ABSTRACT
The tradition of public administration in the United States is the griffin in the globe's menagerie of national managerial traditions: mythical and improbable, but fierce in demeanor and capable of occasional flight. All national traditions are shaped by strong and deep undercurrents peculiar to the national culture. When cultural currents are recognized and articulated by intellectuals, a society's brawn and brain unite in powerful forms. Traditions are born. Nowhere is this combination more evident than in the American tradition of public administration. In this chapter, the authors consider, first, those cultural characteristics that seem unique to the United States, and, second, the intellectualization of those characteristics by the nation's early political thinkers. Layering and striating all of the early American activity in drafting confederations and constitutions was the massive brilliance of the early American political elite, but particularly that of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
