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THE TALE THAT WAGGED THE DOG: IS THE PROGRESSIVE ERA THE FOUNDATION OF

AMERICAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION? Larry S. Luton

Eastern Washington University

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that the Progressive Era is not the foundation of American Public Administration. Granting the significance of that era in framing a self-conscious, professional public administration in the United States, it argues that the importance of the Progressive Era has been overstated. The author prefers to depict that era’s contributions as part of a series of framings and reframings of American public administration. The essay does that by: 1) recognizing some of the key themes of the Progressive Era; 2) identifying some of the key themes of eras before and after the Progressive Era; and 3) suggesting how all of the contributions of the various eras ought to be recognized in order to properly understand how 21st century American public administration came to be what it is—and how it might yet evolve.

THE TALE: AMERICAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION BEGAN WITH THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

It will likely come as a surprise to no one that my answer to the question poised in the title is: No the Progressive Era is not the foundation of American Public Administration. Still, it must be admitted that the Progressive Era was partof theperiodof timethatwasquitesignificant in framingaself-conscious, professional public administration in the United States. I have previously contended that “we should show more interest in the

practice of public administration in the United States before it became a self- conscious practice”—prior to the “management movement” of the late 19th centuryand theProgressiveEraof theearly20th (Luton,1999b,pp.210-211). Scholars have addressed the Constitutional parameters and themes (e.g., Caldwell, 1944; Rohr, 1986; Spicer, 1995), but too little attention has been given to other formative periods for American public administration. This has resulted in giving too much credit to the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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At its worst, the elevation of the management movement’s and Progressive Era’s significance for American public administration appears to claim that there was no public administration prior to the 1880s (e.g., Schuman & Olufs, 1993, p. 244). More commonly, public administration scholars suggest that there was little or no conscientious thought about public administration prior to the management movement (Fesler & Kettl, 1996, p. 18; White, 1948, p. viii; White, 1951, p. 556; White, 1954, p. 566; White, 1958, p. 19). It is almost as if they believe that public administration can be done without thinking, as if they do not realize that “the routine work of government is primarily a mental rather than a manual labor” (Skowronek, 1982, p. 31). Similarly, collections of documents that are deemed to be significant to American public administration often either skip from the late 1700s to the late 1800s—with hardly an apology to the intervening century—or simply begin with a late 1800s document (Mosher, 1976; Shafritz & Hyde, 1992). At its best, our treatment of the management movement and the

Progressive Era as together representing the time period when professional public administration began to take shape includes an admission that the century between the constitutional founding and the civil service reform movement provided the soil in which the seed of professional public administration was able to take root (e.g., Skowronek, 1982, p. 9). Even then, the dirtiness of the soil is likely to be emphasized and its value denigrated. Patronage isdescribedas thedemonfromwhich themerit systemprotectedus (Fish,1905;Stewart1929;White1958,p.18).Localcontrol isdescribedas the chaos that a more centralized bureaucracy would hold at bay (Wiebe, 1967). The point of this essay is not to denigrate the contributions of the

Progressive Era, but to depict them as part of a series of framings and reframings of American public administration, not its foundation.1 The essay will do that by 1) recognizing some of the key themes of the Progressive Era, 2) identifying some of the key themes of eras before and after the Progressive Era, and3) suggestinghowall of thecontributionsof thevariouserasought to be recognized in order to properly understand how 21st century American public administration came to be what it is—and how it might yet evolve.

KEY THEMES OF THE PROGRESSIVE “ORTHODOXY”

Although there may be some question whether there has ever been an American public administration orthodoxy (Luton, in press), there are identifiable key themes of Progressive American public administration. Stillman (1999, pp. 111-117) has described them as: 1) separation of politics from administration; 2) confidence in scientific processes; 3) primacy of the values of economy and efficiency; 4) dependence upon top-down hierarchy; and 5) reliance upon generalist public administrators.

