No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The Progressive Origins of the Administrative State: Wilson, Goodnow, and Landis
Abstract
The American administrative state is a feature of the new liberalism
that is largely irreconcilable with the old, founding-era liberalism. At
its core, the administrative state, with its delegation of legislative
power to the bureaucracy, combination of functions within bureaucratic
agencies, and weakening of presidential control over administration
undercuts the separation-of-powers principle that is the base of the
founders' Constitution. The animating idea behind the features of the
administrative state is the separation of politics and administration,
which was championed by James Landis, the New-Deal architect of the
administrative state for President Franklin Roosevelt. The idea of
separating politics and administration, and the faith such a separation
requires in the objectivity of administrators, did not originate with
Landis or the New Deal but, instead, with the Progressives who had come a
generation earlier. Both Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow were pioneers in
advocating the separation of politics and administration, and made it the
centerpiece of their broad arguments for constitutional reform.
... texto norte-americano. Pestritto (2007) reflete que ambos autores defendiam a diferenciação da administração pública da atividade política para partes do governo tendo como fundamento a habilidade e a competência, e sendo antecedidos pelo contexto do sistema de distribuição de cargos ao partido vencedor de cada eleição, o que gerou alto nível de corrupção e ineficiência. Como forma empírica de descrever e analisar as instituições públicas, a temática despontou sobretudo a partir da década de 1970, marcada pelo estudo de Aberbach, Putnam e Rockman (1981). ...
... Apesar da política definir as tarefas da administração, não se deve permitir que aquela manipule os escritórios desta" (Wilson, 1887, p. 210, tradução nossa). Goodnow (1900), por sua vez, argumentou a necessidade de uma função administrativa com certa independência de considerações político-partidárias como pressuposto para se desenvolver um sistema administrativo de excelência e passível de confiança perante a sociedade, inspi- Goodnow (1900) elaboraram um pensamento compreensivo de crítica e reforma fundado na diferenciação do papel da administração para partes consideráveis do governo (Pestritto, 2007). ...
O relacionamento entre Política e Administração como tema de pesquisa empírica é explorado neste ensaio a fim refletir sobre as contribuições oferecidas à compreensão da administração pública brasileira. A fim de fornecer os contornos ou delimitações e a importância desta temática, o objetivo deste ensaio teórico é revisar criticamente as origens teóricas da política e sua interface com a administração, mostrando que esta é sucedida do exame de três agendas de pesquisa: o estudo das elites governamentais por Aberbach, Putnam e Rockman, a análise do balanço entre as funções desempenhadas e o controle hierárquico no governo por Svara e a investigação do relacionamento político-administrativo como barganhas ou acordos por Hood e Lodge. Os resultados e impactos no campo de pesquisa foram apresentados, bem como algumas possibilidades para analisar as instituições brasileiras.
... 42 The second wave occurred in the Progressive Era of social activism prior to World War I, especially propelled by the progressive views of the Woodrow Wilson administration (1913-21). 43 One theme was consumer protection, which began with the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The Act was stimulated by Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle, a narrative fiction that exposed the unsanitary practices in Chicago's meatpacking industry. ...
... Notwithstanding this nuance, however, both clearly strived to disentangle administration from politics, favoring a subtle but robust dichotomy between the two. In doing so, they had not just a theoretical but above all a practical aim: reforming the US government and building an administrative state (O'Toole, 1987;Pestritto, 2005Pestritto, , 2007. ...
... The founding fathers of the US constitution designed a system that intentionally did not include such division. The system they designed placed an elected representative, the President, in charge of the executive branch of government (Pestritto, 2007). Doing so insinuates a greater demand for accountability in the oversight of the execution of the government's work. ...
... The third type of political influence moves beyond individual preferences and into the heart of the false dichotomy. The framers of the U.S. constitution recognized that politics was a critical component of public administration since the head of the branch of government responsible for implementation (executive) was popularly elected (Pestritto, 2007). This provided a form of accountability that advanced the underscoring principles of a constitutional republic. ...
