ABSTRACT
The effort to create a science of public administration has often led to the formulation of universal laws or, more commonly, to the assertion that such universal laws could be formulated for public administration. The basic problems of public administration as a discipline and as a potential science are much wider than the problems of mere administration. The first difficulty of constructing a science of public administration stems from the frequent impossibility of excluding normative considerations from the problems of public administration. A second major problem stems from the inescapable fact that a science of public administration must be a study of certain aspects of human behavior. There can be no truly universal generalizations about public administration without a profound study of varying national and social characteristics impinging on public administration, to determine what aspects of public administration, if any, are truly independent of the national and social setting.