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Separation of administration from politics was an ideal at the heart of Progressive Era American public administration. Support for this ideal derived largely from the abuses and corruption associated with the political dynamics manifested in early 19th century rotation and patronage. But even those who are credited with being advocates of the dichotomy saw the inevitabilityofconnectionsbetween the two.Forexample,Wilson recognized the relationship between public opinion and the conduct of administration as the fundamental problem for public administration (Wilson, 1992, p. 13). Similarly, Goodnow saw the need to achieve harmony between politics (expression of the state’s will) and administration (execution of the state’s will) (Stillman, 1999, pp. 111-112). But their “separation” provided a frame that facilitated an enhanced focus on some new guiding values for professional public administration—expertise, efficiency, and bureaucratic hierarchy—values that seemed to position the study of public administration closer to business administration than to political science. The rising importance of science in government began in the late 1800s,

aided by the efforts of men like John Wesley Powell (first director of the Bureau of Ethnology and second director of the U.S. Geological Survey) who believed that “government should undertake research for human good” and worked to organize and institutionalize science in government (Luton 1999a, p. 43; Stegner, 1954, p. 70). As society became more technological, the ideas and methods of science were incorporated into our thinking about public administration.Someevendreamedofdevelopingascienceofadministration, with principles and laws every bit as dependable as those of physics (e.g, Fayol, 1937). The dream never was actualized but confidence in detached “scientific” methods of observation supported public administration’s claims of expertise and an ability to make decisions based on evidence rather than personal, social, or political connections (Wiebe, 1967, p. 147). Economy and efficiency were promoted by a related development, the

scientificmanagementmovement,whichhadconfidence inscientificmethods and put them to use in promoting economy and efficiency. Frederick Taylor used empirical experimentation to discover the “one best way” to perform specific tasks efficiently in the pursuit of prosperity. Such Progressive Era leaders as the New York Bureau of Municipal Research and the Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency incorporated Taylor’s views into American public administration. Improving public administration, they believed, would depend on more than removing politics from personnel and other key administrative decisions; it would depend also on creating an institutionalized, scientific pursuit of economy and efficiency. The Progressive Era model also held that an organizational structure based

on thecorporatemodelofachiefexecutiveofficerandstrict,hierarchical lines of authority would be the best way of controlling and directing that pursuit.

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State and federal governments pursued this structural change through such innovations as the government corporation. Local governments adopted council-manager structures or added city or county administrators to better emulate business practices. Stillman’s final key doctrinal theme was a confidence in the ability of

generalist public administrators. Based on their knowledge, experience, and professional abilities, public administrators were believed to be capable of leading government administration, and expected to eschew self-interest and to pursue the public interest—ethically, sympathetically, and wisely. Certainly there is not universal and total agreement that these are the key

themes of the Progressive Era model of American public administration (e.g., Stivers, 2000). Still, they sufficiently represent the dominant model that arose from that era to use them to help us identify key themes of American public administration that did not arise from the Progressive Era. It is to that task that this essay now proceeds.

PRE-PROGRESSIVE THEMES IN AMERICAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The Progressive themes of American public administration were influenced by the pre-progressive themes. Some of them were explicit rejections of pre-progressive ways. Others were modifications. Still others were creative additions. In the first century under the Constitution, politics and administration were thoroughly enmeshed. Science had not yet sufficiently developed to become a guiding idea for public administration. Economy and efficiency were values to be pursued, but the techniques of administration that made them achievable had not matured, so they were not heavily weighted values. Top-down hierarchy was a standard organizational model, but its approach was modeled on military relationships, and its applicability was challenged by continental expansion and increasingly complexsocietal andorganizational relationships.Because theirworkwasnot seen as terribly complicated, general skills, attitudes, and aptitudes were deemed sufficient for public administrators.

Key Themes of the Constitutional Era

Despite claims to the contrary, there is reason to believe that the founders of the U.S. Constitution were quite interested in administrative issues. Lynton Caldwell’s book on The Administrative Theories of Hamilton and Jefferson (1944/1988) is, perhaps, the most thorough treatment of the administrative thought of some of the founders. In it he contrasts the thought of Hamilton—an “architect of an administrative state” (p. xiv)—with those of