The United States places great emphasis on the public administration–politics dichotomy, but what happens to public management when the dichotomy breaks down? The authors critically evaluate the public management frameworks, New Public Management and New Public Governance, in the context of two major public management failures: the U.S. State of Illinois Budget Impasse during 2015–2017 and the COVID-19 Pandemic. A definition of public management failure is proffered, and both public management frameworks are found to have polarized and opposing views on whether process or outcome should have priority in crisis. We question whether the two major seminal theories in our field are still generalizable when their assumptions about the dichotomy and political neutrality are challenged in times of crises. The polarized perspectives were found to contribute to the public management failures. Ultimately, both frameworks were found to minimize the political influences that public administration and public management operate under, leaving a need for a more holistic and realistic framework.
... On the other hand, it is claimed that Wilson was influenced by German Richard T. Ely when he was doing his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins University and he developed his views reading German theoreticians Hegel and Bluntschli. Wilson, who read extensively through Hegel and other German researchers from Hegel's philosophy, was the most influenced by Bluntschli (Pestritto 2007). ...
Women constitute an indispensable force in the quest for national development of any nation. In the developed nations, women have been able to play this important role. However, in Nigeria, women are still relegated to the background as they lack the educational, economic and political power necessary to actualize their innate potentials. The paper examines the important place of women education in the empowerment of women to enable them contribute their quota to national development. The study relied solely on secondary data and this was analysed using content analysis. The paper shows that women access to education is still low as the gender disparity in the enrolment of women into primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions is widening over the years. These problems are further compounded by the high rate of girls’ dropout and failure among women that sat for ‘O’ Level examination. The implication is that many of them lacked the required minimum numbers of credits that qualify them to enrol or get admission into the tertiary institutions. The paper postulates that more pro-active actions need to be taken by the government and other stakeholders to ensure gender parity in education through special child girls education, scholarships and effective implementation of policies and programmes geared towards this.
... On the other hand, it is claimed that Wilson was influenced by German Richard T. Ely when he was doing his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins University and he developed his views reading German theoreticians Hegel and Bluntschli. Wilson, who read extensively through Hegel and other German researchers from Hegel's philosophy, was the most influenced by Bluntschli (Pestritto 2007). ...
The emergence of the discipline of public administration had long been attributed to Wilson. Martin (1987 and 1988) manifested that the discipline originated in France and consequently passed to USA. However, Wilson's 1887 article "The Study of Administration" points to the fact that he based the administration-politics dichotomy on German Bluntschli. This showed that it was essential to analyze the German influence on and, in particular, Bluntschli's contribution to the birth of the discipline of public administration. The present study focuses on Seckendorf, Wolff, Hegel and Stein's theoretical contributions to the emergence of public administration in Europe and intends to investigate each of them with a particular emphasis on Bluntschli's influence. It has appeared that the politics-administration dichotomy, which had a great effect on Wilson, was prevalent in the works of Bluntschli, in which the term primary is used for politics to refer to the former and secondary for administration to refer to the latter. Although politics administration difference was expressed in the French literature of public administration, it was concluded that the German effect was significant in the emergence of public administration and its spread to USA.
Centering administration in U.S. jails and prisons as a case study, we review diverse literature and undertake a conceptual analysis of balancing politics and administration as a constitutional principle, which establishes guidance and legitimacy for exercising administrative discretion. This legal framework for administrative decision-making, through a democratic constitutionalist lens as a basis for public sector ethics, increases capacity to protect constitutional and statutory rights, prevent liability, and strengthen health and safety for people who are working or incarcerated in prisons or jails. Administrative governance within jails and prisons necessitates constitutionally competent and judicially responsive policy and management experts. The judiciary's capacity to shape policy and management within local, state, and federal carceral contexts is particularly significant for people in government custody who are constitutionally guaranteed protection from harm, and some degree of health care. Inequitable reliance on incarceration; competing stakeholder interests; the force of the courts and the judiciary; minimal standards lacking clear administrative guidance; and related policy challenges make explicit the critical role of leveraging soft power as part of duty-based ethics to uphold the Constitution.
