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John Rohr Quotes

John Anthony Rohr was an American political scientist who was Professor Emeritus at the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. Rohr is particularly known as a leading scholar of the U.S. Constitution in relationship to civil servants and public administration.

He also received the prestigious Dwight Waldo Award from the American Society for Public Administration in 2002 for contributions to the literature and leadership of public administration. He was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., and Fellow of the National Academy of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.One of Rohr's argument is that the Constitution pervades American society. Rohr wrote the book, Prophets Without Honor, which talked about the issue of Selective Conscientious Objection to war, detailing both the pros and cons of the possibility of such a policy.

While not a Straussian in the sense of, say, Harvey Mansfield, Rohr was a student of Leo Strauss during a famous period of political theory training at the University of Chicago that heavily influenced his future work and legendary seminar teaching style.

He died in Roanoke, Virginia, in 2011. Wikipedia  

✵ 31. July 1934 – 10. August 2011
John Rohr: 20 quotes1 like

Famous John Rohr Quotes

“According to Rohr, "nothing is more fundamental to governance than a constitution; and therefore to stress the constitutional character of administration is to establish the proper role of administration as governance that includes management but transcends it as well."This is not a novel argument for Rohr, who was recognized in 1999 by the Louis Brownlow Committee of the National Academy of Public Administration for his lifetime contributions on the "constitutional underpinnings" of public administration. But this new version of his rule-of-law critique directly addresses the NPM's excesses, framed convincingly as a comparative study of cases found in four countries spanning three centuries. The first half of the book examines the linkages between constitutions and administrations in France, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The second half of the book examines American cases…”

John Rohr

Abstract
Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002

“The creationist account is as factual, historical and perspicuous and is thus fundamental in the understanding of every fact and phenomenon in the created universe.”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. 176

“The price, then, that the professional study of ethics for bureaucrats exacts from the curriculum is that questions of political philosophy ("Is the regime just?") must yield to less fundamental questions such as "How can I promote the values of the regime?" The method of regime values eschews metaphysics and addresses the students in the existential situation in which it finds them—persons who have taken or are about to take an oath to uphold the values of a particular regime. It admonishes them that taking such an oath presupposes an acceptance of the fundamental justice of the regime but does not require into how the students arrived at the conclusion that the regime is just.”

John Rohr

(1989, p. 70-71)
Ethics for bureaucrats, 1988

“A "value" in the life of a person as well as a nation suggests a pattern of attitudes or behavior that recurs with some frequency. An attitude or a passion or a principle must have a history—either personal or societal before it becomes a "value."”

John Rohr

John Rohr (1976). "The study of ethics in a P.A. Curriculum." Public Administration Review, 36, p. 402

“REGIME VALUES. An expression used frequently in public administration literature to denote the fundamental principles of a polity which, ordinarily, should guide administrative behavior. Although the term applies in principle to any polity, de facto it appears almost exclusively in literature focused on the United States. The expression entered the public administration literature in the first edition of this author’s Ethics for Bureaucrats: An Essay on Law and Values.”

John Rohr

John Rohr (1998), "Regime values." In J. M. Shafritz (ed.), International encyclopedia of public policy and administration. Westview Press. p. 1929

“Administrators should use their discretionary power in order to maintain the constitutional balance of powers in support of instilling individual rights.”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. 181

John Rohr Quotes

“To illustrate the point of legitimacy-beyond-legality, consider the American Nazi party, the Flat Earth Society, and Hustler magazine. All three are quite legal, but they lack legitimacy. We acquiesce in their presence as the price we pay for living in a free society; but we refuse to take them seriously as "legitimate" expressions of political action, scientific inquiry or literary endeavor.”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. x

“More directly related to the NPM is the impressive current literature criticizing it for its sometimes cavalier treatment of the rule of law, especially its free and easy slogans about eliminating red tape and letting managers manage”

John Rohr

Source: Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002, p. ix

“The word "regime" is not used in the journalistic sense of the "Carter regime," or the "Reagan regime," and so on. Rather it is simply intended as the best English equivalent of what Aristotle meant by a "polity." More specifically by the American "regime," I mean the fundamental political order established by the Constitution of 1789.”