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Jefferson—“no friend to bureaucracy, to professionalism in public administration, or to the abstract state as the shaper and director of national development” (p. xiv), but he concludes that both considered administrative matters to be important policy issues (p. xx). Moreover, the U.S. Civil Service Commission has pointed out that “The interest of the founders of our Government in administrative problems is shown by the fact that, as early as 1779, they had instructed their representatives abroad to obtain and forward copies of all decrees pertaining to administration” (U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1941, p. xvii). White says that the Federalists “formed an intelligent system of theory and practice of public administration” (1948, p. 507) and that “The Jeffersonian era in the field of administration was in many respects a projection of Federalist ideals and practice” (1951, p. vii). Muchcredit isgiven to the“foundingbrothers” (Ellis,2000) inestablishing

a system of governance, but their contributions to public administration are oftenoverlooked.One reason for thatoversightmaybe related to their levelof generality, their broadness. Certainly Wilson (1887) made much of the distinction between constitutional and administrative matters. But as Wilson understood, the initial work of those interested in governance is likely to be at a broader level; as more general answers are worked out, it is only natural to move toward themorespecific—toward thosematters thataremoreobviously administrative. When we are looking for the key themes of American public administration, we should not ignore the importance of those initial questions and answers for the latter ones. Perhaps the two most basic administrative questions are: 1) Who should do

thework?;and 2)Howshould theworkbedone?Basicconstitutionalanswers to those questions included the separation of powers and the checks and balances system. Different parts of the government were to be responsible for different functions, but they were given limited powers and were subject to restrictions that might be placed on them by other parts of the government. In Article II, section 2, for example, the appointment of higher officials is to be initiated by the president nominating them, but the Senate is to provide advice and must consent before the nominations are final. Moreover, no member of the executive branch is to hold a Congressional office at the same time. Today we may take that restriction for granted, but it need not have been so. “The ministers of the British Cabinet almost invariably are also members of Parliament” (U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1941, p. ix). Today we do not even need to specify that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency or Amtrack are not to be members of Congress. The Constitution provided little guidance on the appointment of “inferior

officers,” but officers did need to be appointed, so we began to develop administrativeappointmentpractices. Initially appointmentswereoftenbased on a notion of ability (virtue and talents) that was closely tied to the framers’

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belief in a natural aristocracy. Both the Federalists and anti-Federalists shared thisbelief. Jeffersononcewrote toAdams that, likehim,he thought “there is a natural aristocracy among men…[and] the form of government is best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government” (quoted in Ingraham, 1995, p. 19). There remained, however, an additional challenge—that of identifying the

natural aristoi and not confusing them with the artificial aristoi who were advantaged by birth and wealth. Both the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans (aka anti-Federalists) had difficulty meeting that challenge and demonstrated a preference for aristoi from their own political compatriots. Washingtonmadeappointments“forpersonalorpolitical reasons” (U.S.Civil Service Commission, 1941, p. 3). Adams (also a Federalist) removed only 19 Presidential officers when he took office, but he too tended to favor Federalists in his appointments, and when the Federalists lost the election of 1800, he made a number of “midnight appointments” of Federalists to judgeships, annoying Jefferson and his followers and setting a precedent that would feed the development of a spoils system (U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1941, pp. 3-5). At first Jefferson sought to resist the temptation toward spoils, adopting a policy of making no removals for political reasons, but appointing only Republicans until a kind of balance was attained. However, he soon discovered that vacancies were not appearing quickly enough and began to seek reasons for removing Federalist incumbents. The Republicans also repealed the act under which Adams made his midnight appointments, abolishing those lifetime positions. Though “Jefferson did not put the rotation theory into practice to any

extent” (U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1941, p. 8), he did advocate a theory of rotation in office, believing that giving people a chance to serve in government would enhance their civic education. Both Madison and Monroe demonstrated admirable bipartisanship in their appointments, but it was under Monroe’s watch that the Tenure of Office Act of 1820 was passed. It limited some offices to one 4-year term. Combining term limits with rotation theory set the stage for increased use of partisan spoils appointments. The years that White has labeled the Federalist and Jeffersonian eras, thus,

answered the question of who should do the work using two guiding ideas: 1) they should be “fit,” and 2) they should be politically loyal. There was also some agreement that political loyalty should not be so highly prized that it undermined the needs for qualified people and for a government that both parties would support against other alternatives. Monroe, for example, adopted what he called an “amalgamation policy” promoting an era of good feelingamong thepartisans (U.S.CivilServiceCommission,1941,p.11), and one reason that Hamilton supported Jefferson over Aaron Burr in the 1800 election was his fear for the survival of the “infant American nation” (Ellis,

