The Study of Administration
Author(s): Woodrow Wilson
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Jun., 1887), pp. 197-222
Published by: The Academy of Political Science
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Volume II.] June, 1887. [Number2.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
QUARTERLY.
THE STUDY OF ADMINISTRATION.
J SUPPOSE that no practical science is ever studied where
1there is no need to know it. The very fact, therefore, that the
eminently practical science of administration is finding its way
into college courses in this country would prove that this country
needs to know more about administration, were such proof of
the fact required to make out a case. It need not be said, how-
ever, that we do not look into college programmes for proof of
this fact. It is a thing almost taken for granted among us, that
the present movement called civil service reform must, after the
accomplishment of its first purpose, expand into efforts to im-
prove, not the personnel only, but also the organization and
methods of our government offices: because it is plain that
their organization and methods need improvement only less
than their personnel. It is the object of administrative study
to discover, first, what government can properly and success-
fully do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with
the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost
either of money or of energy. On both these points there is
obviously much need of light among us; and only careful study
can supply that light.
Before entering on that study, however, it is needful:
I. To take some account of what others have done in the
same line; that is to say, of the history of the study.
II. To ascertain just what is its subject-matter.
III. To determine just what are the best methods by which
to develop it, and the most clarifying political conceptions to
carry with us into it.
I98 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY. [VOL. II.
Unless we know and settle these things, we shall set out with-
out chart or compass.
The science of administration is the latest fruit of that study
of the science of politics which was begun some twenty-two hun-
dred years ago. It is a birth of our own century, almost of our
own generation.
Why was it so late in coming? Why did it wait till this too
busy century of ours to demand attention for itself ? Adminis-
tration is the most obvious part of government; it is govern-
ment in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most
visible side of government, and is of course as old as govern-
ment itself. It is government in action, and one might very
naturally expect to find that government in action had arrested
the attention and provoked the scrutiny of writers of politics
very early in the history of systematic thought.
But such was not the case. No one wrote systematically of
administration as a branch of the science of government until
the present century had passed its first youth and had begun
to put forth its characteristic flower of systematic knowledge.
Up to our own day all the political writers whom we now read
had thought, argued, dogmatized only about the constitution of
government; about the nature of the state, the essence and seat
of sovereignty, popular power and kingly prerogative; about the
greatest meanings lying at the heart of government, and the
high ends set before the purpose of government by man's nature
and man's aims. The central field of controversy was that great
field of theory in which monarchy rode tilt against democracy,
in which oligarchy would have built for itself strongholds of
privilege, and in which tyranny sought opportunity to make
good its claim to receive submission from all competitors.
Amidst this high warfare of principles, administration could
command no pause for its own consideration. The question
was always: Who shall make law, and what shall that law be?
The other question, how law should be administered with
enlightenment, with equity, with speed, and without friction,
No. 2.] THE STUDY OF ADMINISTRATIOA. 199
was put aside as " practical detail " which clerks could arrange
after doctors had agreed upon principles.
That political philosophy took this direction was of course no
accident, no chance preference or perverse whim of political
philosophers. The philosophy of any time is, as Hegel says,
" nothing but the spirit of that time expressed in abstract
thought"; and political philosophy, like philosophy of every
other kind, has only held up the mirror to contemporary affairs.
The trouble in early times was almost altogether about the
constitution of government; and consequently that was what
engrossed men's thoughts. There was little or no trouble about
administration, - at least little that was heeded by adminis-
trators. The functions of government were simple, because
life itself was simple. Government went about imperatively
and compelled men, without thought of consulting their wishes.
There was no complex system of public revenues and public
debts to puzzle financiers; there were, consequently, no finan-
ciers to be puzzled. No one who possessed power was long at
a loss how to use it. The great and only question was: Who
shall possess it? Populations were of manageable numbers;
property was of simple sorts. There were plenty of farms, but
no stocks and bonds: more cattle than vested interests.
I have said that all this was true of "early times"; but it was
substantially true also of comparatively late times. One does
not have to look back of the last century for the beginnings of
the present complexities of trade and perplexities of commer-
cial speculation, nor for the portentous birth of national debts.
Good Queen Bess, doubtless, thought that the monopolies of the
sixteenth century were hard enough to handle without burning
her hands; but they are not remembered in the presence of the
giant monopolies of the nineteenth century. When Blackstone
lamented that corporations had no bodies to be kicked and no
souls to be damned, he was anticipating the proper time for
such regrets by full a century. The perennial discords between
master and workmen which now so often disturb industrial soci-
ety beg-an before the Black Death and the Statute of Laborers;
but never before our own day did they assume such ominous
200 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY. [VOL. II.
proportions as they wear now. In brief, if difficulties of gov-
ernmental action are to be seen gathering in other centuries,
they are to be seen culminating in our own.
