claims that common sense proverbial wisdom is suffi cient
either as a guide to action or as a means of understanding
human behavior. e question is whether the admittedly
necessary transcendence of common sense is to be achieved by
science as understood by Simon, or by an exploration of hu-
man ends, to which common sense points but which it alone
is not competent to undertake. (1962, 126)
For Storing, the two critical principles of
the regnant understanding of practical
reason, or rational decision making—the
notion of the “one best method” and the
assumption that all practical reason is es-
sentially economic reason—did not make
sense (Kirwan 1981, 207). Instead, Storing
off ered the judicial model of rationality
as the appropriate path for transcending
common sense. is model necessitates a
consideration of ends and requires facts
to be connected to values within a larger
rational framework.
Constitutional Law and the Judicial
Model of Rationality3
As we have already pointed out, part of Storing’s quarrel with
some of the early founders of public administration was disagree-
ment with their assumption that the great political questions
of the day had been largely resolved in the United States by the
Constitutional Convention and the end of slavery, thus leaving
means-centered administrative questions as the major problems
of the day (Wilson 1887, 12). To the contrary, Storing argued
that “age-old political and constitutional problems now present
themselves as problems of (or in) public administration,” and
that “all interesting administrative questions are political ques-
tions” (1964b, 147). is argument refl ected Storing’s extensive
study of administrative and constitutional law.
roughout the 1960s, Storing taught doctoral courses on public
administration and constitutional law at the University of Chicago.
His integration of these subjects was more evident in the classroom
than in his writings. His legacy in the subfi eld of public administra-
tion and law lies primarily in the work of doctoral students who
took his courses and at least partly adopted his analytic methods
and frameworks. Many of his former students went on to become
major contributors to the “constitutional school” of public admin-
istration (see Stephanie Newbold’s essay in this issue). Storing relied
heavily on a textual-analytic method in developing a multipronged
approach to scholarship on the impact of constitutional law on
public administration. His focus was primarily on (1) constitutional
integrity, (2) institutional development, (3) the concept of a civil
servant, and (4) the problem of individual liberty versus national
security.
In many respects, Storing’s attention to the linkage between the
Constitution and public administration was unusual at the time.
For the most part, as late as the 1960s, scholarly analysis of public
administration and law was confi ned to administrative law, with
some attention to major constitutional law decisions handed down
during the immediate postfounding period and the New Deal. e
fi eld’s emphasis on administrative law was narrow, but under-
standable. It was not until the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in
Goldberg v. Kelly (387 U.S. 254 [1970]), which applied constitu-
tional due process to welfare benefi ts, that the rights revolution in
U.S. constitutional law moved substantially beyond public person-
nel administration to broadly aff ect the administrative treatment
of clients, customers, prisoners, public mental health patients,
and individuals involved in street-level regulatory encounters. e
rights revolution also made it easier for
individuals to sue the government and its
employees for the imposition of broad-
based institutional and administrative
reforms, fi nancial compensation, and other
relief.
Storing was deeply concerned with con-
stitutional integrity. He closely analyzed
the reasoning in relevant case decisions to
assess their consistency with the Con-
stitution’s foundational principles. is
approach often led him to focus on the al-
location of constitutional powers between
the executive and legislative branches
of government. Myers v. United States (272 U.S. 52 [1926]) is a
good example. e case involved the constitutionality of President
Woodrow Wilson’s dismissal of a fi rst-class postmaster in contra-
vention of an 1876 statute requiring the Senate’s advice and con-
sent for such removals. e Supreme Court upheld the dismissal,
based largely on its interpretation of the “Decision of 1789,” in
which the fi rst Congress provided that the head of the Department
of Foreign Aff airs then being established could be dismissed by the
president alone, regardless of the constitutional provision that such
department heads be appointed with the advice and consent of the
Senate. Storing analyzed both the Myers and the 1789 decisions
in terms of the criterion of constitutional integrity. He concluded
that Congress’s action in 1789 did not fully support the Myers
ruling because, although some members argued that the power to
dismiss such appointments was part of the executive power vested
in the president alone, others thought that Congress had the power
to decide where the removal power should be vested. In addition
to considering whether Myers or the Decision of 1789 was most
in keeping with constitutional integrity, Storing analyzed what
the impact on public administration might be if the Court had
held in Myers that Congress does have the power to require Senate
approval of the dismissal of presidential appointees who require its
confi rmation. By giving the Senate a larger role in federal admin-
istration, would such a decision have diluted the executive power
and concomitant responsibility and accountability, and promoted
something closer to parliamentary government? Would such
Storing was deeply concerned
with constitutional integrity. He
closely analyzed the reasoning in
relevant case decisions to assess their
consistency with the Constitution’s
foundational principles. is
approach often led him to focus
on the allocation of constitutional
powers between the executive and
legislative branches of government.
