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Essential History for Public Administration

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Author’s Note: Essential History for Public Administration was published in early 2018, by
Melvin & Leigh. So that ResearchGate users can preview the book for potential classroom use,
the publisher has given me permission to post the Preface and Chapter One in manuscript form.
R. Box

Preface
The writing of Essential History for Public Administration was inspired by my classroom
experiences discussing current issues in public administration with graduate students.
Sometimes, students are a bit unsure of the chronology of historical events, for example whether
Social Security was created during the New Deal or the Great Society. Other times, the
substance of major eras in governmental history is unclear, such as the environmental legacy of
the Great Society. Perhaps most important, students often must accept the current relationship of
the public sector to society—its size, functions, and political standing—as a given, as simply
“what is,” because they have not explored how this relationship has developed over time.
Knowing something of the history of this relationship is useful for understanding the
present and thinking about what the future might be. The public sector in every country has its
own unique history, a history that describes, explains, and draws boundaries around how
government can and does operate in the present. Knowledge of this history may improve our
capacity to adapt management practices to the political and economic environment. In addition to
this practical advantage, it can provide a sense of satisfaction in knowing how what we do fits
into a larger cultural story about the public sector.
In this spirit, Essential History for Public Administration examines four key time periods
of social change in American history that played a large part in shaping the role of government in
modern society. These are the Founding Era, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great
Society. The cover photos for the book highlight these four eras, by showing the Constitutional
Convention in session in Philadelphia in 1787, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New
York City in 1911, President Franklin Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act in 1935 (Labor
Secretary Francis Perkins is standing behind the President), and President Lyndon Johnson
visiting with a Kentucky resident during a tour of poverty conditions in 1964.
In focusing on these four eras we should acknowledge that much of importance in
American history has been left out, and that concentrating on times of crisis and challenge in
public affairs produces something of a bias in perspective. On the positive side, events during
these four periods provide a powerful explanatory view of American government as it is today,
as well as offering a conceptual guide to the future.
This is a supplemental book, designed to enhance courses in public affairs without
replacing key assigned readings. The intended audience includes students of public affairs and
their professors, who sense that adding historical context will enrich classroom dialogue and the
overall learning experience.
It is appropriate to note some limitations of the book and its author. I am a public
administration scholar, not a historian, which means the reader should expect an emphasis on
events and issues of significance to my field rather than sophisticated recounting and
interpretation of historical events. For this reason and given the purpose of the book, the
narrative relies on readily available materials, including many drawn from online searches.
Readers who want additional information can easily follow the ideas and sources I have
documented to learn more about those they find interesting. It is my hope that faculty and
students will use Essential History as a beginning point for discussion rather than thinking of it
as an authoritative or comprehensive historical source.
It has been a pleasure to work on this project and to learn much I had not known about
the people, places, and events that have shaped American government. I hope the reader finds
this historical overview useful and that the narrative kindles a desire to know more. I am pleased
to have had this opportunity to write for Melvin & Leigh Publishers, and I want to thank M & L
President Harry Briggs for his advice and assistance.

Richard Box
September 2017

Chapter One
Introduction: The Meaning of the Past for the Present
Knowledge of history may not seem especially important for people who work in or study public
organizations. Public administration is an applied professional field involved with issues such as
finance, organizational structure, and program management, all dealt with in real time. We know
that recent events can affect choices made today, but events in the more distant past may appear
largely irrelevant to creating and implementing public policies in the present. This book is
designed to persuade the reader that knowledge of history is useful for the daily work of public
sector professionals.
Essential History for Public Administration explores the culture that surrounds and
shapes the American public sector by focusing on periods of dramatic change in the role of
government in society. The premise of the book is that knowledge of the cultural context can
improve understanding of the issues students of public affairs learn about in coursework, and it
can assist practicing public professionals in designing and managing successful programs.
Each chapter focuses on one of four eras that produced major rethinking of the purpose of
the public sector in relation to the private economy and individual lives. These time periods (with
approximate beginning and ending dates) are: the Founding Era and early years (1776-1800); the
Progressive Era (1890-1920); the New Deal (1933-1938); and the Great Society (1963-1968).
The narrative for each era describes how it changed cultural understanding of the role of the
public sector in society. The final chapter examines contemporary society (beginning in the
1980s) to explore how events in these earlier times influence the government and the work of
public professionals today.