This is the reason why administrative tasks have nowadays
to be so studiously and systematically adjusted to carefully
tested standards of policy, the reason why we are having now
what we never had before, a science of administration. The
weightier debates of constitutional principle are even yet by no
means concluded; but they are no longer of more immediate
practical moment than questions of administration. It is get-
ting to be harder to ran a constitution than to frame one.
Here is Mr. Bagehot's graphic, whimsical way of depicting
the difference between the old and the new in administration:
In early times, when a despot wishes to govern a distant province,
he sends down a satrap on a grand horse, and other people on littlc
horses; and very little is heard of the satrap again unless he send back
some of the little people to tell what he has been doing. No great
labour of superintendence is possible. Common rumour and casual re-
port are the sources of intelligence. If it seems certain that the province
is in a bad state, satrap No. i is recalled, and satrap No. 2 sent out in
his stead. In civilized countries the process is different. You erect
a bureau in the province you want to govern; you make it write letters
and copy letters; it sends home eight reports per diem to the head
bureau in St. Petersburg. Nobody does a sum in the province without
some one doing the same sum in the capital, to " check" him, and see
that he does it correctly. The consequence of this is, to throw on the
heads of departments an amount of reading and labour which can only
be accomplished by the greatest natural aptitude, the most efficient
training, the most firm and regular industry.'
There is scarcely a single duty of government which was
once simple which is not now complex; government once had
but a few masters; it now has scores of masters. Majorities
formerly only underwent government; they now conduct gov-
ernment. Where government once might follow the whims of
a court, it must now follow the views of a nation.
And those views are steadily widening to new conceptions of
state duty; so that, at the same time that the functions of gov-
ernment are every day becoming more complex and difficult,
1 Essay on Sir William Pitt.
No. 2.] THE STUDY OF ADMINISTRATION. 201
they are also vastly multiplying in number. Administration
is everywhere putting its hands to new undertakings. The
utility, cheapness, and success of the government's postal ser-
vice, for instance, point towards the early establishment of
governmental control of the telegraph system. Or, even if
our government is not to follow the lead of the governments
of Europe in buying or building both telegraph and railroad
lines, no one can doubt that in some way it must make itself
master of masterful corporations. The creation of national
commissioners of railroads, in addition to the older state com-
missions, involves a very important and delicate extension of
administrative functions. Whatever hold of authority state or
federal governments are to take upon corporations, there must
follow cares and responsibilities which will require not a little
wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Such things must be
studied in order to be well done. And these, as I have said,
are only a few of the doors which are being opened to offices
of government. The idea of the state and the consequent
ideal of its duty are undergoing noteworthy change; and " the
idea of the state is the conscience of administration." Seeing
every day new things which the state ought to do, the next
thing is to see clearly how it ought to do them.
This is why there should be a science of administration
which shall seek to straighten the paths of government, to
make its business less unbusinesslike, to strengthen and purify
its organization, and to crown its duties with dutifulness. This
is one reason why there is such a science.
But where has this science grown up? Surely not on this
side the sea. Not much impartial scientific method is to be
discerned in our administrative practices. The poisonous
atmosphere of city government, the crooked secrets of state
administration, the confusion, sinecurism, and corruption ever
and again discovered in the bureaux at Washington forbid us
to believe that any clear conceptions of what constitutes good
administration are as yet very widely current in the United
States. No; American writers have hitherto taken no very
important part in the advancement of this science. It has
202 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY. [VOL. II.
found its doctors in Europe. It is not of our making; it is
a foreign science, speaking very little of the language of
English or American principle. It employs only foreign
tongues; it utters none but what are to our minds alien ideas.
Its aims, its examples, its conditions, are almost exclusively
grounded in the histories of foreign races, in the precedents
of foreign systems, in the lessons of foreign revolutions. It
has been developed by French and German professors, and is
consequently in all parts adapted to the needs of a compact
state, and made to fit highly centralized forms of government;
whereas, to answer our purposes, it must be adapted, not to
a simple and compact, but to a complex and multiform state,
and made to fit highly decentralized forms of government. If
we would employ it, we must Americanize it, and that not
formally, in language merely, but radically, in thought, prin-
ciple, and aim as well. It must learn our constitutions by
heart; must get the bureaucratic fever out of its veins; must
inhale much free American air.
If an explanation be sought why a science manifestly so sus-
ceptible of being made useful to all governments alike should
have received attention first in Europe, where government has
long been a monopoly, rather than in England or the United
States, where government has long been a common franchise,
the reason will doubtless be found to be twofold: first, that
in Europe, just because government was independent of popular
assent, there was more governing to be done; and, second, that
the desire to keep government a monopoly made the monopo-
lists interested in discovering the least irritating means of
governing. They were, besides, few enough to adopt means
promptly.
