Values for Public Administration Renewal

Values for Public Administration RenewalCreating the American State: The Moral Reformers and the Modern Administrative WorldThey Made by Richard Stillman,; Bureau Men, Settlement Women: Constructing PublicAdministration in the Progressive Era by Camilla Stivers; Building a Legislative-CenteredPublic Administration: Congress and the Administrative State-1946-1999 by David H.RosenbloomReview by: James A. SteverPublic Administration Review, Vol. 61, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2001), pp. 625-629Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/977622 .

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Book Reviews I Larry Luton, Editor

Values for Public Administration Renewal

James A. Stever, University of Cincinnati Richard Stillman II, Creating the American State: The Moral Reformers

and the Modern Administrative World They Made (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1998). 207 pp., $29.95 cloth.

Camilla Stivers, Bureau Men, Settlement Women: Constructing Public Ad- ministration in the Progressive Era (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kan- sas, 2000). 187 pp., $29.95 cloth.

David H. Rosenbloom, Building a Legislative-Centered Public Administra- tion: Congress and the Administrative State- 1946-1999. (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2000). 199 pp., $34.95 cloth.

Introduction Public administration did not fare

well during the last half of the twentieth century. Whereas during the first half, Progressive Era machine politics, depression, and world war seemed to catalyze the public administration community into greater heights of creativity and ingenuity, things changed slowly, then more noticeably during the latter half. American public administration entered the post-Progressive Era attempting to live off the intellectual capital generated by the Progres- sive founders. Lately, there are prom- ising signs of creativity that may end this interregnum era. Scholars of public administration are now searching for not only new governing theory but also new core values to energize the profession.

Three recent and notable attempts warrant the consideration of those in- terested in the renewal of the profession. Collectively considered, the books by Stillman, Stivers, and Rosenbloom bear some similarities. Each is written by an established scholar from the field. Each is well- researched, and each grounds the ar-

gument for renewal in twentieth-century history. Finally, each identifies values that could renew the field. How- ever, beyond these commonalities, similarities wane.

The Stillman book chronicles the lives of seven individuals whose dedi- cation, determination, and values con- tributed to the early twentieth-century state. Hence, renewal lies with strong individuals, tenacity, and moral values. The Stivers book compares and con- trasts the reform strategies of Progres- sive Era men who worked in various bureaus of municipal research with that of women who worked in settlement houses. Hence, women should be included in the renewal of twenty-first century public administration. The Rosenbloom book traces the development of congressional involvement in agency administration. Hence, the legislature must be a prominent feature of twenty-first century renewal.

One understandable response to the disagreements among three prominent authors is pessimism. Why should a public servant aspire to be professional when the so-called gurus of the pro-

fession disagree? Academic disagreement ran rampant in the post-Progres- sive Era, and this disagreement did not serve the profession well. Is this typi- cal post-Progressive academic wran- gling? Can anything be accomplished by reading three books written by aca- demicians who come to different con- clusions? I think so! Here's why.

One reason for reading these three books is that they serve notice that a new value base for the profession may be forming, different from the one that launched the profession over one hun- dred years ago. The old value base was not indigenous to America. Rather, the values that spawned the profession were substantially drawn from the European experience. Imagine the frustration of turn of the twentieth century reformers such as Woodrow Wil- son or Luther Gulick who were forced to rely upon foreign expertise and foreign experience. In contrast, the new value base identified by Stillman, Stivers, and Rosenbloom is a distinc- tively American value base. These three authors urge administrative renewal-reasoning wholly within the

James A. Stever is a professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. His research interests include administrative theory and state theory. His most recent book is The Path to Organizational Skepticism. Email: [email protected].

Book Reviews 625



context of the American historical experience. These authors do not rely on a twenty-first century analog of Henri Fayol. The very existence of these books suggests that in the next century, American experience, not the experience of other nations, will be the primary historical context for reasoning about the next wave of American reform.

A second reason for reading these books is that these authors are quite careful. In contrast to intellectuals who would acquire an audience by fanciful leaps of logic or by outra- geous premises, Stillman, Stivers, and Rosenbloom ground their arguments in the historical record. The reader will learn a good deal about the historical context of American public administration when reading these books. This is not to say that these authors provide us with a complete historical context; nor do they provide unassailable interpretation of the historical facts they consider. However, on balance, these books rest on a foundation crafted by meticulous historical research. The discerning reader can judge whether the individual authors have adequately interpreted the American historical context.