John Rohr

(1989, p. 3)
Ethics for bureaucrats, 1988

“Alexander Hamilton spoke the language of legitimacy when, as Publius, he noted in Federalist 27 the connection between sound Public Administration and widespread popular support”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. x

“Legitimacy means more than a grudging acceptance of the inevitable.3 The word suggests at least confidence and respect and, at times, even warmth and affection.”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. x

“By "regime values," I intend to suggest that the normative foundation of ethical standards for public servants in any regime is the values of that regime. In the United States these regime values happen to be constitutional values, but not every regime takes its constitution as seriously as Americans do… By using the word "regime," my intention was to stress the particularistic character of the values that form the basis of public administration ethics. By emphasizing regime rather than constitution, I hope to make this book more interesting to students from other countries who are studying public administration in the United States.”

John Rohr

(1989, p. ix-x); as cited in: Patrick Overeem, "The Concept of Regime Values Are Revitalization and Regime Change Possible?." The American Review of Public Administration 45.1 (2015): 46-60.
Ethics for bureaucrats, 1988

“The analogy between management and engineering has the unwholesome effect of taking management one further step away from governance. Engineering, like science, music, and theology, knows no national boundaries, and this is why scientists, artists, and theologians— often to their credit— make statesmen uneasy. Such men and women operate from a different normative base from those who govern. Despite the salience of the NAFTAs, the WTOs, and the EUs of this world, governing remains overwhelmingly the business of nation-states.”

John Rohr

Source: Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002, p. ix

“Public administration as an American profession originated in the early twentieth century with urban reformers advocating the application of scientific and business practices to rehabilitate corrupt city governments. That approach transformed governance in the United States but also guaranteed recurrent debate over the proper role of public administrators, who must balance the often contradictory demands of efficiency and politically defined notions of the public good. Currently the business approach holds sway. Legitimated by Al Gore's National Performance Review, the New Public Management movement promotes entrepreneurs over civil servants, performance over process, decentralization over centralization, and flexibility over rules. John Rohr demurs, arguing that the movement goes too far in downplaying the distinctively American challenges arising from the separated powers principle. Consequently, the NPM alienates public management from its natural home -- a nation-state established within a constitutional order.”

John Rohr

Abstract
Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002

“The book's focus is on the troubling questions of legitimacy that survive the resolution of a legal controversy. With constitutional issues, there are many such survivors, because the Constitution is more than a legal document; it is covenant as well as a contract.”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. x.

“The purpose of this book is to legitimate the administrative state in terms of constitutional principle… Because public administrators at virtually all levels of government take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, this neglect deprives the profession of the opportunity to consider an important normative foundation for its activities.”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. ix

“For those who distinguish state and society, "regime," as used in this essay, is closer to society than state. Although the distinction of state and society is a philosophical question of the first order, I do not think it makes any difference for the purpose of this book just where one stands on this great issue. Those who, like Aristotle, do not distinguish state and society may perhaps feel more comfortable with the words "regime" or "polity" than those who make this distinction. The latter may prefer the somewhat ambiguous term “society values.” It is important to note, however, that I am not talking exclusively about the values of the "state"”

John Rohr

the authoritative and coercive agent of a political society.
1989, p. 90-91, Note 33
Ethics for bureaucrats, 1988

“[The administrative state is legitimate because it] is consistent with the Constitution, fulfills its design, and heals a longstanding major defect.”

John Rohr

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. 13

“The Public Administration neither comprises nor heads any branch of government but is subordinate to all three of them. Like Congress, president, and courts, the Public Administration makes its distinctive contribution in a manner consistent with its peculiar place, which is one of subordination.”

John Rohr

John Rohr (1990) "The constitutional case for public administration." In G. L. Wamsley et al. (eds.), Refounding public administration, Sage. p. 80

“In France constitutions come and go, but administrative institutions remain.”

John Rohr

Source: Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002, p. 18

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