The Contributions of Herbert J. Storing 629
outcomes be in keeping with the founders’ constitutional design?
Would they be benefi cial or detrimental in light of various concep-
tions and theories of how public administration should function?
Myers was followed by Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (295
U.S. 602 [1935]), which involved the presidential dismissal of
a Federal Trade Commission member for policy reasons rather
than for “ineffi ciency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in offi ce,”
as prescribed by statute. Storing analyzed this decision in terms
of institutional development. e Supreme Court held that the
president’s executive power to dismiss appointees did not extend
to those offi cers who were engaged in quasi-legislative and judicial
functions. In the course of its decision, the Court stated that
commissioners “occupy no place in the executive department”
(Humphrey’s Executor 1935, 628). e decision eff ectively reduced
presidential authority over the independent regulatory com-
missions and fragmented control over public administration. In
considering the eff ects of the decision on public administrative
theory and doctrine, Storing made extensive use of the President’s
Committee on Administrative Management’s 1937 Report to the
President (Brownlow Report), which complained bitterly about
the “headless fourth branch” of government (i.e., the independent
regulatory agencies) and sought to put most of it fi rmly under
presidential control (President’s Committee on Administra-
tive Management 1937, 32). Storing’s focus was on the impact
of Humphrey’s Executor on the president’s institutional role as
administrator in chief.
Storing was deeply interested in the historical development of vary-
ing conceptions of the civil servant’s role. is was one reason why
he focused so intensely on the civil service reform movement of
the 1870s and 1880s and the Progressive movement that followed
it. Prior to the adoption of a fl edgling merit system in 1883, the
dominant concept of a civil servant was as a functionary who was,
fi rst and foremost, an arm or extension of the political party that
appointed him (there were very few “hers” appointed at the time).
After reform, a civil servant was considered a politically neutral
expert in his or her area of administration. Storing often argued
that, postreform, civil servants could ideally be like judges—
neutral, expert, and dedicated to the long-term public interest. He
viewed their neutrality as enabling the civil service to act as a shock
absorber that smoothed out abrupt policy changes. is role was in
keeping with the constitutional design (expounded on in Federalist
No. 10 and No. 51, among other places) for moderated responsive-
ness to shifts in public opinion.
In analyzing various conceptions of civil servants held in diff erent
historical periods, Storing looked to judicial decisions among other
sources. For example, cases that held that a government job is a
privilege to which no rights are attached supported a civil service
based on partisanship, whereas those affi rming Congress’s and the
state legislatures’ power to prohibit civil servants from engaging in
partisan activity supported the concept of neutrality.
Finally, Storing was concerned with the contest between individual
liberty and national security, a theme that runs through the found-
ing debates over the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. In terms of
public administration issues in the 1950s and 1960s, this interest
led Storing to focus extensively on the loyalty-security program
for federal employees. He painstakingly analyzed the reasoning
in key judicial decisions such as Bailey v. Richardson (182 F.2d
46 [1950]), Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath (341
U.S. 123 [1951]), and Keyishian v. Board of Regents (385 U.S. 589
[1967]). Storing’s textual-analytic approach sometimes revealed
contradictions in a court’s or an author’s reasoning. When argu-
ments were otherwise well reasoned, Storing viewed such contra-
dictions as revealing the fault lines in broader controversies and
pointed to areas where more thought was needed (though some
issues inevitably remain intractable). Storing’s interest in loyalty-
security cases spun out into consideration of judicial doctrines
aff ecting public administration, such as the doctrine of privilege,
which came under heavy pressure in the 1950s and 1960s but
did not fully crumble until the 1970s. What does it mean to say
that a civil service job is a privilege? What would it mean to say it
is a property right or interest? What are the eff ects of the middle
position that there is no constitutional right to a civil service job,
but civil servants retain some constitutional rights in the context of
their public employment?