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2000, p. 40). Party loyalties were important in the early years, but they were trumped by the need to minimize centrifugal forces. According to White (1948), the Federalists answered the how should

government be administered question in a number of important ways. They supported a strong administrative leadership. Most administrative authority was vested in the chief executive, and Congress was expected to keep out of administrative details. Much administration was done under delegated authority in a hierarchical chain of command and within parameters set by law, instructions, and precedents. They expected administrators to be accountable for their actions and their use of public funds. Most scholars seem to agree that, among the Federalists, Hamilton was the

best administrator (e.g., Morison & Commager, 1962, p. 324; White, 1948, p. 515). Working against a political culture supportive of tax evasion, he directed vigorous action against late payment by importers. He required weekly reports, removed collectors who performed poorly, insisted on consistent interpretations of the revenue laws, and commended his collectors when that was appropriate—and further demonstrated his support of them by seeking to improve their pay scales. Caldwell’s analysis of Hamilton’s approach to administration points to a number of key principles: energy, unity of command, duration in office, power commensurate with purpose, and personal responsibility (1988, pp. 23-30). Quite another set of administrative principles is associated with Jefferson:

harmony (rather than energy), decentralization (rather than unity of command), adaptability (rather than duration), simplicity (rather than power), and responsibility enforced through legal limitations (Caldwell 1988,pp.129- 141). But it is not clear that any of them found much expression during the Jeffersonian years. Jefferson’s inconsistencies have been thoroughly addressed by historians (e.g., Ellis, 1997). If inconsistencies are found in his writings, they abound when one compares his words to his actions. So, it may not be surprising that it was not until the Jacksonian era that the Jeffersonian principles dominated public administration in the United States (Caldwell, 1988, p. 141). All in all, White describes the ways that administration was done in the

Federalist era as rather rudimentary (White, 1948, p. 466) and he says that the Jeffersonianerabasicallycontinued theadministrativewaysof theFederalists (White, 1951, p. vii). In the early years under the Constitution, Americans were more interested in learning the art of self-government than the art of administration. Moreover, while the art of public administration was not very advanced anywhere in the world (with the possible exceptions of Prussia and China), the art of democratic public administration had only begun to be practiced. Looking back on how the Federalists administered, it may be tempting to feel superior. Nonetheless, at that early stage of development,

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“common sense, sound judgment, initiative, and courage” (White, 1948, p. 478) may well have been sufficient for getting the job done and those qualities were at least as readily available then as they are today.

Key Themes of the Jacksonian Era

According to Nelson, the Jacksonians had two primary objectives in reforming American governance: to give control of government to the people and to replace the deteriorated structures of order and authority with new ones (1982, pp. 22-23). Political parties and the federal court system played key roles in this reformation. In the Jacksonian years, the political associations that had developed in the

Federalist and Jeffersonian years were institutionalized as political parties. According to Skowronek, it was these parties and the courts that administered and integrated the nation during most of its first century. This second phase of post-Constitutional administration is often maligned in public administration literature as the spoils era, but its accomplishments were vital to the survival and success of the American experiment. Under this administrative regime, American public administration “fought wars, expropriated Indians, secured new territories, carried on relations with other states, and aided economic development” (Skowronek, 1982, p. 19). When Jackson took office, it was generally agreed that the number of

superannuatedfederalemployeeswasaproblem. If theyhadoncebeennatural aristoi, they no longer were. No retirement system had been established and officials who were old and disabled by sickness were often kept on for humanitarian reasons (U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1941, p. 15). It was in this context that Jackson delivered his first annual message to Congress in which he advocated rotation in office. He had several good reasons for favoring rotation: duration in office could incline a person to forget their duty to the public interest; they could instead begin to respond to special interests; they could begin to believe that they had a property right in the office; and the duties of public offices did not appear so complicated that their proper fullment required people with a lot of experience (Jackson, 1976, pp. 331- 332). He did not trust officials to be virtuous and he did not think public offices required much talent. Jackson’s reputation as the father of the spoils system is rather unfair, but

his reputationas thepresidentwhodemocratizedAmericangovernance iswell founded and has significant implications for American public administration. His removal and appointment practices were not very different from those of his predecessors (Van Riper, 1958, pp. 34-36). Eriksson concluded that Jackson’s personnel practices and principles were about the same as Jefferson’s (Eriksson, 1926/1927, p. 540). On the other hand, in the

