The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration
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The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817380243 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 12/24/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 262 |
| Sales rank: | 1,007,667 |
| Lexile: | 1460L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 685 KB |
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The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration
By Vincent Ostrom
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2008 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8024-3
CHAPTER 1
The Crisis of Confidence
As we enter the third century of American nationhood, we are losing confidence that the twenty-first century in the Christian era will be an American century (Hacker, 1970). Instead, we have been seized by a maelstrom of crises. Some have even begun to wonder whether there will be a twenty-first century in the Christian era and whether the United States of America will survive as a nation.
Whatever fate or destiny the future may hold for human civilization, that future will be a product of human choice. Technical capabilities now exist for human beings to choose a fate marking the end of modern civilization as we know it. Today, the choice to destroy much of mankind can be made by a mere handful of men. If that choice is ever made, we can be reasonably confident that Americans acting in "the line of duty" will have participated in that fateful decision. Such a decision can, indeed, be taken with considerable "speed and dispatch" and with relatively small expenditures of "time and effort" in decision making.
The range of possibilities at the command of human choice today far exceeds those available to prior generations. But a wealth of possibilities always interposes proportionately higher decision costs. The more benign the future of this civilization, the more time and effort will be required in fashioning decision structures appropriate to human creativity and the less we can afford to rely upon preemptive strategies involving speed and dispatch. The course of destruction is simple; the course of constructive action is much more complex and difficult.
If the practice of public administration is based on a knowledge of the organizational terms and conditions that are necessary to advance human welfare, then those of us who teach public administration should be able to indicate what those terms and conditions are. In short, we should be able to specify the consequences that will follow from different organizational conditions. To assert that consequences follow from conditions is to say that effects have their causes. Knowledge depends upon the specification of relationships between conditions and consequences, between causes and effects. We should be able to indicate the conditions and consequences that derive from the choice of alternative organizational arrangements if theories of organization have scientific warrantability.
We must, however, distinguish between a determinate causal ordering and a quasi-causal ordering. In a determinate causal ordering a cause impinges directly upon and determines an effect. A quasi-causal ordering depends upon the intervention of human actors who are capable of thinking, considering alternatives, choosing, and then acting. The one is determined; the other is constituted. In such circumstances we are required to take account of how individuals view themselves, conceptualize their situation, and choose strategies in light of the opportunities available to them. Analysis in the social sciences requires recourse to strategic thinking in quasi-causal orders. The rule-ordered relationships that are constitutive of human organization function as soft constraints that are themselves subject to choice.
If we have a body of knowledge that enables us to estimate the probable consequences evoked by different organizational arrangements, we should then be able to pursue two forms of analysis. One form uses theory to draw inferences about consequences to be anticipated. These inferences can be used as hypotheses to guide empirical research and test the predictive value of theory. We can have some confidence in a theory that has predictive value for indicating consequences that can be expected to flow from specifiable structural conditions.
A second form of analysis derives from the first. When relationships between conditions and consequences can be specified and when any particular set of consequences is judged to be detrimental to human welfare, we should then be able to specify the conditions that lead to that set of consequences. Consequences of organizational arrangements that are detrimental to human welfare can be viewed as social pathologies. If the conditions leading to those pathologies can be specified, then the basis exists for diagnosing the organizational conditions of social pathologies. If conditions can be altered so as to evoke a different set of consequences, then different forms of remedial action can be considered. By altering the appropriate conditions, one set of consequences judged to be pathological might be avoided and another set of consequences judged to be more benign might be realized.
The relationships that I have just specified indicate the connection between theory and practice in the use of any body of knowledge. The practice of any profession depends upon the knowledge its members profess. The worth of professional practice depends upon the difference that professional advice will make in the opportunities made available to those who rely upon that advice. If I seek professional advice and that advice either reduces the misery I would otherwise have suffered or improves the advantage I might realize, then such advice is of value to me. If, on the other hand, professional advice leaves me worse off, I would have to conclude that such advice is harmful.
Organizational arrangements can be thought of as nothing more or less than decision-making arrangements. Decision-making arrangements establish the terms and conditions for making choices. Consequently, we would expect that the practice of public administration will increase in importance as the domain of choice is extended to include an increasing range of opportunities. I doubt that there are many today who anticipate a decline in the relative importance of the practice of public administration as long as opportunities exist for continued advancement in human welfare.
We are, however, confronted with a substantial question of whether the bodies of knowledge used by those who practice public administration will lead toward an improvement in or an erosion of human welfare. If, perchance, the consequence of acting upon knowledge used in the practice of public administration were a decline in human welfare, we would have to conclude that such knowledge contributes to social pathologies. Conventional wisdom in public administration indicates, for example, that efficiency will be enhanced by eliminating overlapping jurisdictions and fragmentation of authority. What, for example, would be the consequence of eliminating 80 percent of the units of local government in the United States (Committee for Economic Development, 1966)? Would the consequence of such action substantially enhance or diminish human welfare? We could hardly expect such action to be without consequences.