Finally, these authors provide di- vergent, but I think complementary, perspectives on what will likely be the value base of twenty-first century public administration. At one level, these are three very different books. Rich- ard Stillman reminds us that the American public service was constructed by principled individualists. Camilla Stivers stresses openness and inclusiveness. David Rosenbloom ob- serves the growing importance of legislative values for public administration. Moreover, each individual book will likely attract its own unique and loyal following. However, at another level, it would be a shame if scholars and practitioners of public administration allowed the impact of these three books to languish at that level. This would simply reinforce the

balkanization that exists within post- Progressive public administration. If the post-Progressive Era ever ends, one key stimulus for the termination will be the emergence of a value set that commands the allegiance of a ma- jority of public administration scholars and practitioners. Admittedly, the large and sprawling public administration community is not likely to march to the beat of a specific, har- monized value structure such as that crafted by each of these individual authors. However, it is plausible that the profession could be enhanced by a loose and mildly complementary set of values such as these three authors have collectively produced.

The review will now turn to the task of presenting each book and making critical comments for the ben- efit of prospective readers. It will then return to the primary question of this review: Do these books offer us a coherent set of public administration values capable not only of renewing the field, but also of providing the coherence and unity required by a le- gitimate profession?

Stillman: Principled Individualism

Reading Stillman's Creating the American State imparts a haunting sensation-as though Max Weber were alive and updating his Wirtschaft und Geselleschaft to fit the American circumstance. Stillman demonstrates how the uncoordinated actions of seven different individuals signifi- cantly influenced the development of the American administrative state. The resulting administrative state was rela- tively coherent in part because these individuals shared similar values. Yet, Stillman would point out that the American state is hardly an iron cage. Rather, it is a haphazard, incrementally constructed series of institutions created in response to specific problems. In Stillman's words: "[u]nlike Euro- pean states that were founded on uni-

tary, rational designs, usually at one time and from the top down, the American state was put together over several decades in bits and pieces, from the bottom up, and often in ways that were ill fitting, illogical, and con- tradictory" (167).

Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, written specifi- cally to explain the American context, provides a convenient stepping-stone to Stillman's now well-known argument that Calvinism, with its strong emphasis on individual moral right, responsibility, and judgment, is a pow- erful force in America. Stillman, however, is far better at explaining the American state than Weber. His inci- sive biographical analysis of seven American state builders provides ample evidence that individual moral vision was the driving force behind their reform efforts.

There is not space in this review to do justice to the tapestry of Stillman's arguments. He presents to us the lives and the Herculean reform efforts of seven American men and women who forged the major girders of the American state: George Will- iam Curtis (civil service reform), Charles Francis Adams Jr. (railroad/ business regulation), Emory Upton (public service professionalism), Jane Addams (social reform), Frederick W. Taylor (scientific management), Ri- chard S. Childs (council management government), Louis Brownlow (executive management). This collection of individuals offers an ideal lineup for Stillman's neo-Weberian argument, and Stillman's argument is fine, as far as it goes.

Stillman admits that he reaches the frontier of his argument two pages before the end of the book. In the next century, he wonders aloud, "Can the American state founded on such his- torically remote, indeed geographi- cally isolated moral values survive?" Stillman could have asked the question more directly. He could have asked: Just because many key Ameni-

626 Public Administration Review a September/October 2001, Vol. 61, No. 5



can statebuilders were fortunately moral visionaries, can we assume that moral vision will continue to energize American statebuilding? The answer is: No. In the 1980s, public administration scholarship promoted the en- trepreneurial public administrator, and morality was hardly a driving force in this administrator's psyche. Moreover, in the 1990s, moral vision was not the defining feature of the Clinton administration. The inevitable conclusion is that in the less moral culture of the twenty-first century, fewer of America's state builders will be mor- ally driven.

In contrast to Stillman, who re- lentlessly argues that moral principle knit together the disparate threads of nineteenth and early twentieth century public administration, Camilla Stivers uncovers fundamental and heretofore unearthed contradictions. She argues that fault lines lie just beneath the surface of American public administration.