The Cultural Context

The argument for the importance of history begins with observing that people who work in the
public sector are not simply machine-like tools used to implement policies. Instead, the actions
they take are influenced by political, social, environmental, and economic conditions in the
surrounding society, they provide feedback to elected leaders and interested citizens that can lead
to policy change, and they bring professional judgment to bear in daily decision making. This is
true both for political appointees such as cabinet secretaries and their assistants, and for career
public professionals chosen on “merit,” for their skills based on education and work experience.
Because public professionals are a key part of governance and their roles are shaped by
conditions in society, the characteristics of these conditions are especially relevant to daily
practice. Put another way, “the context matters.” It is in exploring the context of public
administration that we discover the importance of history, because the current situation is not
fully understandable without tracing back in time how it developed.
Public anxiety about the role of government in society and in the lives of individual
citizens is a key element of the context of the American public sector. In surveys and interviews,
Americans express skepticism and wariness about government. They give a variety of reasons
they dislike or mistrust government and its political leaders and bureaucrats, and they often think
it should be smaller and taxes should be cut. (We really should write “governments,” since this
includes national, state, and local public organizations, but the singular form is used for
convenience.)
However, when asked about specific programs, leaders, or interactions with career public
professionals, respondents often express positive opinions and resist the idea of cutting
programs. They dislike Congress, the Internal Revenue Service, huge program expenditures,
supposedly overpaid and underworked bureaucrats, and so on, but they like, for example, Social
Security, Medicare, the Marines, national and state parks, highways, the elected officials that
represent their area, and local government workers. They think Americans are heavily taxed,
when in fact they are lightly taxed in comparison to people in most other developed countries.
They want to cut programs so that taxes could be lower, but not programs they think are
important to themselves or to the community, state, or nation. As a result, they find it difficult to
identify what should be cut.
This discomfort with the public sector suggests that Americans hold two separate and
conflicting views of government at the same time. One of these views is inspired by a cultural
aversion to government intervention in the economy and individual lives; the other view is
grounded in experience with reports about how government agencies perform and personal
interactions with the staff of government agencies. Unavoidably, media stories about the
dysfunction of Congress and occasional mistakes made by bureaucrats feed the negativity of the
cultural view, and even textbooks on American government emphasize characteristics such as
“the large size and permanence of bureaucracy, its alleged lack of efficiency compared to
business” and “the use of unintelligible language” (Goodsell 2015, 7).
In a quiet moment of reflection, a person might realize there is a contradiction between
her or his opinion of the public sector as a whole and what government actually does. However,
the cultural perspective tends to be readily apparent in public opinion, while the experiential
perspective may be given less importance or ignored altogether.
The strength of the cultural view of government can have significant consequences,
because political leaders use it to mobilize public support, legislators sense it when they consider
changes in public policies and programs, and citizens may have it mind when they vote. In his
first inaugural address, given in 1981, President Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of reevaluation
of the role of government by saying that, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to
our problem; government is the problem.” Though the place of the public sector in American
society has always been somewhat uncertain (Stillman 1991), in the decades since President
Reagan’s declaration it has been especially controversial.
 The cultural view of the public sector did not appear mysteriously in the past few
decades. It began in the period before and during the founding of the nation, as people left
Europe to escape the influence of monarchical governments and religious restrictions. It shaped
the creation of institutions of government and it continues to influence how Americans think
about government, public policy, and the appropriate role for unelected career public
professionals in American society. For this reason, the term “cultural” is particularly well-suited
to describe a perspective on the position of the public sector in the United States. It is more than
a product of recent events or a perspective unique to a generation, but is instead an ongoing
feature of the national political landscape.
While the cultural view continues to influence public attitudes and public policy, it adapts
to new circumstances created by political trends, economic conditions, and developing
technologies. This is especially true during periods of intense social change in response to
challenges that galvanize public will to act collectively, such as economic depression, war,
inequalities of wealth and power, social injustice, and deterioration in the physical environment.
This means that the relationship of the public sector to the broader society is not fixed and
inevitable, but is instead refashioned as people act to solve current problems.
Examples of issues that have prompted major changes in the role of the public sector
include: safe food and drugs; economic and medical support for the elderly; clean air and water;
civil rights of minorities; women’s rights; a safety net for those in poverty; and conservation of
public lands and wilderness. Creating change in issue areas such as these often involves
sustained action over a period of years, as people who advocate change meet resistance from
people who use their influence to block or weaken new policy initiatives. Over time, successful
changes in the role of the public sector are integrated into the cultural view and become
relatively stable features of the function of government.

