ABSTRACT
This chapter approaches the theme of professionalism from the perspective of a "crisis in legitimacy" in the institution of Public Administration. The cloud of illegitimacy that hangs over administrative activities presents public service professionals with a problem that is serious and challenging. The professional problem is also a constitutional problem because the illegitimacy can be traced to a fundamental conflict between the origins of the theory of American Public Administration and the pre-eminent symbol of legitimacy in American politics, the Constitution of the United States. The chapter presents in two parts: a statement of the political theory of the Constitution and a statement of the constitutional theory of Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow, the two leading architects of classical Public Administration. The origins of Public Administration theory in the United States can be traced to the civil service reform movement of the final third of the nineteenth century.