Taken together, Storing’s teaching about the convergence and
collision of constitutional law and public administration with
respect to constitutional integrity, institutional development, the
concept of a civil servant, and individual liberty versus national
security set a theory-building and research agenda for many of his
students. All of us probably pay great attention to the impact of
major judicial decisions dealing with constitutional integrity and
aff ecting public administration, such as Bowsher v. Synar (478 U.S.
714 [1986]) and Morrison v. Olson (487 U.S. 654 [1988]). In terms
of institutional development, such as the scope of presidential
power, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (542 U.S. 507 [2004]) stands out along
with theories such as those supporting claims by some presidents
over the course of American history that the Constitution estab-
lishes a unitary executive branch. e concept of what a civil servant
is or should be is also refl ected in work on administrative ethics and
issues posed by whistle-blowing and internal dissent in administra-
tive organizations, such as those raised in Garcetti v. Ceballos (547
U.S. 410 [2006]). Individual liberty versus national security remains
a strong concern in much of public administration theory, while the
constitutional rights of public employees have become a major topic
within public human resources management. Storing’s eff ort to
ground public administration theory and practice on the Consti-
tution foreshadowed developments that will continue to have an
enduring impact on the profession.
One of the important consequences of Storing’s focus on the nexus
between constitutional law and public administration was the
development of the “judicial model” of administrative decision
making. Storing was drawn to the way in which judges in appel-
late and common law settings have to make judgments that take
facts into account while also considering principles that provide
a moral standard, without prescribing a specifi c outcome. Almost
every course that Storing taught was enriched with the close study
of illuminating judicial decisions. He used these cases in two ways.
First, he enjoyed the process of immersing students in the complex
interplay between the “facts of the case” and the way each judge
used these facts to reach a decision that gave meaning to a broader
set of legal principles. is approach to legal analysis treats legal
principles as “a basic thought process which is gradually tempered
630 Public Administration Review • July | August 2010
by experience, context, and an awareness of the institutional condi-
tions of one’s role as a public offi cial. ey [legal principles] can
help public administrators cope with the continua of political life in
terms of lawful as well as sensible purpose and action. It is one way
of making the ideal of rule by law more practicable and adaptable”
(Green 2002, 281–82).
For Storing’s purposes, dissenting opinions were as important as ma-
jority decisions. In keeping with his view of the problematic nature
of American democracy, he reminded students that the minority
opinion of today may well become the majority opinion tomorrow.
What was important to Storing in reviewing each judge’s opinion
was whether it was persuasive. Did it make sense? Was the reasoning
compelling? Was it consistent with the purposes and intent of the
Constitution? All of this was a way of teaching students what “judg-
ment” meant as well as preparing them for the exercise of judgment
in the their own teaching and practice. He was far less interested in
the “doctrinal impact” of a case or vote than he was in the diff ering
processes used by various judges to distill the ratio decidendi that
connected moral principles to concrete facts.
Storing’s call for using the judicial model as a guide to administra-
tive practice foreshadowed a wide-ranging and growing critique of
the positivist science decision-making model from critical theorists
(Habermas 1985), humanists (Hummel 2007), feminists (Gilligan
1993), and organizational theorists (Lipsky 1980; Schön 1984). As
part of their critique, these theorists emphasized at least three forms
of practical knowledge that can be acquired only through experience
rather than through formal scientifi c analysis. ese forms stand on
a separate footing from the knowledge acquired through use of the
scientifi c method (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988; Vickers 1965; Weick
1979). In the world of administrative practice, these practical forms
of knowledge often overshadow scientifi c knowledge as the most
common bases for making judgments about policy development,
implementation, and all matters related to the design and operation
of public organizations.
ere is, fi rst, the prudential understanding that is acquired by un-
dertaking an activity over a long period of time. e subtle nuances
and complex interactions among materials, people, and settings
acquired by master artisans and craftsman through a long period
of “hands-on” experience exemplify this kind of tacit knowledge.