Common Themes, Then and Now

Present-day issues and challenges in the public sector are different in details from those of the
past, but they often reflect themes that are also found in earlier times. Here is an interesting
description of political conditions:

It’s life or death for America, people tell you. Angry debates about taxes, religion, and
race relations inflame the newspapers. Everyone is talking politics: your spouse, your
teenage daughter, your boss, your grocer. Neighbors eye you suspiciously, pressing you
to buy local. Angry crowds gather, smelling of booze and threatening violence; their
leaders wink, confident that the ends justify the means. The stores have sold out of guns.
(Fitz 2016, 36)

Writing in The Atlantic magazine, Caitlin Fitz uses this description of the situation in the
British American colonies in 1775 (yes, 1775!) to introduce a review of two new books about the
American Revolution. Notice the several elements of the description that show how, underneath
the obvious differences between the society of the late eighteenth century and society in the
twenty-first century, things remain much the same: fear of what will come; intense debates about
taxes, religion, and race relations; suspicion among neighbors; angry crowds threatening
violence; guns selling as fast as stores can stock the shelves.
 We can highlight some common themes that are especially relevant to the Essential
History project of showing how knowledge of the past is useful in the present. Despite the
differences between contemporary society and conditions in earlier periods, the parallels with
today’s issues and problems are striking. These themes found throughout American history are:
public versus private interest; concentrated wealth and power; the size and cost of government;
and the relationship between “insiders” and “outsiders.”

Public Versus Private Interest

The concept of public interest is commonly expressed by people involved in politics or public
management, but its meaning is hard to define. On a superficial level, people use it to mean
whatever policy option or government action they happen to favor. If they can make their
preferred option sound as if it will be of benefit to everyone rather than to a particular group, the
chances of successful adoption and implementation may be increased. Despite the difficulty of
defining exactly what the concept means, the idea of a public interest can be a powerful way to
draw attention to effects of government action on a community, a state, or the nation. It is one
thing to say, “I have a good policy idea,” and another to say, “my policy idea is in the public
interest!”
Much of the process of making public policy and government programs and regulations
involves individuals and groups advocating for government action that will be to their benefit.
This is the pluralist model of democracy in which citizens debate about options and possibilities,
culminating in a decision by a legislature and/or chief executive. The role of government in this
setting is to provide a framework for public discussion and mediation or litigation of disputes,
but not to impose a single goal or solution. This model of public decision making focuses on the
several contending perspectives, or private interests, that appear during public discussion of
action options for government.
Comparing the concepts of public interest and private interest emphasizes the relationship
between individual preferences and the well-being of the broader community or society. Three
perspectives on the public interest can assist in visualizing this relationship. The first is the
“aggregate” perspective, in which the public interest is “the sum of the existing views of the
most powerful groups or the majority of individuals” (Box 2015, 146). The second perspective
focuses on process; it “is about who participates, what sort of discussion occurs, and how
responsibility for making decisions is allocated” (146). The third, “substantive,” perspective on
the public interest seeks to identify “what people mean in a particular situation when they refer to
the public interest” (146).
Ultimately, the public interest may be “The future that a majority of people would choose
at a particular point in time, given adequate information and an opportunity for dialogue with
others before making a decision” (Box 2015, 147). This definition includes key limitations on the
possibility of finding a viable public interest that can be used in making and implementing public
policy. It recognizes that the public interest on a particular policy issue can change over time, as
circumstances generate shifts in public opinion. It assumes that people will have adequate
information to use in choosing between policy options—this is often difficult to achieve. It also
assumes that individuals have an opportunity to discuss options with other people who are
interested in a particular policy issue, providing greater understanding of the impacts of potential
choices.
 This analysis suggests that finding a definition of the public interest a majority of people
involved in a policy discussion can agree upon can be challenging. Even so, the concept
continues to be useful, if only as an ideal that inspires decision makers by serving “as a kind of
question mark before all official decisions and conduct” (Cooper 2012, 81).

