In what is probably still the most thoughtful and comprehensive work on the subject Dunsire (1973) identified no fewer than fifteen main meanings for the term administration. Given that the number of alternative definitions of public is not small either, it is unsurprising that the field of public administration suffers identity problems. The development of public administration as a field of study (and, in parallel, as a field of practice) has been subject to constant incursions and borrowings. Public administration has long been disputed territory and its scholars (public administrationists) have frequently agonized over their intellectual parentage and prospects. Yet what the field may have lost through lack of a coherent identity it has—at least in the view of its enthusiasts—more than made up for by the richness of its polyglot theoretical baggage.
A typical contemporary text condenses the various meanings of public administration into just three: first, the activity of public servants; second, the structure of executive government; and third, the systematic study of the first two (Greenwood and Wilson 1989). We are naturally most concerned with the third of these meanings, but the nature of the field of study cannot be adequately comprehended without an appreciation of the continuous and close proximity of the practice of public administration, both as the day-to-day doings of countless public officials and the patterning and repatterning of a wide variety of state institutions. The development of the academic field has mirrored the growth of ‘big government’, a growth which, in many European and North American states, took off in the mid or late nineteenth century and continued (with occasional pauses) until the early 1980s.
As a proto social science, separate from the older study of the law, public administration can cite a number of distinguished ancestors. Frederick William I of Prussia (1713–40) created university chairs in ‘cameralistics’ or ‘council studies’, hoping to ensure a supply of adequately trained public officials. Napoleon Bonaparte developed a distinct and forceful system of state administration, including scientific training for elite civil servants and army officers. At least half of Jeremy Bentham’s great Constitutional Code is concerned with the structures and procedures of government departments (Bowring 1843), and subsequently J.S. Mill theorized extensively on the ways in which administrative structures could influence administrative behaviours (Lerner 1961).
However, the best-known name in the early elaboration of administrative theory is probably that of Woodrow Wilson. In 1887 Wilson (later to become President of the United States) published a seminal paper entitled ‘The study of administration’. Wilson argued that politics and administration could and should be separated from each other, and that administration could then be analysed and implemented in a wholly scientific manner. For example, ‘If I see a murderous fellow sharpening a knife cleverly, I can borrow his way of sharpening the knife without borrowing his probable intention to commit murder’ (Wilson 1887:220). In a strikingly analagous way contemporary politicians frequently argue that modern business methods may be imported to the public sector without also introducing the more inequitable and rapacious practices of the commercial world. Both the possibility and the desirability of such a separation remain the subjects of intense dispute.
Public administration scholars have always borrowed theories and approaches from larger and more prestigious academic neighbours. Law was probably the first of these, but since the 1920s, political studies, organization theory and management science have each in turn become more influential.
Law continues to contribute a particular concern with the correctness of procedures and with the accountability of public administrators to the appropriate public authorities. How are those who wield the resources and authority of the state to be held to account? How are those citizens who may have suffered at the hands of incompetent or corrupt officials to obtain redress? Where, and how, should administrative discretion be exercised?
The study of politics has had a particularly deep influence. Until recently, public administration scholars would most probably be located in university departments of government, politics or political science. Public administrationists from this background have tended to concentrate on ‘higher’ questions of the relationships between politicians and top civil servants, the role civil servants could or should play in the policy-making process, how public institutions could be structured so as to make them responsive to the objectives of politicians yet efficient, fair and free from partisan bias (a good example is Self 1972).
Organization theory is itself a relatively recent field of study, not without its own boundary disputes. Since the 1940s, however, it has generated many theories, concepts and taxonomies which have been gratefully taken up by public administrationists. Herbert Simon’s (1947) analysis of the limits to rational decision making in organizational contexts was exceptionally fruitful. From the mid-1960s onwards a less elegant but nevertheless influential body of theory grew up around a series of research projects investigating the relationships between an organization’s performance, its internal structures and the contingencies in its environment (Donaldson 1985).
Most recently, public administration has come under the influence, occasionally dominance, of management studies. The latter subject has expanded hugely in terms of publications and student numbers. In both American and British universities some public administration programmes have been absorbed within schools of management and business studies. This swallowing of public administration within the generic study of management was not unconnected with the contemporary political fashion for adopting private sector ‘business methods’ as the solution for many of the perceived problems of public governance. In the earlier stages of its growth, management studies tended to restrict itself to important but relatively mundane issues such as management information systems, operational logistics, recruitment policies, different approaches to planning and so on. By the mid-1980s, however, public administration was exposed to a much more ambitious managerial rhetoric of ‘cultural change’. Western governments began to make extensive use of management consultants working to terms of reference so wide as to imply a substantial shifting of the public/private boundary and/or a fundamental re-structuring of many public institutions (Pollitt 1993).
In the mid-1990s it is exceptionally difficult to foresee the future of public administration as a distinct field of study. It is possible that it will disappear completely, consumed by not only the generic study of management but also the revived interest of political scientists in the actual implementation of political programmes and policies. More likely, perhaps, it will survive as a separate academic entity. In this modest scenario it will continue to eke out its existence on the margins of academically more prestigious and popular disciplines, defining itself in terms of the nature of its concerns and its substantive territory of interest rather than by laying claim to any unique conceptual or theoretical vocabulary.
To portray public administration in this way is not meant to belittle its importance. Public administrationists have struggled, with some considerable success, to make sense of the many and contrasting ways in which governments and their agents daily allocate and transfer huge sums of money, process millions of citizens through a myriad of transactions, embark upon vast infrastructural projects, issue numerous licenses, permits, refusals, fines and guidelines, and employ a sizeable proportion of the workforce in most modern economies. This is not a trivial endeavour.
Christopher Pollitt
Brunel University
References
Bowring, J. (ed.) (1843) The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 10 vols, Edinburgh.
Donaldson, L. (1985) In Defence of Organization Theory: A Reply to the Critics, Cambridge, UK.
Dunsire, A. (1973) Administration: The Word and the Science, London.
Greenwood, J. and Wilson, D. (1989) Public Administration in Britain Today, 2nd edn, London.
Lerner, M. (ed.) (1961) Essential Works of John Stuart Mill, New York.
Pollitt, C. (1993) Managerialism and the Public Services, 2nd edn, Oxford.
Self, P. (1972) Administrative Theories and Politics, London.
Simon, H. (1947) Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization, New York.
Wilson, W. (1887) ‘The study of administration’, Political Science Quarterly 2.
