Political Science and Public Administration: A Note on the State of the Union

Abstract

By tradition public administration is regarded as a division of political science. Woodrow Wilson set the stage for this concept in his original essay identifying public administration as a subject worthy of special study, and spokesmen for both political science and public administration have accepted it since. Thus Leonard White, in his 1930 article on the subject in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, recognizes public administration as “a branch of the field of political science.” Luther Gulick follows suit, observing in 1937 that “Public administration is thus a division of political science ….” So generally has this word got around that it has come to the notice of the sociologists, as is indicated in a 1950 report of the Russell Sage Foundation which refers to “political science, including public administration….” “Pure” political scientists and political scientists with a public administration slant therefore are not alone in accepting this doctrine, which obviously enjoys a wide and authoritative currency.But if public administration is reckoned generally to be a child of political science, it is in some respects a strange and unnatural child; for there is a feeling among political scientists, substantial still if mayhap not so widespread as formerly, that academicians who profess public administration spend their time fooling with trifles. It was a sad day when the first professor of political science learned what a manhole cover is! On their part, those who work in public administration are likely to find themselves vaguely resentful of the lack of cordiality in the house of their youth.

Understanding Government: Four Intellectual Traditions in the Study of Public Administration

“…Both Taylor’s time and motion studies and Gulick’s management functions and organization principles (area, objective, process, clientele) are excellent examples of the prewar search for principles of organizational design that is grounded in experience. In their 1937 Papers on the Science of Administration , Gulick and Urwick write that such a science ‘…can be arrived at inductively from the study of human experience of organization, which should govern arrangements of human association of any kind’ (quoted in Martin 1952, p. 667). Postwar practical experience continues along these lines and is, both in the US and in Europe, interested in prescription (Mayntz 1978, p. 2).…”

Ties That Bind: The Link between Public Administration and Political Science

“…As a subfield, public administration first appeared separately in the annual listing of doctoral dissertations in the American Political Science Review in 1936 (Martin 1952). There was a growing sense that political science as an academic discipline did not adequately represent and address the needs of those interested in improving government performance.…”

“…This recommendation was merely a whisper, however, overlooked in the field's pursuit to take its place among the other sciences. The words of Roscoe Martin in 1952 proved prescient: “Robbed from a concern for a vigorous and vital administration, political science would become largely a thing of library and classroom, hardly worthy to treat of so buoyant a subject as government” (Martin 1952, 674). The breathless chase to be “one of them” continued.…”

“…By the time Leonard White's textbook on public administration appeared in 1926, political science was making a fateful shift toward the scientific model as against the professional (Waldo 1980). As a subfield, public administration first appeared separately in the annual listing of doctoral dissertations in the American Political Science Review in 1936 (Martin 1952). There was a growing sense that political science as an academic discipline did not adequately represent and address the needs of those interested in improving government performance.…”

Incrementalism: Dead yet Flourishing

“…What, however, is applied theory? Some scholars might regard this phrase as an oxymoron: theory and practical research are often contrasted in public administration (Martin , 669; Simon , 248) and other fields. But mapping the academic division of labor this way is unproductive.…”