Stivers: Open and Inclusive Public Administration

Whereas Stillman defines nineteenth and early twentieth century public administration as porous, haphazard, but mildly unified by Calvinistic conscience, Stivers defines the same era as rigid, slavish to rationalistic ide- als, and culturally divided: one culture male, the other female. The meager common ground between these two books is nowhere more evident than in the respective treatment of Jane Addams. Stillman praises Addams because she tenaciously pursued a mindset inherited from her father: "a highly personal morality that sought to follow one's inner light as derived from a common set of Christian vir- tues, emphasizing courage, character, kindness, fairness, and love of human- ity" (85-6). Unfortunately, Addams was excluded from the male world that dominated the Progressive Era. Stivers

makes the case that females lived under differing cultural norms and ap- proached the task of reform from a decisively different but discernibly female perspective.

The introductory chapter, "Finding a Usable Past," makes the case for a dualistic understanding of the Progres- sive Era. The chapter title itself is in- structive: for example, that without an understanding of the male/female dualism that dominated the Progressive Era, the past is inaccessible, cloudy, misinterpreted, and murky. This dualism is more than biological. It is rein- forced by culturally entrenched stereo- types under which males and females of the era were obliged to function.

Stivers does not mince words. Males who used the municipal research bureau as the institutional ve- hicle of reform viewed the city as a business, embraced rationalistic science, and promoted the role of expertise in politics. Females who labored within the nascent settlement house movement used the language of home life to diagnose the problems of the city. Stivers succinctly captures this difference in chapter two entitled "The Other Side of Reform": "Men's clubs, preoccupied with the notion that the city was essentially a business corpo- ration, tended to establish 'good government' as their principal aim, whereas women's clubs were more likely to speak in homely terms of improving the quality of community life" (53).

This book conveys some fascinat- ing insights into the Progressive Era. Stivers demonstrates how culturally defined male and female roles condi- tioned reform language and ideology. Females viewed reform as "municipal housekeeping." Males who worked in the increasingly scientific world of business argued that reform was inher- ently rationalized business. The book is also entertaining when it deflates the often lofty reform rhetoric that extolled the application of science to government. Stivers punctures this balloon by

pointing out that science was often used as a shield, a "banner." This shielded them from retaliation by machine politicians while enhancing their virility. Moreover, Stivers also corrects the legacy and record of the Progres- sive Era. She establishes that the settlement women had some very good ideas and approaches to reform that have been overlooked.

However, like the Stillman book, the Stivers book also reaches a frontier. Just as the moral world of the nineteenth century is in tatters, so is the dualized progressive world. The dualism of the Progressive Era has dimin- ished. What, then, is the utility of con- tinuing the assault on this old dualism in an attempt to renew and unify public administration? Though conducted in the name of inclusiveness and eq- uity, these assaults may contribute to tensions between male and female public administration professionals and perpetuate the balkanized world of the post-Progressive Era.

The Stivers book will appeal to those within the public administration community who have grown distrust- ful of the traditional values on which the discipline was founded (such as rationality, hierarchy, science, business management). Those who enjoy the iconoclasm and irreverence of the Stivers book will also enjoy the Rosenbloom book, Building a Legis- lative-Centered Public Administration. This book is equally iconoclastic, but Rosenbloom takes aim at a different target, the orthodox values of executive-centered administration.

Rosenbloom: Legislative- Centered Public Administration

Rosenbloom strides out onto an old battlefield in public administration and takes sides. He looks across the battlefield at pretty much the same group of villains that are on Stivers's battle- ground, orthodox apologists for rational, scientific, executive-centered

Book Reviews 627



management. Rosenbloom promotes the perspective of the legislature, arguing that legislative-centered management is not the organization-de- stroying, foot dragging influence on administrative process that its opponents claim it is. Rosenbloom argues that congressmen are results oriented too; it's just that they have a different way, a more open and democratic way of achieving results.

Even Rosenbloom's intellectual opponents should read this book care- fully because it does deliver on what the author claims in the last paragraph of the book, that he has correctly syn- thesized this perspective, given it theoretical coherence, historical grounding, and a measure of consti- tutional legitimacy. In doing so, Rosenbloom has made the case for legislative-centered management more formidable. Confident that he has succeeded, Rosenbloom has some advice for his opponents: "Critics of legislative-centered public administration would probably do better to work within its parameters than to reject it entirely" (155). Like it or not, legislative-centered public administration is here to stay.