Concentrated Wealth and Power

Early Americans disliked displays of wealth and power connected with royalty and royal
officials and titles. This aversion to status based on heredity and official position is still evident
today, and there is general agreement on “equality of opportunity,” the idea that all people
should be able to advance in society by virtue of individual talent and hard work. There is also
widespread disapproval of “equality of outcome,” the idea that significant inequalities of wealth
should be controlled and minimized by government.
Concentration of power was a concern of the founding generation, but it was expected
that people with enough wealth to have the leisure to govern would lead society. Many in the
wealthier class worried that the common people, given too much say in governance, would try to
redistribute wealth and property to benefit themselves, so “democracy” was equated with mob
rule. Despite these distinctions between ordinary citizens and the economic and political elite,
most Americans wanted to avoid concentrated power that would allow one group or “faction” to
control the nation’s politics. This concern about concentration of power inspired the “separation
of powers” (named powers allocated to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the
national government) and “checks and balances” (actions each branch can take to block
initiatives of another branch, such as presidential veto of legislation) that are key features of the
U.S. Constitution.
At various times in American history, there has been heightened concern about the effects
of concentrated wealth and power. When public concern rises to a certain point, there can be
widespread changes in politics, laws, and the role of government in society. A good example is
the changeover in power from the Federalist administrations of George Washington and John
Adams, from 1789 to 1801, to the administration of Thomas Jefferson. The Federalists wanted a
powerful government and were willing to take action to stifle public dissent, for example by
imprisoning newspaper editors who wrote articles critical of the Adams administration.
Jefferson’s Republican party (this was not today’s party of the same name; it was also
called the Democratic-Republican party) represented a major shift in the perspective on public
power, as Jefferson believed in a modest and minimalist national government. The Federalists
were fearful of the change, thinking it so radical that the new nation was in danger. It was not,
but the emphasis on centralized power and the pomp and dignity of national office in evidence
during the Federalist administrations were abandoned during Jefferson’s terms as president.
Another example of major social change resulting from concentrated wealth and power is
the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era. During the Gilded Age (approximately
1870 to 1900) the nation shifted toward an industrial economy, with the rise of huge corporations
and the transition for a portion of the population from working independently in small town
businesses, farms, and workshops to working as hourly employees in factories. Large parts of the
economy, such as railroads, steel production, and oil were controlled by small groups of very
wealthy people, with much of the population living in difficult conditions. This led Mark Twain
and a co-author to characterize the era, in 1873, as a time of corruption and greed covered over
by a thin layer of gold to make it acceptable, thus the name “Gilded Age.”
 The public debate over inequality resulting from concentration of wealth and power
continues today. The middle class grew and prospered in the decades of economic growth
following World War Two. Now, though, many people are struggling to stay in the middle class
and the percentage of wealth held by those at the very top of the economic pyramid is increasing.
This has revived public concern about the effects on democracy and the lives of ordinary people
of concentrations of wealth and also political power. This concern is captured in a colorful name
for the present era, “The New Gilded Age.” It can be argued that great economic inequality is
good for the economy and “all boats rise together,” or that, as happened in the original Gilded
Age, it leads to unrest, protest, and rapid political change. The excesses of the Gilded Age led to
the reforms of the Progressive Era, a time when the role of government changed dramatically.
There are many potential policy alternatives between the polar positions of allowing as
much economic and political inequality as market forces can produce, and using the force of law
to severely limit excesses of corruption, monopoly behavior, and concentration of wealth. Today,
the idea of equality of opportunity is challenged by the realities of technological change,
geographic concentration of poverty with poor schools and lack of jobs, offshoring of
manufacturing, and public policies that favor concentration of wealth at the top.