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Jacksonian era “The administrative system was captured by democratic rotation and the common man.…The structure of the federal system stood intact; its spirit and its customs were deeply affected” (White, 1954, p. 560). The Jacksonian era’s approach to administration was dependent upon

political partymachineryand thecourts. Itwas thepartymachinery that freed American governance “from dependence upon a patrician class” (Skowronek, 1982, p. 25). According to Nelson, the social order based on that patrician class had disintegrated and “effective government could no longer rest on it” (1982, p. 24). Moreover, as White has noted, “Rotation was imposed because it was demanded from below, not merely because it was advocated from above” (1954, p. 301). Jackson had run for election promising to make governmentmore responsive to thecommonman.Rotation inofficehelped to loosen the aristoi’s grip on government office holding and to replace them with more representative individuals. Moreover, itwaswithparty tiesandpatronage that theearlyAmericanstate

was able to bind each locale to a national government. Even those who were opposed to patronage recognized its capacity as a nationalizing force. The 1826 Senate Select Committee on Executive Patronage predicted that spoils would “enable the Federal Government essentially to govern throughout the States as effectually as if they were so many provinces of one vast empire” (quoted in U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1941, p. 15). As Tocqueville noted, the prominent feature of early American public administration was “its excessive decentralization” (1990, p. 83). The parties brought cohesion and some degree of standardization. They organized the internal workings of government and routinized administrative procedures. “The federal patronage appointee became the embodiment of a series of concrete ties between President and Congress and between local and national governments” (Skowronek, 1982, p. 25). Complementing the concrete administrative role of parties, the courts

established the governance infrastructure for administrative activities. They arbitrated disputes among the power brokers in the nascent system of governance. Within the parameters set by the Constitution, they shaped and defined the authority of local, state, and federal governments. Making ample use of the common law, they also established important precedents regarding government-business relations, became the regulators of corporate behavior, andplayedasignificant roleaspromotersofeconomicdevelopment. In short, “The courts had become the American surrogate for a more fully developed administrative apparatus” (Skowronek, 1982, p. 28). Nelsonsays thatpoliticalpartiesduring the Jacksonianerawere significant

contributors to theestablishmentofa“majoritarianauthority structure” (1982, especially pp. 9-40). If the parties came to represent the institutionalization of the democratic impulse in the Jacksonian years, the courts and the lawyers

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might be seen as having embodied the aristocratic impulse in American political culture. Just as the party workers linked the government to the “common man,” when the era of the aristoi was over, the lawyers and judges acted as a “surrogate aristocracy” (Skowronek, 1982, p. 32). Democratic administration needs to address both impulses. It needs to retain some connection with the people and to find some way to engage especially qualified people in making the democracy run effectively. In the first 40 years after the Constitution, the emphasis was upon holding

thenation togetherbymaking thegovernmentoperateeffectively.By the time Jackson was elected, holding the nation together required reviving the connection with the people. The thrill of 1776 and the commitments to the 1789 constitution were no longer sufficient. Political parties and the courts represented practicable solutions to the administrative challenges of the day. American public administrators should not squirm at this part of their

history. They should recognize and celebrate our ability to find more than one way to run our Constitution. Even one of the Jacksonian Era’s most severe critics has granted “there could be no doubt in 1860 that a new force had been introduced into the system.…This new element was democracy.…It was an innovation that deserves to rank in its influence, both in its own time and in succeeding generations with the original doctrines on which the system was based” (White, 1954, p. 566). During the first century after adopting the Constitution, American public

administration began to grapple with some of the most basic and difficult problems faced in democratic administration. Their answers were not always consistent but they established key themes for American public administration. For example, whether the question of who should administer was answered with an emphasis on fitness for office or responsiveness to the citizens, it was an answer that dealt with a fundamental issue in American public administration. Through each resolution of the basic questions we learned something about the advantages and disadvantages of various reasonable approaches. No one should fault them if their answers were not final ones. In a democracy, we probably would not want them to be. As initial answers, they do represent important influences on what was to follow.