Rosenbloom builds his case around the Administrative Procedure and Legislative Reorganization Acts of 1946, arguing that this legislation created the framework for congressional involvement in agency administration. True, 1946 was the year in which Congress redefined its consti- tutional position vis-a'-vis, agencies. However, Rosenbloom conveys the impression that 1946 was the public administration equivalent of the Big Bang. In fact, what happened in 1946 would have been inconceivable without the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 or the lingering congressional resentment over the passage of the Executive Reorganization Act of 1939. Including this material, though, would certainly have made the book longer and may have de- tracted from Rosenbloom's larger

goal-crafting a deft, concise book that makes the case for legislative- centered administration.

One way to assess Rosenbloom's arguments is to consider that he wrote the book from within a particular historical circumstance, for example, at a time of waning presidential power and ascending congressional importance. Since the Nixon resignation in 1973, the power and prestige of the presidency of the United States has descended. It is hardly an accident that the rise of administrative orthodoxy occurred in an era of ascending presidential prestige and power. As Herbert Kaufman points out, historical cycles occur. Hence, historical circumstance may again produce an imperial presidency. In that situation, advocates of executive-centered administration might have more to cheer about. Or- thodoxy might return, and the pros- pects for legislative-centered public administration might diminish.

Beyond the historical limitations to Rosenbloom's arguments, other questions emerge such as: Will legislatures advance the art and science of administration? The fumbling attempts at the General Accounting Office to enhance administration through general management review do not inspire confi- dence. Finally, there is the enduring question of definition and identity. Conventional wisdom dictates a certain core or essential definition of administration. Rosenbloom is, in effect, asking the profession to depart from the conventional/essential definition of public administration that grounds the civil servant's identity within a politi- cized world. Believing in the so-called orthodox definition, civil servants tra- ditionally understand that they work for their agency-based supervisors, not for the legislature. Orthodoxy dictates that civil servants are accountable to, but not supervised or controlled by the legislature. Legislative-centered administration changes all this around. Rosenbloom asks the civil servant to accept the legislator as master. In his

words: "Democracy requires that administration be subordinated to repre- sentative institutions" (154). Rosenbloom thus substitutes legislative values for conventional/essential administrative concepts and values. If this substitution occurs, will public administration be public administration?

These comments directed at Rosenbloom's concept of legislative- centered public administration hardly obviate what should be regarded as an excellent contribution to the public administration literature. The Rosenbloom book, as well as the Stillman and Stivers books, was sub- jected to a standard in this review that perhaps the authors did not anticipate. To repeat, the central question in this review is: Do these three books collectively provide values that have the potential of unifying a badly divided post-Progressive public administration? The concluding section returns to this pressing question.

Conclusion There is a common theme running

through the books written by Stillman, Stivers, and Rosenbloom-the old value orthodoxy is vanishing, if not dead. This should be a wake-up call. Without common values, a profession cannot be a profession. It should be alarming to discover that scholars of public administration no longer be- lieve that the old values that once energized the profession can extend into the twenty-first century. Stillman openly questions whether the old moral values that energized the profession will survive. Stivers and Rosenbloom argue respectively that there is greater utility and virtue in openness and legislative-centered public administration than in the old orthodoxy. When three senior scholars express such doubts about the value set that has sustained the profession for over a century, this expression itself should be sobering, whatever the grounds.

628 Public Administration Review a September/October 2001, Vol. 61, No. 5



There is further reason for concern. The central argument of this review is that these three authors offer the post- Progressive profession particular, but not general values. Particular values please certain constituencies within the profession, but are not sufficient to sustain a profession composed of mul- tiple constituencies like ours. Unless general values are arrived at and embraced soon, the profession will continue to drift, and worse, may disinte- grate.

There is some good news amidst all this. The particular values identified by these authors could be the basis for a new value foundation for the profession. These authors argue persuasively that principled individualism, openness, and legislative-centeredness are parameters within which twenty-first century public administration must function. Properly reworked and re- stated, these could form a complementary value set for a now old, but certainly necessary and honorable profession.

Book Reviews 629



Documents

Values for Public Administration Renewal