The Size and Cost of Government

Complaints about the size of government, its intrusion into the private economy and individual
lives, and its cost in taxes and national debt, are a constant in American public life. Except
during times of national emergency (such as World War Two), or times of economic growth and
prosperity (the 1950s, for example), Americans are inclined to think that government could
operate more efficiently, at significantly reduced cost. Often, they believe this could be done
while protecting whatever programs are of personal benefit to them by cutting “waste, fraud, and
abuse,” and eliminating some programs that other people care about.
Making sense of these concerns requires distinguishing between the three levels of
government: national, state, and local. Much of the public awareness of the size and cost of
government comes from media commentary about the national budget, deficit, and debt, though
local government has grown significantly in the past several decades. The focus on national
spending is understandable, because state and local governments must, for the most part, balance
their budgets each year, while the national government can spend more than it collects in
revenues. Citizens have much more influence over state and local spending than they do over
national spending, which appears to be out of control.
We live in a “mixed” economy, in which government regulates the private sector so it can
function without some of the extremes associated with an unfettered market system. This role of
government is not as apparent to the public as are the many services it provides, but it is critical
to the success of a contemporary democratic society. In this role, government creates a structure
of laws to protect contracts, inventions, transactions, and other private business activities, it
limits the potential of monopolies to dominate specific parts of the economy, it seeks to prevent
the abuse of workers and consumers by regulating working conditions and the safety of food,
drugs, and consumer products, it stabilizes the economy through a central banking system and
creation of public spending programs during serious economic downturns, and it controls some
of the more damaging environmental effects caused by land development, pollution of air and
water, and overuse of natural resources.
 In the early years of the new United States, the national government performed only a
few functions, such as mail delivery, customs collection at ports, overseas diplomacy, and
maintaining a small army and navy (a large permanent military was considered by many to be a
threat to liberty). Today, the federal government is involved in many areas of national life, from
providing assistance to college students and income and medical support to older people, to
maintaining the world’s most powerful military, with global reach and influence.
Nevertheless, as a percentage of the national economy, the tax burden in the U.S. is
relatively low. According to the Tax Policy Center,

US taxes are low relative to those in other developed countries. In 2012, US taxes at all
levels of government represented 24 percent of GDP, compared with an average of 34
percent of GDP for the 34 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD).
Among OECD countries, only Chile and Mexico collected less than the United
States as a percentage of GDP. In many European countries, taxes exceeded 40 percent of
GDP. But those countries generally provide more extensive government services than the
United States does. (Tax Policy Center 2016).

The federal tax burden of individual U.S. taxpayers is relatively low as well. The Pew
Research Center compared individual payments for national government income and payroll
taxes, finding that:

A single, childless American making the average wage in 2014 ($50,099), for instance,
paid 24.8% of her gross income in federal income tax and payroll taxes, versus the 39-
country average of 27.3%. Such a person living in Belgium, by contrast, would pay
42.3% of her gross income. An American married couple, both working (one at the
average wage, one at two-thirds of it) and with two kids, paid 19.4% of their gross
income in taxes; a similar Belgian family would have paid nearly double that rate, or
38.3%. (Pew Research Center 2016)

The Pew report noted that that much of the comparative difference between the total of national
taxes paid by individuals in the U.S. and in other developed countries is accounted for by “the
taxes that fund social-insurance programs, such as Social Security and Medicare in the U.S.
These taxes tend to be higher in other developed nations than they are in the U.S.” (Pew
Research Center 2016).
One way that taxes supporting the national government have been kept relatively low
while maintaining a level of service the public desires is by spending more than the level of tax
revenue, thus running an annual budget deficit. Until the Great Depression of the 1930s, deficit
spending occurred mostly during times of war. Annual budget deficits became common
following World War Two and grew significantly during the budget cuts and military buildup of
the Reagan administration in the 1980s. The administration argued that cutting taxes would
create investment and new jobs, growing the economy and generating new taxes to offset the
revenue lost from the cuts. The result was mostly an increasing annual deficit and accumulation
of federal debt.
According to the website U.S. Government Spending, in 2015 the annual deficit was
$438 billion, or 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), which consists of all goods and
services produced in the U.S. The deficit has gone up and down in the past several decades,
increasing to approximately 5 percent of GDP following the tax cuts of the 1980s and almost 10
percent in 2009 during the economic recession. In 2016, the total federal debt was approximately
$19 trillion, or almost $60,000 per person (www.usgovernmentspending.com).
The long-term concern about the federal deficit is that current levels are not sustainable
as the accumulated debt grows larger. Interest payments on the debt consume an increasing part
of the annual budget, further limiting national capacity to fully fund public programs. Domestic
and foreign investors may become wary of the capacity or willingness of the U.S. government to
make payments on debt owed, which would limit the nation’s access to new funds.
There does not appear to be the political will to levy taxes at a level that offsets
expenditures. Today’s elected leaders benefit from offering services the public desires while
keeping taxes low by running a deficit. The political cost of this deferred accountability will fall
on future officeholders, so current elected leaders can spend without suffering the consequences.
In part, then, discussion about how programs such as Social Security and Medicare are
unaffordable and will bankrupt the nation is a bit misleading. In addition to steps that might be
taken to reform existing programs, a relevant issue is the extent to which the failure of political
leadership to realistically address the funding of public services is aggravating the nation’s
financial problems.