Police offi cers, case managers, and city planners rely on it routinely
to make decisions under conditions of limited resources, short time
frames, signifi cant uncertainty, and political confl icts that often
make systematic analysis impossible.
A second kind of practical knowledge can be described as a “feel for
the whole,” and it is critically important for successful administra-
tive practice. For public servants, knowledge of the whole tends to
develop through experience in a variety of positions, and by moving to
higher-level administrative roles that require an increasingly broad or
“strategic” sense of their institution. As they do so, they become more
aware of how their work forms part of the larger process of democratic
governance. ey develop a sense of proportion among priorities, and
of balancing competing demands. ey learn how to weave people
and programs together and how to mobilize interests into new mis-
sions and institutional arrangements. Viewed in this way, knowledge
of the whole is inseparable from managing change for the common
good. It is what some call democratic statesmanship (Green 1998).
ird, there is critical knowledge that gives skilled practitioners a
sense of when things are not quite right, or do not add up. In these
situations, their judgments often run against perceived facts and
guiding principles. ey also often run against the tide of opinion
among colleagues, or in the general public, which invites confl ict.
e capacity to preserve and protect critical knowledge for the
public benefi t requires institutional safeguards such as secure tenure
for key positions and careful staffi ng of critical workgroups to avoid
problems with “groupthink” and related organizational pathologies.
Critical knowledge represents a “sixth sense” for public servants who
know that good administrative work cannot always follow pre-
scribed formulas or seemingly convincing data.
ese three types of practical knowledge contribute to the vital
capacity for making judgments where other types of rational or
systematic decision making fail because they are unable to connect
facts to moral purposes. Storing’s goal was not to denigrate scientifi c
knowledge. Instead, he sought (1) to make the common knowledge
acquired through experience and refl ection central to successfully
managing public aff airs, and (2) to connect it to the larger moral
purposes that this knowledge is intended to serve.
Conclusion: Restoring the Nobility of Public Service
Storing’s intellectual agenda was guided by the desire to recover
the foundational principles that would enable America’s demo-
cratic system of government to thrive. His search for the mean-
ing and implications of the American founding has produced
three legacies that, taken together, restore the nobility of public
service. First, his eff orts to recover the founding principles have
permanently reframed the debate about how we measure success
in governing. Second, in the process of recovering the founding
principles, Storing restored an important role for public admin-
istration and its agents in the governing process. Finally, Storing
reminded us that the American democratic order can remain
healthy only if its leaders and teachers of public service reach out
to participate in an ongoing renewal process that connects current
political issues to the underlying tensions inherent in American
democratic governance.
The Task of Recovery: The Problematic Nature of American
Democracy
As we pointed out earlier in this essay, Storing was singularly
focused on the recovery of the problematic nature of the American
democratic republic. In undertaking this recovery, Storing con-
cluded that the prevailing views of the founding, whether they be
liberal, conservative, elitist, or democratic (e.g., Beard 1913; Brown
1963; Elkins and McKitrick 1962; Hartz 1955; Hofstadter 1948;
Jensen 1940; McDonald 1958; Rossiter 1953; Wood 1973), failed
to capture the full complexity of the problem that both the Fed-
eralists and Anti-Federalists were trying to solve. In revisiting the
founding, Storing came to the conclusion that American democracy
needed some unity in the executive, adequate opportunities for the
expression of existing and emergent interests, wise leaders who had
the motivation and discretion to use their judgment to promote the
public interest, and vigilant and engaged citizens who cared deeply
about democratic governance. Because there was no magic formula
The Contributions of Herbert J. Storing 631
that would successfully and permanently reconcile these competing
needs, it was important that each generation be prepared to con-
tinually reengage and rebalance such central political issues. Storing
argued that the bureaucracy plays a central role in the success of this
ongoing balancing process.