A bstract
This research note addresses a gap in the public administration literature by arguing that a political Darwinism was present in the intellectual origins of American administrative theory. By examining the arguments of Woodrow Wilson, this article demonstrates that Darwinism complemented the German political thought that contributed to the establishment of America’s administrative state. The application of Darwinian evolutionary biology to politics was a vital element of Wilson’s reconceptualization of the state as a living organism. Darwinism was a key rhetorical tool employed by Wilson in his argument against the Constitution’s separation of powers. This note finds that Darwinism was present in the early stages of public administration theory in Wilson’s argumentation and persists today in the public administration literature. It concludes by sketching out an agenda for further research on Darwinism’s influence on public administration.
This essay examines certain epistemic problems facing administrative states’ efforts to draft efficient regulations for their societies. I argue that a basic feature of the administrative state’s authority, namely its monopoly over the production of legally binding rules for all members of a geographically defined society, creates epistemic problems that impede efficient rule-making. Specifically, the administrative state’s monopoly over the production of legally binding rules prevents multiple public policies from being simultaneously implemented and compared. The resulting singularity of administrative states’ regulatory decisions prevents observation of the counterfactual effects of policies that were possible but which were not implemented. The absence of observable policy counterfactuals frustrates efforts to assess the efficiency of administrative states’ decisions, as it is impossible to determine whether different policies would have generated greater benefits at lower cost than the policy the state implemented. As these epistemic problems are derived from the singularity of administrative states’ decisions, they exist independently of principal agent problems, suboptimal incentives, or the preferences and capabilities of administrative personnel.
Following the Roosevelt administration’s implementation of New Deal programs in the 1930s, the federal courts began to interpret the Constitution in a way that accommodated the rise of the “administrative state,” and bureaucratic policymaking continues to persist as a central feature of American government today. This essay submits, however, that the three pillars supporting the administrative state—the congressional delegation of Article I powers to the executive branch, the combination of powers within individual administrative entities, and the insulation of administrators from political control—might be reconsidered by the courts in the near future. After showing that the constitutionality of the administrative state has come under recent judicial scrutiny, the essay turns to the administrative law principle of deference, and argues that a reassessment of the Chevron doctrine seems imminent. Finally, the essay examines federal courts’ heavy use of “hard look” review as a means of curtailing agency discretion during recent administrations, and concludes that this judicial practice stands in uneasy tension with republican principles.
Contemporary critiques of the administrative state are closely bound up with the distinctively American doctrine that republican freedom requires that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers be exercised by separate and distinct branches of government. The burden of this essay is to argue that legislative delegation and judicial deference to the administrative state are necessary, or at least highly desirable, features of a democratic separation of powers regime. I begin by examining the historical and conceptual roots of the separation of powers doctrine, paying particular attention to the unique way in which it was adapted to fit the American case. I then examine three concerns that the resulting constitutional system raises about the republican freedom of those who are subject to it—which I call the accountability, legitimacy, and stability concerns—and argue that the administrative state is a useful, albeit imperfect, tool for reducing the unavoidable tension between these concerns. The thrust of this discussion is to push us away from “in principle” objections to the administrative state, and back toward the kinds of prudential considerations that are associated with ordinary liberal politics. More importantly, the aim of the essay is to encourage sober reflection on the real dangers that face the American constitutional system under current circumstances.
In 1989, the Cold War abruptly ended and it seemed as if the world was at last safe for democracy. But a spirit of uneasiness, discontent, and world-weariness soon arose and has persisted in Europe, in America, and elsewhere for two decades. To discern the meaning of this malaise we must investigate the nature of liberal democracy, says the author of this provocative book, and he undertakes to do so through a detailed investigation of the thinking of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville. Paul A. Rahe argues that these political thinkers anticipated the modern liberal republic's propensity to drift in the direction of "soft despotism"-a condition that arises within a democracy when paternalistic state power expands and gradually undermines the spirit of self-government. Such an eventuality, feared by Tocqueville in the nineteenth century, has now become a reality throughout the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. So Rahe asserts, and he explains what must be done to reverse this unfortunate trend.
