Masters level 510 assignment
Perspective
Jeremy F. Plant is professor of public
policy and administration in the School of
Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, where
he has been a member of the faculty since
1988. He is past chair of the Section on
Ethics and the Section on Transportation
Policy and Administration of the American
Society for Public Administration. His
research focuses on administrative ethics,
transportation policy, and the history of
public administration.
E-mail: jfp2@psu.edu
Remembering William Mosher: A Pioneer of Public Administration 13
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 75, Iss. 1, pp. 13–14. © 2014 by
The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12270.
Jeremy F. Plant Penn State Harrisburg
When today’s student of public administration thinks of the founding fi gures of the fi eld, the list is rather small: Woodrow Wilson, Charles Goodnow, Luther Gulick, Leonard White, Mary Parker Follett, Louis Brownlow, and Charles Beard. Less likely to be mentioned along with these well-known authors is an individual who bridged the academic and professional sides of public administration, William E. Mosher. Th e fi rst dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Aff airs at Syracuse University, William Mosher was in his day a well-regarded scholar in the area of personnel man- agement, but today he is better known for two lasting contributions that continue to resonate: the develop- ment of the master of public administration (MPA) curriculum and the creation of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).
William Mosher came late to the fi eld of public administration. His initial fi eld of study was German culture, which he studied at Oberlin College and in graduate studies in Germany and then taught for more than a decade at Oberlin. His transition to public administration came about in the turbulence of World War I, when, on the advice of Charles Beard, head of the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York City, he moved from the quiet life of a college professor to become actively involved in personnel training for supervisors in war indus- tries. Personnel administration became his primary research interest, culminating in the fi rst major text- book on the subject, Public Personnel Administration, coauthored with J. Donald Kingsley. But Mosher’s interest in the training of personnel led him to the position with which he is most closely associated, as dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Mosher became its fi rst director, later dean, in 1924, and through his leadership created the foundation for the modern MPA degree, stressing a general- ist professional orientation. (For a more detailed account of Mosher’s career, see the excellent article by Charles S. Ascher in the Spring 1946 issue of Public Administration Review.)
Public administration in the 1920s was still largely concerned with local government administration, refl ecting the absence of a true national administra- tive state as well as the fi eld’s roots in the munici- pal research bureaus. Mosher initially directed the Maxwell program toward local government manage- ment—realistic given its location away from major centers of state and national government activity. But as the New Deal unfolded, Mosher found himself and others in the fi eld moving away from the local orienta- tion to see problems in a national context. Mosher was part of a group charged by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Basil Manly, vice chairman of the Federal Power Commission, to study electric rates nationally, a project that moved him to the forefront of policy research during the New Deal.
As the 1930s drew to a close, Mosher moved forward with plans for a national professional association that would link the various strands of the fi eld of public administration together—local, state, and national public administrators, researchers and consultants from the research bureaus, and students and faculty at the emerging academic programs across the nation. As recounted by Charles Ascher, the key to Mosher’s leadership on the issue was his chairmanship of the executive committee of the Governmental Research Association (GRA) in 1939–40 (Ascher 1946, 103–4). In Ascher’s words, the bureau orientation of the GRA was no longer able to satisfy the needs of university faculty and professional administrators involved in the explosion of governmental activity at all levels of government in the 1930s:
Indeed, the founder-members [of the GRA] had over a decade viewed with some doubts the infi ltration into GRA of university profes- sors and public administrators. Th ese sought in its annual meetings a forum for the discus- sion of issues of public policy and the place of administration in a changing society … Th e sentiment crystallized that this country was ready for a society of public administration for
Remembering William Mosher: A Pioneer of Public Administration
14 Public Administration Review • January | February 2015
its fi rst president and guiding spirit. Th e high regard in which he was held by all the strands of the fi eld made him an essential leader in creating and nurturing ASPA in its infancy.
William E. Mosher’s legacy is immense. His vision of public administration is one that is still honored today: a fi eld that would enable a democratic society to fulfi ll its promise of honest, eff ective, and responsible governance. He saw the need to fuse the separate constituencies that emerged from the Progressive era, and he played a key role in imagining that this would require the cooperation of universities, research bureaus, active citizens, and professional administrators. Like father, like son: Mosher’s most direct legacy can be found in the work of his distinguished son, Frederick Camp Mosher, who followed the path set by his father in furthering the dialogue between academics and practitioners and enriching the literature of public administration.
References Ascher, Charles S. 1946. William E. Mosher. Public Administration Review 6(2):
99–107. Mosher, William E. 1938. Public Administration: Th e Profession of Public Service.
American Political Science Review 32(2): 332–42.
administrators, a need which neither GRA nor the American Political Science Association could fi ll without neglecting their established constituencies in the research bureaus and the universities. (1946, 104)
For Mosher, the formation of ASPA was the logical next step in the process of professionalizing the fi eld of public administration. His European education had given him a view of societies in which trained experts held positions of great responsibility for public aff airs. In the American context, he reasoned, this sense of professional responsibility had never been developed, to the detriment of the nation. Th e nation needed strong, expert leadership to deal eff ectively with the governance issues facing a developed democracy. University- based graduate programs could provide the intellectual foundation for the profession, but a nationally based membership association was crucial to provide the range of activities every profession required: an annual conference, a distinguished journal, a forum for the discus- sion of issues, and the basis of a dialogue on ethical issues facing the fi eld (Mosher 1938). ASPA would be fundamentally diff erent from the existing organizations representing distinct professional groups (city managers, planners, etc.) or levels of government. As the saying goes, he walked the talk, shepherding the new association along as
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