The Task of Restoration: The Bureaucracy’s Role in
Governance
Storing wanted to put responsibility for continually addressing the
problem of American democratic governance on the doorstep of
public administration. He rejected the notion that the bureaucracy
can or should be limited to a simply subservient role, providing
elected political offi cials with the benefi t of narrow technical and
neutral expertise. He argued that the bureaucracy was equally
responsible for managing the problem of responsiveness, protecting
against majority tyranny, and cultivating an engaged and vigilant
citizenry. But in sharing responsibility for managing the ongoing
problem of democratic governance, administrators needed to be
armed with the kind of knowledge necessary to be successful. is
knowledge is political in nature and requires the exercise of the kind
of judgment found in a statesman.
e cultivation of the kind of judgment needed for a “closet states-
men” was refl ected in Storing’s approach as a teacher, as he moved
from one set of texts to another, from e Federalist, to the writings
of the Anti-Federalists, to the political writings of black Americans,
to treatises on the U.S. Constitution (i.e., William W. Crosskey’s
history and analysis of the U.S. Constitution), to Supreme Court
cases, to presidential papers, and always back again to the start-
ing point of his agenda, the American founding. While the goal of
reading these texts was to challenge the mind and recover important
ideas written by thoughtful authors, it also set an example of what
was required to be a good teacher and a good closet statesman. Here
was a highly accomplished scholar at a top university who always
worked hard—excessively, it sometimes seemed—to do his absolute
best in the classroom. He was highly respected by students, and he
respected them. For Storing, intellectual development was part of
the larger process of character formation.
Storing’s commitment to the nobility of knowledge and thought
was refl ected in his conception of what a public administrator
might ideally be. In earlier days (the Federalists and the Progressive
period), civil servants were expected to possess civic virtue, in addi-
tion to their other competencies. e old merit exams, which we
now look on as neither job related nor productive of a representative
bureaucracy, contained questions about the leadership and structure
of government, physical public landmarks, and constitutional mat-
ters precisely because even the lowest-level civil servant should be a
model citizen. Storing shared this idea. For example, he favored the
1955 Hoover Commission recommendation for the establishment
of a senior civil service (which fi nally became law in 1978). He
argued that such a senior corps (1,500 at the outset) would provide
the bureaucracy with a nonpartisan, experienced, and knowledge-
able group of administrators who could give their elected political
partners invaluable counsel in managing the aff airs of state.
Storing observed in his study of the founding that while the fram-
ers believed in the importance of attracting the best individuals
to public offi ce, they failed to establish any mechanisms ensuring
that this would happen on a consistent basis (Storing 1981, 1:73).
Storing believed the establishment of a senior civil service would
improve the overall quality of the American polity. (To Dostoevsky’s
claim that one could measure the quality of a society by its prisons,
Storing might have added, “and its civil service and public admin-
istration.”) To fulfi ll this function, however, civil servants had to be
honest, upstanding, and committed to improving the civic culture
and public morality.
Such concepts might seem old-fashioned—even archaic—in
contemporary public administration writings, which see little that
is special about civil service per se. Today, civil servants are largely
viewed as interchangeable with private sector employees (includ-
ing those working for nonprofi ts). “But for a handful of functions
dealing with national security and criminal justice,” remarked Paul
Light, “it is not clear that there is a pure and inherently govern-
mental function left today” (1999, 9–10). With the blurring of the
boundaries among the public, private, and nonprofi t sectors, the
role of the civil service has been signifi cantly diminished. When this
development is combined with the last three decades of criticism
of the bureaucracy by the Reagan-Bush, Clinton-Gore and Bush-
Cheney administrations, Storing would have been concerned about
the long-term consequences for the quality of American democratic
governance.
The Task of Renewal
Storing did not believe that recovering the founding principles by
themselves and lodging shared responsibility for their stewardship in
the bureaucracy was suffi cient. ese principles had to be connected
to the realities of current political life. Principles held only as ab-
stractions could not provide the energy and excitement for a renewal
of public administration. Public administration is a clinical practice.
As mentioned earlier in this essay, one of the proposed reforms that
especially intrigued Storing was the creation of a senior civil service.
But Storing was also mindful of the important role of education
in this recovery and renewal process. “Unquestionably,” Storing
argued, “if our nation requires leadership, including administrative
leadership, we had better give more and deeper consideration to the
education of our leaders than we have done” (1963, 84).