Both critics and defenders of the modern American administrative state have recognized the influence of Hegelian ideas upon the American progressives. But existing scholarship on this connection has not delved into the institutional details of Hegelian political theory and its transformation in progressivism. This article traces the continuities and adaptations between Hegelian and American progressive theories of the administrative state through three conceptual pairs: individual rights and social welfare, civil society and the state, and legislation and execution. For both German Hegelian legal scholars and the American Hegelian progressives, these conceptual pairs staked out the basic normative and institutional tensions underlying the modern state. The progressives, however, gave these concepts a democratic interpretation, and thus sought to involve the public at multiple levels of the policy-making process. This Hegelian progressive theory provides a compelling basis for a public philosophy of the contemporary American state.
In recent decades, neo-republican philosophers have developed a theory of freedom as non-domination, which, they claim, is conceptually and analytically distinct from the “liberal” concept of freedom as non-interference. However, neo-republicans have intervened in constitutional debate almost exclusively in relation to structural issues of institutional competence, and have made little impact on the analytical jurisprudence of constitutional rights. While judicial review seems ill equipped to respond to the distributive dimensions of republican freedom, republicans like Richard Bellamy have argued that the whole edifice of countermajoritarian, strong-form judicial review is itself an affront to freedom as non-domination properly understood. Republican freedom, in this lens, is defined structurally, procedurally and politically rather than in relation to a definite set, concept or theory of rights that is put outside and beyond politics. And partly for this reason, there has been little commentary concerning how the theory of freedom as non-domination might inform constitutional-rights doctrine. This article will argue, first, that the neo-republican view can usefully inform constitutional-rights doctrine notwithstanding republican reservations concerning judicial power. Second, it will propose a number of specific ways in which the jurisprudence of constitutional rights might account for the central concerns of the republican idea.
In the last few decades a narrative of American political thought has emerged which attributes the transformation of the American regime over the last century to the Progressive movement. This narrative tells the story of the Founders versus the Progressives, and explains modern liberalism as a departure from the ideas of the Founders. This article argues that, on the whole, the Founders versus Progressives account is descriptively accurate. Nevertheless, there are important difficulties that the account has yet to explain adequately. The article proceeds to identify and explain one of these difficulties, namely the difference between old Progressivism and postmodern Progressivism. For the Founders versus Progressives account to offer a fully compelling explanation of developments in American political thought, it will have to explain how contemporary liberalism and postmodern Progressivism are related to the philosophy of the earlier Progressives.
This study examines the extent to which Goodnow's ideas about public administration were informed by Hegelian political philosophy. Hegel's reflections on the characteristics of the state and public administration came to Goodnow's attention from such scholars as John Burgess, Francis Lieber, Lorenz von Stein, Johann C. Bluntschli, and Rudolph von Gneist. Hegelian philosophy helped Goodnow to deal with the intellectual challenges of the progressive era. The article concludes with a discussion of Hegelian political philosophy as a source of inspiration for contemporary administrative ethics.
Among the plethora of public values, one special class is that of “regime values.” This notion plays a central role in the constitutional approach to public administration mainly developed by the late John A. Rohr. In this article, an attempt is made to assess the viability of Rohr’s concept of regime values and its applicability outside the United States. After brief overviews of the constitutional approach in general and Rohr’s use of the concept of regime values in particular, it is argued that Rohr’s conceptualizations of “regime” and “values” are too narrow and result in ambiguities within the concept of “regime values” itself. The applicability of the concept of “regime values” is unnecessarily affected by the typically American reference points Rohr uses and can best be improved, it is suggested, by treating “regime values” more frankly as an inherently normative concept.
The seminal work of Johann Caspar Bluntschli, a Swiss-born and German-trained scholar of public administration, should be known to a wider English-speaking readership. This article offers insights into Bluntschli's organic theory of the state, his concept of public administration, and his understanding of the politics-administration dichotomy. Considering Bluntschli's intellectual influence on classic American authors like Woodrow Wilson and Frank J. Goodnow, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the normative foundations of early American scholarship on public administration. It concludes with a discussion of organic state philosophy as a source of inspiration for contemporary administrative research and theory.
The American Progressive Movement argued for both a democratization of the political process and deference to expert administrators. Relying on the work of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the article endeavors to explore this tension and make some preliminary suggestions as to how it might be reconciled—at least in the eyes of its adherents—into a single democratic theory. Both Roosevelt and Wilson criticize the principles of the original Constitution for being insufficiently democratic and overly suspicious of the popular will, and they want to make public opinion a more direct force in national politics. Yet both are also suspicious of politics and its potential for corruption by “special interests,” and thus look for ways of empowering expert administrative agencies and insulating them from political influence. Wilson seems to understand the potential conflict between these two aims more than Roosevelt does, although both look to a popularized presidency as a means of reconciling consent and expertise.