It will be instructive to look into this matter a little more
closely. In speaking of European governments I do not, of
course, include England. She has not refused to change with
the times. She has simply tempered the severity of the transi-
tion from a polity of aristocratic privilege to a system of demo-
cratic power by slow measures of constitutional reform which,
without preventing revolution, has confined it to paths of peace.
No. 2.] THE STUDY OF ADMINISTRATIONr. 203
But the countries of the continent for a long time desperately
struggled against all change, and would have diverted revolu-
tion by softening the asperities of absolute government. They
sought so to perfect tlleir machinery as to destroy all wearing
friction, so to sweeten their methods with consideration for the
interests of the governed as to placate all hindering hatred,
and so assiduously and opportunely to offer their aid to all
classes of undertakings as to render themselves indispensable
to the industrious. They did at last give the people constitu-
tions and the franchise; but even after that they obtained
leave to continue despotic by becoming paternal. They made
themselves too efficient to be dispensed with, too smoothly
operative to be noticed, too enlightened to be inconsiderately
questioned, too benevolent to be suspected, too powerful to
be coped with. All this has required study; and they have
closely studied it.
On this side the sea we, the while, had known no great diffi-
culties of government. With a new country, in which there
was room and remunerative employment for everybody, with
liberal principles of government and unlimited skill in practical
politics, we were long exempted from the need of being anx-
iously careful about plans and methods of administration. We
have naturally been slow to see the use or significance of those
many volumes of learned researeh and painstaking examination
into the ways and means of conducting government which the
presses of Europe have been sending to our libraries. Like a
lusty child, government with us has expanded in nature and
grown great in stature, but has also become awkward in move-
ment. The vigor and increase of its life has been altogether
out of proporticn to its skill in living. It has gained strength,
but it has not acquired deportment. Great, therefore, as has
been our advantage over the countries of Europe in point of
ease and health of constitutional development, now that the
time for more careful administrative adjustments and larger
administrative knowledge has come to us, we are at a signal
disadvantage as compared with the transatlantic nations; and
this for reasons which I shall try to make clear.
204 POLITICAL SCELWCE QUARTERLY. [VOL. II.
Judging by the constitutional histories of the chief nations
of the modern world, there may be said to be three periods of
growth through which government has passed in all the most
highly developed of existing systems, and through which it
promises to pass in all the rest. The first of these periods is
that of absolute rulers, and of an administrative system adapted
to absolute rule; the second is that in which constitutions are
framed to do away with absolute rulers and substitute popular
control, and in which administration is neglected for these
higher concerns; and the third is that in which the sovereign
people undertake to develop administration under this new con-
stitution which has brought them into power.
Those governments are now in the lead in administrative
practice which had rulers still absolute but also enlightened
when those modern days of political illumination came in which
it was made evident to all but the blind that governors are prop-
erly only the servants of the governed. In such governments
administration has been organized to subserve the general weal
with the simplicity and effectiveness vouchsafed only to the
undertakings of a single will.
Such was the case in Prussia, for instance, where administra-
tion has been most studied and most nearly perfected. Frederic
the Great, stern and masterful as was his rule, still sincerely
professed to regard himself as only the chief servant of the
state, to consider his great office a public trust; and it was he
who, building upon the foundations laid by his father, began to
organize the public service of Prussia as in very earnest a ser-
vice of the public. His no less absolute successor, Frederic
William III, under the inspiration of Stein, again, in his turn,
advanced the work still further, planning many of the broader
structural features which give firmness and form to Prussian
administration to-day. Almost the whole of the admirable sys-
tem has been developed by kingly initiative.
Of similar origin was the practice, if not the plan, of modern
French administration, with its symmetrical divisions of terri-
tory and its orderly gradations of office. The days of the
Revolution - of the Constituent Assembly - were days of
No. 2.] THE STUDY OF ADMINISTRATION. 205
constitution-writizg, but they can hardly be called days of
constitution-makintg. The Revolution heralded a period of con-
stitutional development,-the entrance of France upon the sec-
ond of those periods which I have enumerated, - but it did not
itself inaugurate such a period. It interrupted and unsettled
absolutism, but did not destroy it. Napoleon succeeded the
monarchs of France, to exercise a power as unrestricted as they
had ever possessed.
The recasting of French administration by Napoleon is,
therefore, my second example of the perfecting of civil machin-
ery by the single will of an absolute ruler before the dawn of a
constitutional era. No corporate, popular will could ever have
effected arrangements such as those which Napoleon com-
manded. Arrangements so simple at the expense of local
prejudice, so logical in their indifference to popular choice,
might be decreed by a Constituent Assembly, but could be
established only by the unlimited authority of a despot. The
system of the year VIII was ruthlessly thorough and heartlessly
perfect. It was, besides, in large part, a return to the despotism
that
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