ABSTRACT
The High Noon of American public administration orthodoxy resides in President Franklin Roosevelt’s masterful effort to shape, define, and craft a vast administrative system of government that allowed the executive branch to play a more direct and central role in the economic, social, and political lives of the American people. The nation’s 32nd president took office in 1933 promising a New Deal for the nation. Applying the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes, Roosevelt abandoned Adam Smith’s invisible hand theory and expanded the size, role, and responsibility of the U.S. federal government in an effort to establish a political and administrative infrastructure designed to tackle the economic devastation caused by the Great Depression. One of the most interesting and often underappreciated legacies of the
Roosevelt administration is the president’s reliance on public administration scholars to aid in the creation, development, and maintenance of a growing, more responsive, more demanding, more involved federal government. Louis Brownlow, Arthur Buck, Robert Cushman, James Fesler, Luther Gulick, Joseph Harris, James Hart, Arthur MacMahon, Harvey Mansfield, Sr., Charles Merriam, Floyd Reeves, and Leonard D. White all contributed great knowledge and expertise to the Roosevelt administration. Just as importantly, their individual and collective experiences within the executive branch fundamentally transformed how this distinguished group of scholars was able to contribute and advance the theoretical and practical foundations of public administration, democratic governance, and the intellectual history of the field as their academic careers progressed. The President’s Committee on Administrative Management is but one noteworthy example of how this generation of public administration academics contributed to the practice of managing the federal government. Herbert Kaufman has often addressed the impact of the New Deal period
on the fields of public administration and political science. On the 70th Anniversary of the Brownlow Report, Kaufman reviewed the Committee’s fourth paper, Problems of Administrative Management, which was co-authored by
“The (2007, p. 1046). The field of U.S. public administration generally agrees with this assessment because we continue to study and engage the works of scholars who contributed to the New Deal era not only because they add to our intellectual history but more importantly because these collective ideas speak to some of the most fundamental issues that continue to affect administrative management in complex public organizations. Exploring the intellectual significance of Roosevelt’s efforts to transform
the workings of the federal government into what would become the modern administrative state is a critical piece of the intellectual history of U.S. public administration (Fesler, 1987; Karl, 1963; Newbold and Rosenbloom, 2007; Polenberg, 1966; Rosenbloom et al., 2015; Schlesinger, 1978; Stillman, 1988). From the time President Roosevelt submitted the Final Report of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management to Congress in January 1937, formally entitled Administrative Management in the Government of the United States, it became clear that the executive branch of American government was going to become a more prominent actor within the management of the nation’s government and within the development and implementation of national policy initiatives. As such, this effort established the Executive Office of the President in 1939 and “fundamentally transformed the presidency from a weak office with a few staff assistants to what we know it as today, that is, one of the most powerful chief executive positions in the world” (Stillman, 1988, p. 135). Chaired by Louis Brownlow with the support of Charles Merriam and
Luther Gulick, the President’s Committee on Administrative Management sought to create the type of infrastructure necessary for Roosevelt to implement a vast portion of his New Deal agenda. The public administration and political science academic communities have recognized the Final Report of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management as making significant contributions to the development of executive branch dynamics, executive leadership, and executive organization (Denhardt, 1995; Karl, 1963; Rohr, 1986; Rosenbloom et al., 2015). The five central recommendations that scholars rely on most when describing how this study influenced the development of contemporary administrative management include: 1) expanding the White House staff; 2) reorganizing the executive branch; 3) strengthening managerial agencies; 4) expanding the merit system in the federal government; and 5) increasing accountability standards on behalf of the executive to Congress (Brownlow et al., 1937). From 1937 to 2006, what remained surprisingly overlooked within the
intellectual history of American public administration and to a large extent political science were the five accompanying papers that were part of the official record associated with the President’s Committee on Administrative Management. As Newbold and Terry (2006) explain, the Final Report of the Committee did not occur in a vacuum and its recommendations were largely
man-the constitutional traditions of American government. These five studies focused on (1) personnel management; (2) fiscal management; (3) independent regulatory commissions; (4) administrative management; and (5) rule-making and the preparation of proposed legislative measures by administrative departments. Taken together, these official government documents constituted nearly
300 pages of text and almost all of the recommendations and analyses found within the Final Report that President Roosevelt submitted to Congress are derived from these five papers. The U.S. Government Printing Office printed copies of each paper and sold them for 15 to 25 cents apiece. Moreover, each of these papers can be found within the government documents section of any major U.S. library. Newbold and Terry’s exploration of these overlooked papers, which constitutes the complete story of how the Brownlow Project’s Final Report came to its final recommendations, not only enriches the intellectual history of U.S. public administration but also illustrates that this effort of governmental reform encompassed much more than managerial recommendations for how to improve executive branch organization and empower the American president. On the 70th Anniversary of the Brownlow Project, Peri Arnold reflected
on Robert Cushman’s analysis of independent regulatory commissions and observed the following: “Today, far from being just an interesting episode in American public administration, its work on regulation, as much as its work on executive organization, heralded and enabled a new era of presidential administration” (2007, p. 1039). This new era of executive administration is also one that transformed U.S. public administration in fundamental ways, working to establish both an increasingly powerful president and administrative state. As David Rosenbloom (2000) has correctly shown, however, this effort also motivated Congress beginning in 1946 to create a more comprehensive, wide-ranging role for the legislative branch in the management and support of the federal government and its administrative agencies. The Brownlow Project ironically was also responsible for establishing a legislatively oriented approach to U.S. public administration. The unifying theme of the President’s Committee on Administrative
Management is its collective emphasis on how to improve democratic governance within the American republic. The Committee’s effort in this regard relates directly to how and why a Constitutional School is central to U.S. public administration theory and practice. The purpose of a Constitutional School of U.S. public administration is to demonstrate how the constitutional fabric of the nation serves as the bedrock of American government and administration (Newbold, 2010). Throughout the Brownlow Project, the Committee members relied on Federalist 70 as the constitutional justification to expand executive responsibility and executive function. Alexander Hamilton maintained that unity in the executive created the framework
becomes, the more likely he is able to address and solve key problems facing the management of government and of the country. The authors of the Brownlow Project, moreover, were emphatic in their understanding that the Constitution and the nation’s founding documents serve as the foundation for how to begin solving some of the most critical managerial problems facing the nation. Almost every recommendation the Committee made in its Final Report and in the supplemental research that directed the Committee as a whole was grounded in the ideas espoused by Hamilton in Federalist 70. The most important lesson to ascertain from Newbold and Terry’s
exploration of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management is that the Final Report championed by President Roosevelt was not just about improving executive branch management as almost all of the literature claims was the central contribution of this groundbreaking study. That was certainly key, but the Committee members were even more concerned with improving the constitutional infrastructure of the second branch of government in such a way that would enable the executive to manage the needs of the nation more efficiently and responsively. The Constitutional School encourages “scholars and practitioners to
engage, debate, and write on issues that are significant to the constitutional heritage of the United States, its democratic institutions, and its administrative agencies” (Newbold, 2010, p. 544). Newbold and Terry’s article supports this very mission. It highlights the forgotten intellectual history of one of the most important periods in the development of U.S. public administration and in doing so provides the field with a rich, comprehensive example of how and why constitutional tradition and democratic values are the most important elements of public sector governance and of efforts to reform the practice of public management.