KEY THEMES OF POST-PROGRESSIVE AMERICAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

There are also key themes for American public administration that have been added or reinforced since the Progressive Era. Whether even the Progressive Era truly represented an era of orthodoxy or not, it is generally agreed that after that era the orthodoxy was transcended. According to Stillman, “From the late 1940s onward, public administration was

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transformed into a vastly broader, more enriched, and more dynamic field” (1991, p. 125). Because of the number and diversity of the perspectives involved in that transformation, it will be possible here only to make rough generalizations and provide short capsule summaries of some specific contributions. Generally, in post-progressive public administration the key themes of

Progressive public administration have not been discarded so much as they have been added to, transcended, and transformed. The relationship between politics and administration is no longer depicted as a dichotomy, but there remains a distinction. Science and scientific processes are not seen as providing all the answers, but they are still used to inform our decisions and approaches. Economy and efficiency are not discarded as values to be pursued, but they are not so frequently the dominant values. Top-down hierarchy has not disappeared as an organizational model, but it has been supplemented by matrix organizations, quality circles and other non- hierarchical approaches. There still remains a need for generalist public administrators, but increasing complexity and growing utilization of technology in the tasks of public administration has fostered greater need for special skills. Some of the indicators of the post-progressive transformation are found in

thepracticeofgovernance.Rosenbloom, forexample,has identified1946asa watershed year in post-progressive public administration. In that year Congress passed four important statutes (Administrative Procedures Act, Legislative Reorganization Act, Federal Tort Claims Act, and Employment Act) that together set a frame for “legislative-centered public administration”—a kind of public administration that directly challenged the politics/administration dichotomy by viewing administrative agencies as extensions of Congress. It also was intended to ensure that constitutional and democratic values were infused into American public administration by emphasizing such values as “representativeness, participation, openness, responsiveness, procedural safeguards, and public accountability” (Rosenbloom, 2000, p. xi). According to Rosenbloom, this framework has remained quite durable over the years, being reinforced numerous times through additional legislation such as the Freedom of Information Act (1966), the Inspector General Act (1978), the Paperwork Reduction Acts (1980 and 1995), and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (1966). More recently the reinvention movement and the Clinton administration’s

National Performance Review have promoted increased use of the market and of market mechanisms (Gore, 1993; Osborn & Gaebler, 1993). As Kettl (1994) has pointed out, the use of these approaches may be increasing, but they are not new to American public administration. It is also true that a common theme of Progressive Era public administration involved the

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desirability of becoming more businesslike in the pursuit of efficiency. Nonetheless, reinvention and the NPR do represent a significantly different frame for public administration. It is a frame that at least diminishes (if not destroys) the distinction between the public and private sectors. Thus, if it were to be followed to its logical conclusion, it could represent the end of an approach to theadministrationofsocialcooperation that isdistinctivelypublic (cf.Lindblom,2001;Luton,1996).Fortunately, thingsare seldomfollowed to their logical conclusions. Similarly, the increasing use of nonprofit organizations to deliver public

services can be viewed as representing either a significant change in the frame for public administration or (at least) a distinctively different approach to providing collective goods or achieving collective ends. Salamon sees the non-profit sector as like the public sector in existing to address needs that the market system is ill suited to serve. But he also says that the non-profit sector exists to address collective needs that the public sector has failed to serve adequately (2001, pp. 164-165). Ascertaining the proper roles of the private, non-profit and public sectors in serving society’s needs was not part of the Progressive Era frame. Other key aspects of the post-progressive frames of public administration

are found in intellectual reconsiderations of public administration. The 1968 Minnowbrook Conference represents one example of an intellectual reframing of American public administration. Arising from the troubled times of domestic unrest and the Vietnam War and envisioned as an opportunity for a new generation of public administration scholars to set an agenda for the field, the Minnowbrook conference’s reframing came to be known as “New PublicAdministration.”The“new” label represented“somesortofmovement in the direction of normative theory, philosophy, social concern, activism” (Waldo, 1971, p. xvi). It moved away from positivism (but did not reject it entirely), was ambivalent in its attitude toward techniques, and was energized by a new attention to values such as social equity:

