Dwight Waldo: Public

“This is a study of the public administration movement from the viewpoint of political theory and the history of ideas. It seeks to review and analyze the theoretical element in administrative writings and to present the development of the public administration movement as a chapter in the history of American political thought.”

Dwight Waldo

Preview; lead paragraph
The Administrative State, 1948

History , Idea , Study

“Students of administration, writes J. M. Gaus, have become "more uncertain in recent years as to the ends, aims and methods which they should advocate/' It is difficult to view in their entirety and in perspective the writings on public administration that now pour from the presses. But this is hardly necessary to confirm the truth of Gaus' statement.”

Dwight Waldo

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 206

Truth

“Perhaps most important of the theoretical movements now influencing American administrative study is scientific management. At the level of technique or procedure, borrowing from and liaison with scientific management will undoubtedly continue. Although some doctrines, such as "pure theory of organization," have already affected public administration, how influential other theoretical aspects of scientific management will be remains to be seen. In its "democratic" or "anarchistic" doctrines, conceivably, there is enough force to reconstruct present patterns of administrative thought, at least if conditions become favorable.”

Dwight Waldo

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 209

Study

“It is procedure that governs the routine internal and external relationships - between one individual and another; between one organizational unit and another; between one process and another; between one skill or technique and another; between one function and another; between one place and another; between the organization and the public; and between all combinations and permutations of these. It is by means of procedure that the day-to-day work of government is done-mail sorted, routed and delivered; deeds recorded; accounts audited; cases prosecuted; protests heard; food inspected; budgets reviewed; tax returns verified; data collected; supplies purchased; property assessed; inquiries answered; orders issued; investigations made; and so forth endlessly.”

Dwight Waldo

Source: "Government by Procedure", 1946, p. 381-82; As cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 595

Food

“Historically, "public administration" has grown in large part out of the wider field of inquiry, "political science." The history of American political science during the past fifty years is a story much too lengthy to be told here, but some important general characteristics and tendencies it has communicated to or shared with public administration must be noted.
The Secular Spirit Despite: the fact that "political science" in such forms as moral philosophy and political economy had been taught in America long before the Civil War, the present curriculum, practically in its entirety, is the product of the secular, practical, empirical, and "scientific" tendencies of the past sixty or seventy years. American students dismayed at the inadequacies of the ethical approach in the Gilded Age, stimulated by their pilgrimage to German universities, and led by such figures as J. W. Burgess, E. J. James, A. B. Hart, A. L. Lowell, and F. J. Goodnow have sought to recreate political science as a true science. To this end they set about observing and analyzing "actual government." At various times and according to circumstances, they have turned to public law, foreign institutions, rural, municipal, state, and federal institutions, political parties, public opinion and pressures, and to the administrative process, in the search for the "stuff" of government. They have borrowed both ideas and examples from the natural sciences and the other social disciplines. Frequently they have been inspired by a belief that a Science of Politics will emerge when enough facts of the proper kinds are accumulated and put in the proper juxtaposition, a Science that will enable man to "predict and control" his political life. So far did they advance from the old belief that the problem of good government is the problem of moral men that they arrived at the opposite position: that morality is irrelevant, that proper institutions and expert personnel are determining.”

Dwight Waldo

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 22-23

Life , Men , War , Age

“Procedure is not a unique feature of public administration. It is a concomitant of all organized activity, and many procedures are equally usable by private administration or public administration. Private as well as public "red tape" can be time-consuming and annoying to those affected, as anyone can testify who has tried to exchange a purchase without a sales slip or to cash a check without "proper identification.”

Dwight Waldo

Source: "Government by Procedure", 1946, p. 381-82; As cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 595

Time