Dare we contemplate the possibility that the contemporary malaise in American society may have been derived, in part, from the teachings of public administration? The consolidation or merger of units of local government has, in some cases, attained substantial success. Have those successes been congruent with the consequences we expected? Is New York City a model of what we would like to achieve? Or is it a gargantuan system that has become virtually ungovernable? If our teachings have contributed to the contemporary malaise, we might further contemplate the possibility that continued reliance upon those teachings, as the basis for prescribing remedies to contemporary social pathologies, can lead to further deterioration in human welfare.
If such a circumstance prevails, we are confronted with a growing dilemma. On one hand, the practice of public administration will increase in relative significance. But as it grows in importance, those affected by public administration would be confronted with a progressively deteriorating situation. Actions taken to remedy conditions would exacerbate problems. In such a circumstance, we might expect to find that those educated in public administration were no more successful in its practice than those who were not educated to do so. They might be even less successful than others not so educated.
Perhaps this is an occasion on which we should entertain an outlandish hypothesis: that our teachings include much bad medicine. I have reached this conclusion after considerable agonizing about the problem. I once hoped that I could be proved wrong. I have since abandoned that hope; and I have attempted to work my way through to alternative resolutions. I am now persuaded that the major task in the next generation will be to lay new foundations for the study of public administration. If these foundations are well laid, we should see a new political science join a new economics and a new sociology in establishing the basis for a major new advance upon the frontiers of public administration.
The Persistent Crisis in the Study of Public Administration
When I was first introduced to the study of public administration on the eve of World War II, the confidence reflected in the theory and practice of public administration impressed me. The theory of administration presumed that technical solutions were available to solve public problems. Once decisions specifying policy objectives were reached, we assumed that the translation of these objectives into social realities was a technical problem within the competence of professional administrative expertise. The social problems associated with the Great Depression were transformed into new programs by enlightened political leadership and the technical proficiency of those who staffed the public service. Students in the late 1930s displayed as much enthusiasm for the public service as many of their counterparts in the 1970s had for the movement.
Perhaps the high point of that era was reflected in the publication of the Report with Special Studies of the U.S. President's Committee on Administrative Management (1937) and the companion volume edited by Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick as Papers on the Science of Administration (1937). The Papers stated the theoretical foundations for the science of administration. The Report proposed a bold new reorganization plan based on that science of administration to rationalize the host of New Deal agencies into a coherent administrative structure.
The war years provoked a challenge from which the study of public administration has never recovered. Wartime control measures were plagued by persistent failures. Public administration sometimes appeared to involve greater measures of unprincipled expediency than of principled action. The principles of administrative organization were honored more in their breach than by their observance. The gap between theory and practice became increasingly difficult to bridge.
The wartime experiences with civil and military administration were more congruent with the work of Elton Mayo and his colleagues (Mayo, 1933) in the Western Electric experiment than with the work of Gulick and Urwick. The human relations aspect of organization appeared to have a greater effect on productivity than did formal tables of organization. The gulf between theory and practice was, indeed, formalized by distinguishing between a theory of formal organization and a theory of informal organization.
Perhaps the most devastating blow came in the carefully reasoned analysis sustained by Herbert Simon in his study Administrative Behavior. Simon explicitly rejected the principles of public administration as little more than proverbs (Simon, 1946; 1965a: 20–44). Simon concluded upon analysis that the traditional principles of public administration, like proverbs, could be arrayed into logically contradictory sets. One or another principle could always be invoked to justify contradictory positions.
The central thrust of Simon's challenge has never been effectively faulted. Considerable debate was engendered by his fact-value distinction. His call for an administrative science was widely supported. His organization theory was different but not unfamiliar.
Many of us who lived through the era following Simon's challenge found ourselves in basic agreement with a number of his contentions. At other points we sustained serious reservations. For example, many of us have been concerned with Simon's use of the fact-value distinction to dichotomize policy and administration (Simon, 1965a: 52–59). In addition, some have had a sense that Simon did not go far enough, that his theoretical thrust implied much more than he developed.
Leonard White, in the third edition of his Introduction to the Study of Public Administration (1948), for example, reviewed Simon's contention that the rule implied by unity of command was logically incompatible with the rule implied by specialization in technical competencies. White, however, was able to demonstrate that "Simon eventually grants priority to the rule of unity of command but reformulates the proposition in these words: 'In case two authoritative commands conflict, there should be a single determinate person whom the subordinate is expected to obey; and the sanctions of authority should be applied against the subordinate only to enforce his obedience to that one person'" (38). Somehow, the thrust of Simon's theoretical criticisms should have generated a far less conventional conclusion. Perhaps this observation applies to all of us: that the extent of our theoretical doubts should lead to far less conventional inquiries than we are willing to pursue.