A Public Administration which fails to work for changes which try to redress the deprivation of minorities will likely be eventually used to repress those minorities.…Social equity, then, includes activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well-being of these minorities. (Frederickson, 1971, p. 311)

The New Public Administration not only rejected the idea of neutral competence, it promoted active policy advocacy. A similar example is found in work begun in the “Blacksburg Manifesto”

and further developed in the work of many of its contributors and their students. Wamsley has described their reframing as based on a specific set of values that arequitedistinctive fromtheProgressiveEravalues: social equity, wider citizen participation, explicit treatment of norms and values in

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administrative theory, attention to the relationship between knowledge and action, a critical perspective on pluralism, and a challenge to the Progressive faith in science by challenging logical positivism and empiricism (Wamsley et al., 1990, p. 20). Surveying public administration theory in 1999 and thinking ahead to the

21st century, Stivers concluded that “there appear to be only two potential directions for public administration theory: public management or post- modernism.” She saw public management as an extension of the Progressive effort to turn public administration into a science and advised against their “fruitless quest for final truths and unarguable values” (Stivers, 1999, pp. 520, 522). While she said that she did not subscribe fully to a post-modern perspective, she saw value in its implications for how to deal reasonably with the uncertainty and ambiguity that seem to be inherent in both the study and practice of public administration. Promoters of the public management perspective explicitly reject

“traditional” public administration’s emphasis on hierarchy, efficiency, accountability, and neutral competence. In place of hierarchy they prefer decentralized market mechanisms. While not opposed to efficiency and accountability, they are more concerned about liberating managers to pursue effectiveness. Directly opposed to neutral competence, they envision public managers as powerful actors in policymaking and implementation. They remain optimistic about the contribution that positivist social science can make to dealing with the problems of public administration (e.g., Bozeman, 1979, p. vi; Lynn, 1996, p. 6), but they are not likely to be pleased with any suggestion that theirwork is similar toProgressiveErascientificmanagement. Lynn refers to this aspect of public management as an emphasis on the “analytic dimension” and identifies economics and quantitative policy analysis as key elements of public management’s intellectual roots (1996, pp. 56-57). In public management the analytical dimension would be put to service through the discretion of public managers in persuading people to pursue strategies aimed at achieving a specific mission. In sum, there are key differences between public management and the progressive orthodoxy, but they are similar in their confidence in science and promotion of public managers’ power within the governance system. Few would disagree that postmodern approaches to public administration

represent a non-progressive frame for public administration. Fox and Miller, for example, havepronounced theprogressiveorthodoxy“dead,” consider the politics/administration dichotomy thoroughly discredited, and dismiss scientific rationalism and bureaucratic hierarchy as “sometimes successful” (1996, p. 3). They offer a new approach based on discourse theory and an attention to public policy rather than bureaucracy. Their version of post- modern public administration aims at “a new framework that can withstand

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postmodern conditions, on the one hand, and can claim congruence with democratic ideals,on theother” (Fox&Miller,1996,p.7).Admonishingus to no longer make the bureaucracy the dominant focus in public administration, theyoffer instead“an indeterminatecollectionofphenomenologicalmoments we call a public energy field” (Fox & Miller, 1996, p. 9). Focusing on action and agonistic tension, their concept of public administration is more open, inclusive, and dynamic than that of the Progressive Era. David Farmer’s “anti-administration” (which he describes as having

“affinities” with postmodernism, but not equivalent to it) is significantly defined by its openness and interest in promoting energy (Farmer, 2001, pp. 475-492). “It is openness that seeks understandings both from mainstream and frommarginalizedorexcludedperspectives.…It isunrelentingopenness” (2001, p. 481). The “anti” in anti-administration is largely (but not simply) against the limitations of the progressive orthodoxy. “In analyzing bureaucratic questions, there is a failure to focus enough on the non- bureaucratic, the non-systematic, the non-mechanical” (2001, p. 481). Farmer hopes to undermine the efficiency model, the economist attitude, hierarchy and patriarchy, but anti-administration is explicitly not so much a rejection of the mainstream as a consciousness that is shaped by it. Anti-administration hopes through its dynamic relationship with the mainstream to shape new approaches to public administration. It is an imaginative and playful attempt to loosen up public administration. Certainly, other examples could be included in this essay, but those above

