ABSTRACT
Good government is dependent upon good administration. The framers of the American Constitution elaborated on this great theme throughout The Federalist Papers noting in the 68th entry, “The true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration” (Cooke, 1961, p. 461). The Constitution and the rule of law are the central legitimating forces that hold the American administrative state together. As the field of U.S. public administration has transitioned into one that focuses more on scientific enquiry, the application and reliance on quantitative analysis and statistical methods to determine governmental efficiency and effectiveness, the incorporation of business norms and practices into public sector management, and the contracting out of public goods and services to third party and private sector corporations, we find that there is less attention in the literature and in the field’s doctoral education for how democratic norms and values work to conserve the constitutional integrity of the American state and its public institutions (Newbold & Rosenbloom, 2014). In what many view as a modern classic, Ronald Moe and Robert Gil-
mour’s (1995) article underscoring public administration’s neglected appreciation for how the rule of law serves as the intellectual core of public sector governance is especially important for the institutional and intellectual integrity of the Constitutional School. Similarly, we believe that grounding public administration in the rule of law and constitutional tradition ensures better government and better administration. Moe and Gilmour challenged the field to focus more on the intersection between public law and public administration and less on trying to apply “glib aphorisms” from other disciplines in an effort to create “ersatz theory.” In other words, applying ideas and theories from other intellectual disciplines to public administration just because they sound good is a faulty exercise, because too often what sounds impressive in theory only leads to disappointment and frustration in practice. The challenge of applying management theories from other disciplines to U.S. public administration is that our legitimacy, our heritage is grounded in the rule of law and democratic-constitutionalism. With the possible exception of political science, no other field in the social sciences can claim this legacy.