By a curious coincidence, the translated works of Max Weber were published in America at the same time that Herbert Simon's Administrative Behavior first made its appearance (Gerth and Mills, 1946). Weber's Economy and Society (1978) was a powerful effort to fashion a general sociological theory based on what he presumed to be a value-free approach to the study of social phenomena. In formulating his general sociology, Weber established certain ideal types to define social structures that functioned as elements in the organization of societies. Weber conceived a hierarchically ordered system of public administration, which he identified as "bureaucracy," to be one of the necessary organizational requisites for a modern society. Bureaucracy provided a rational basis for social organization. Weber's theory of bureaucracy became an important influence on work both in the sociology of large-scale organizations and in public administration during the post–World War II era.
Weber's commitment to a value-free social science was congruent with Simon's fact-value position. His concept of bureaucracy was offered as an ideal type to be used as a measure analogous to a well-calibrated yardstick. Weber's conception of bureaucracy would, thus, serve as a model which scholars could use in arraying imperfect cases of human organization. Weber's theory of bureaucracy was fully congruent with the traditional theory of public administration in both form and method.
In this circumstance, the postwar challenge to the traditional approach to public administration was accompanied by a new intellectual thrust that tended to reinforce traditional commitments of American scholarship in public administration. Woodrow Wilson and his contemporaries, such as Frank J. Goodnow, drew their inspiration for the study of public administration from French and German scholarship concerned with highly centralized bureaucratic structures. Weber, whose lifework was largely contemporary with Wilson's, provided a powerful restatement of that theory of administrative organization. The very theory that was being challenged by Simon was at the same time being reinforced and sustained by Weber, one of the twentieth century's most powerful social theorists. A theory challenged in one context reappeared in the cloak of different words and phrases to realize a new era of splendor.
The ambiguities of the shifting theoretical scene were accompanied by shifting styles of work in scholarly research. Early research in public administration had been management-oriented. Typically, such research included reference to organization, planning, budgeting, personnel, and selected aspects of program operation. The empirical thrust was diagnostic in character. Conclusions were usually accompanied by policy recommendations congruent with the prevailing theory of public administration.
The wartime experiences of many of the students of public administration led to a new style of research reflected in case studies designed to provide a narrative about the "realities" of administrative decision making (Stein, 1952). Case studies dramatized issues and pointed to the pervasiveness of conflict within the administrative setting. They were used extensively as teaching materials to give students a sense of reality about administration. In the absence of a reformulation of administrative theory, these accounts of reality become increasingly incongruent with theory.
Still another research tradition was stimulated by students of administration who came to adopt the behavioral approach and its commitment to building theory by generating and testing hypotheses. Theory, the behavioralists hoped, might gradually evolve from the accumulation of tested hypotheses. The work of the behavioral scientists made important contributions to the challenge to traditional theory. Emphasis on goal displacement and bureaucratic dysfunctions appeared in much of the behavioral research and reinforced the prevailing doubts about bureaucratic rationality (Merton et al., 1952; Blau, 1956; March and Simon, 1958; Crozier, 1964). The strategy of the bureaucratic personality who followed the rule of thumb "when in doubt, don't," stood in sharp contrast to the presumptions of efficiency, speed, and dispatch which Weber had attributed to bureaucratic organization (Merton et al., 1952: 378). The new research strategies that developed in light of the wartime and postwar challenge to the theory of public administration merely served to deepen and reinforce the challenge.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration by Vincent Ostrom. Copyright © 2008 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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Table of Contents
ContentsForeword
Preface to the Third Edition
1. The Crisis of Confidence
The Persistent Crisis in the Study of Public Administration
The Crisis as a Paradigm Problem
The Paradigm Problem in Public Administration
2. The Intellectual Mainstream in American Public Administration
Wilson's Point of Departure
Weber's Theory of Bureaucracy
The Research Tradition in American Public Administration
Gulick's Anomalous Orthodoxy
Simon's Challenge
3. The Work of the Contemporary Political Economists
Model of Man
Structure of Events
Decision-Making Arrangements
4. A Theory of Democratic Administration: The Rejected Alternative
Some Anomalous Threads of Thought
Hamilton and Madison's Theory of Democratic Administration
Tocqueville's Analysis of Democratic Administration
5. The Choice of Alternative Futures
Some Opportunity Costs in the Choice of Paradigm
A Science of Association as Knowledge of Form and Reform
The Use of Different Approaches to Policy Analysis
Conclusion
6. The Continuing Constitutional Crises in American Government
Watergate as a Crisis in Constitutional Government
Extending Prerogatives and Abandoning Responsibilities
A New Millennium
7. Intellectual Crises and Beyond
The American Intellectual Crisis
A Copernican Turn?
Challenging Ways of Thinking
Notes
References
Index