are probably sufficient to make the point: not only were there significant frames for American public administration prior to the Progressive Era, many frameshavebeenaddedsince theProgressiveEra.Weshouldnotbe surprised or disappointed that the reframings of the post-Progressive years continued to struggle with some of the same questions that the pre-Progressive framers were attempting to answer. For example, the question regarding whom we should depend upon to do the work of democratic public administration continues to hold our attention. In our answers to that question, we still struggle with reaching an appropriate balance among such values as competence, responsiveness, efficiencyandeffectiveness. Whetheranyof the answers offered during this era will have lasting impacts is something that we will all have to wait to see.

CONCLUSION

This essay began by identifying key Progressive Era themes for public administration. It then reviewed pre-Progressive themes in an attempt to show that the Progressive Era’s “foundation” was one in a series of framings and reframings. Next it was demonstrated that Post-Progressive reframings of

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American public administration were conscious of and affected by previous framings. The basic argument in this essay is that there have been many framings of American public administration. The Progressive Era is not the foundation for American Public Administration. Non-Progressive themes are found in both pre-Progressive and Post-Progressive thought and practices. In all three-time periods American public administrators have attempted to deal with complex and vexing questions regarding appropriate approaches to democratic public administration. In assessing what this means, rather than seeing the eras as distinct from

each other, I think it would be better to see them as related to each other. The accident of time helps to define some aspects of their relationships. That which comes later may add to or respond to that which has come earlier. Hamilton’spreference for a strongadministrative statewaspartlyconditioned on the failures of American governance under the Articles of Confederation. “A long train of abuses and usurpations” shaped Jefferson’s distrust of centralized government. The Jacksonian spoils system was a response to the threat of aristocratic dominance coming out of the previous era. The management movement/Progressive Era’s rejection of partisan spoils approaches was premised on the Jacksonian era experience. Post-modern preferences for open and creative approaches are, in part, responses to problems arising from the bureaucratic and mechanical character of Progressive Era public administration. As Kiel and Elliott (1999) have pointed out, approaches to public

administration in theU.S.need tobeunderstoodas takingshape in response to changes in social, political, andeconomiccontext.There isnoonebestway to approach public administration, only ways that are better (or more poorly) suited to the expectations and values of a given time. Progressive Era American public administration was one resolution of the question: How best might we manage the public affairs of the nation? Aspects of that resolution retain significance for us today, but so do aspects of the resolutions arrived at in the Federalist, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and other eras. Jefferson may have gone too far when he suggested that each generation needed to form its own constitution, but it seems not so radical (and historically accurate) to suggest that within the relatively stable parameters of the Constitution we are well advised periodically to modify our approaches to public administration to suit the times in which we live. One way to enhance the probability that we will find appropriate approaches to public administration is to recognize our history of diverse frames and not be so focused on the Progressive Era.

ENDNOTE

1. In this essay I will utilize the terms frame, framing, reframing, etc. to designate ideasoractions thatguidedanddelimitedpublicadministration thoughtsandpractices.

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Some might prefer the terms foundations, founding, refounding, etc., but those terms connote more solidity and permanence than I want to imply. Fox and Miller have used the phrases “sedimented habitual comportments” and “recursive practices” to refer to ideasandactionsthathavehadgreater impactsovertimethanothers(1996,pp.84,109). I have previously (1999b) borrowed Murray Gell-Mann’s phrase “frozen accidents” (1994, p. 231) to recognize the greater impact over time of some ideas and actions. In usingvariationsof the termframe, Idonotmeantodenysuchdifferential impacts,only to diminish the temptation to think of them as solidly fixed, inviolable, or permanent. Even the most “foundational” ideas and actions are subject to altered understanding, reinterpretation, and/or reconsideration.

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Larry S. Luton is a professor of public administration at Eastern Washington University, where he also serves as director of the Graduate Program in Public Administration. His main research interests revolve around environmental policy administration and the history of public administration. In 2002-2003 he is spending nine months in the Russian Federation as a Fulbright Fellow.

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