Recent scholarship has linked the rise of the Progressive movement in America to the creation of an “administrative state”—a form of government where legislative, executive, and judicial powers are delegated into the hands of administrative agencies which compose a “headless fourth branch of government.” This form of government was largely constructed during the New Deal period. The influential legal theorist Roscoe Pound provides the paradoxical example of a Progressive who balked at the New Deal. While many commentators have concluded that Pound's opposition to the New Deal was based on a departure from his earlier Progressive thought, his opposition was in fact based on a consistent Progressive philosophy. Pound therefore provided a vision of an alternative administrative state, which would achieve the ends of the Progressive vision but without the means of the administrative state.
To what extent were Woodrow Wilson’s ideas about public administration informed by German organic political theory? Drawing on the writings of Wilson, Lorenz von Stein, and Johann K. Bluntschli on public administration, and comparing American and German primary sources, the author offers insights into Wilson’s general concept of public administration, as well as his understanding of the politics–administration dichotomy. With regard to current administrative research, this study underscores how the transfer of ideas profoundly contributes to advancing comparative public administration and helps clarify terminological difficulties and conflicting perspectives among diverse administrative science traditions.
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, a.k.a. 'the bank bailout bill,' engendered a fair degree of political controversy during and after its enactment but relatively little constitutional controversy. That is unfortunate, and at least a bit puzzling, because, as a matter of original meaning, the statute raises important constitutional questions along at least four dimensions: it is questionable whether Congress had the enumerated power to authorize the Treasury Department to purchase securities, the specific authorizations were sufficiently vague to raise serious questions under the nondelegation doctrine, the expansion of the powers of the Secretary of the Treasury under the statute make it quite possible that then-Secretary Henry Paulsen could not implement the Act in 2008 without a new appointment under the Appointments Clause, and President Bush’s unilateral decision to use some of the bank bailout money to subsidize automobile companies and unions reflects a truly stunning assertion of executive power. This essay, which is an extended version of remarks delivered on a panel on 'The Administrative State and the Constitution' as part of the Federalist Society’s February 27-28, 2009 student symposium entitled 'Separation of Powers and American Constitutionalism,' sketches these four legal problems with the EESA and relates them to broader themes regarding the place of the modern administrative state in the constitutional order.
In recent years, the failure of administrative agencies to implement congressional programs faithfully and effectively has called into question the wisdom of the central institutional innovations of the New Deal: the expansion of the regulatory state and the shift in power from the states to the federal government. In this Article, Professor Sunstein challenges the New Deal more fundamentally, examining not only the institutional changes themselves, but also the shift in constitutional commitments that underlay those reforms. Professor Sunstein identifies three aspects of New Deal constitutionalism: the rejection of the original constitutional commitment to checks and balances in favor of independent and insulated regulatory administration, the recognition of substantive entitlements beyond those protected at common law, and the abandonment of principles of federalism that vested regulatory authority in both the federal government and the states. Professor Sunstein argues that many of the present failures of regulatory administration - particularly the problems of agency capture and factionalism - can be traced to the New Deal's failure to incorporate the original constitutional commitment to checks and balances into regulatory administration. The remedy, he suggests, is to reinvigorate the commitment to checks and balances through a system of coordinated review of agency action that includes a strong supervisory role for each of the three branches of government - the executive, the judiciary, and Congress. In addition, Professor Sunstein maintains that the protection of new entitlements during the New Deal was a natural and justified outgrowth of the recognition by New Deal reformers that the common law itself favors some social interests over others. He suggests that this substantive aspect of the New Deal should be incorporated into modern public law, in which common law categories persist despite the insights of New Deal reformers. Finally, Professor Sunstein argues that the third aspect of New Deal constitutionalism - the emphasis on national rather than local control of regulatory issues - has been carried too far, depriving citizens of the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the debate over the terms of their social life.