While Storing did not set forth a curriculum for bureaucrats, the
direction that such a curriculum might take is clear from his views
on the role of administrators in governing and from his critique of
the two accepted criteria of successful administrative work: technical
competence and subservience to the popular will. Storing observed
that “it is where these standards are unavailable, or contradictory,
or insuffi cient that [an administrator] meets his most diffi cult and
highest test” (1964a, 46). So what is the best way to educate ad-
ministrators for the exercise of discretion, especially for the kind of
political discretion characteristic of the closet statesmen? e answer
for Storing might take a variety of forms. For example, Storing ob-
served that the study of Supreme Court decisions “will sharpen and
deepen the [bureaucrat’s] practical grasp on the complex and some-
times ambiguous political principles that provide most of the ethical
ground and substance of their work as American public administra-
tors” (Rohr 1978, vi.). Because Storing was not a legal positivist,
he believed that law constitutes “the normative horizon, or context,
from which public administration must take its bearings.” For Stor-
ing, the interpretation of law required refl ection on the purposes
632 Public Administration Review • July | August 2010
of the law, and hence on questions of justice and right (Clor 1980,
2). But the opportunity to refl ect on justice and right were also
provided for Storing by the writings of the Anti-Federalists and
black Americans, a major reason he gave for assembling collections
of their readings. One consequence of Storing’s approach would be
a greater focus in American schools of public administration on the
thoughtful and critical study of constitutional law, political history,
political theory, and political biography, at the expense of reduc-
ing the curricular role of generic courses that ignore the diff erence
between public and private administration and the “systems science”
approach, whether it be policy analysis, decision making, budgeting,
personnel management, information management, or any number
of other subjects.
An important opportunity for Storing to regenerate interest in
public administration was provided by the civil rights movement of
his day. e movement posed the question of how we can construct
an enduring devotion to the principle of e pluribus unum without
losing the identity of the parts. is was a central theme of his study
of the founding, of constitutional law, and public administration.
In the introduction to his collection of political writings by black
Americans, Storing argued that social and political thought ought
“to aim to help men fi nd their way into broader and higher levels of
signifi cance.” e aim should be, however, “not to abandon the nar-
rower particular associations but rather by sustaining their integrity
and exploring their implications, to enrich and elevate the whole
community.” Storing observed that W. E. B. Du Bois’s writings raise
basic questions about the foundations of American government and
politics, and even about the accepted foundations of politics in the
modern world (1970, 11–12). In his preface to What Country Have
I? Storing turns to Du Bois for guidance in identifying what is ulti-
mately important in our work as teachers and scholars (1970, vi–vii).
Du Bois described the African American as “a sort of seventh son,
born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American
world. . . . . One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro;
two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring
ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from
being torn asunder.” Storing observes that “Du Bois knew that all
men live within their veils of prejudice, convention and particular-
ity, just as, at the same time, all thoughtful men reach out for a
world beyond”:
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line
I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling
men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From the
caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth
and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius
and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no
scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above
the Veil. (Du Bois 1903, 109; emphasis added)
Storing cited Du Bois, fi rst, because he stood “among the notewor-
thy makers and critics of the American regime,” thus shedding light
on our eff orts to reconcile the political parts with the whole. But he
praised Du Bois also because he stood among “those who seek to
understand men and their relations with one another. . . . a teacher
of all who aspire to wed Truth and dwell above the Veil” (Storing
1970, 11–12). Du Bois was an exemplar for Storing, both for what
he taught us about living together as members of a common politi-
cal community and for what he taught about being human. No less
can be said of Storing’s contributions as a teacher and as a scholar
of public administration. e nobility of public service ultimately
fi nds expression in the lives of men and women of noble character
who devote their lives of service and teaching to balancing the ten-
sions inherent in the foundations of America’s system of democratic
governance.
Notes
1. In preparing this article, we have drawn heavily from Kent Kirwan’s (1981)
earlier summary of Herbert Storing’s contributions to public administration.
2. In summarizing Storing’s teachings, we have drawn on the following sources:
Storing (1962, 1963, 1964a, 1964b, 1970, 1980, 1981).
3. For an excellent extended discussion of the importance of the judicial model of
reasoning to administrative practice, see Green (2002).
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