Insiders and Outsiders

Writing on social ethics, Roger Betsworth (1990) distinguished “insiders” from “outsiders.”
Insiders are members of a dominant majority, people who accept the existing social order
because they were born into it. Because of personal characteristics (such as skin color, gender,
national origin, or sexual orientation), outsiders may experience society as unjust and
discriminatory. This can be expected in any society, but in a nation such as the United States,
with dynamic immigration and a diverse mixture of people from all over the world, tension
between groups of people is to be expected. The U.S. has been, in comparison with many other
nations, remarkably successful in accommodating a complex and dynamic mixture of cultures,
races, and religions.
Nevertheless, American history includes unjust treatment of, among others, Native
Americans who were driven from their ancestral lands, African Americans who lived in slavery
and were then subjected to the discrimination and violence of the Jim Crow era (extending into
the middle of the twentieth century), immigrants who were discriminated against (the Irish,
Catholics, and others) or prohibited from entering the United States (such as the Chinese and
other Asians), and women and homosexuals who have experienced unjust treatment in
employment, housing, and other areas of life. The rights of citizenship have always been a focal
point for the struggle of outsiders to become insiders. For example, women could not vote until
1920 and voting rights for African Americans have often been denied or restricted.
The unjust treatment of people who are regarded as outsiders has created a history of
social conflict, activism, civil unrest, and legal decisions, sometimes resulting in movement
toward a society that is more accepting of differences between groups of people. However,
events such as shootings or police abuse of people of color by police, restrictions on voting that
disproportionately affect minorities, the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in
the United States and is not a Christian, disapproval and sometimes hatred directed at immigrants
and Muslims, display of the Confederate battle flag, and mocking of women, gays, and others in
political discourse show that tension between insiders and outsiders continues to be a significant
part of the societal context of public administration.
This is particularly disturbing to people who had hoped that in the first part of the twenty-
first century, American society had moved beyond the attitudes and actions revealed by events
such as these. If that were so, it would mean that most people in society are now insiders, or at
least that the perceived differences between insiders and outsiders are much reduced in number
and intensity. However, this does not appear to be true. Race-based differences are an example;
Susan Gooden (2014) has described race as a “nervous area” of discussion in government,
because conflicts involving race are unresolved and people feel uncomfortable dealing with
them.
Public administrators do not create the laws or make the legal decisions that can improve
relations between insiders and outsiders, but they can work to correct inequitable provision of
public services that favors insiders. In the field of public administration, this capacity is called
“social equity” (not “equality,” which is a different concept). The origins of the term can be
traced to the late 1960s; in 1980, H. George Frederickson described social equity as “activities to
enhance the political power and economic well-being” (7) of minorities. According to
Frederickson, social equity is important because “pluralistic” government, in which policy is the
result of competition between powerful groups, discriminates against minorities that are not as
powerful. This contributes to “widespread unemployment, poverty, disease, ignorance, and
hopelessness in an era of economic growth,” a situation Frederickson finds “morally
reprehensible” (7).
Public professionals can advance social equity by providing public services of equal
quality in rich and poor neighborhoods, such as street maintenance, trash pickup, public
transportation, and well-maintained parks. They can also work with elected leaders and citizens
on issues such as community-oriented policing, improvement of public schools, and providing
incentives for business and job creation. These things can occur at the same time that citizen
groups advocate for legislation to reduce discrimination that damages the lives of people who are
still thought of as outsiders.

Four Eras of Major Change

This book is not a thorough survey of history—instead, it highlights key events that have helped
make the relationship between the public sector and society what it is today. Historian Arthur
Schlesinger (1986) wrote about cycles of American history that stretch over decades. He defined
the cycles “as a continuing shift in national involvement, between public purpose and private
interest” (27). According to Schlesinger, periods of intense national activity focused on public
problems occur in relatively short “bursts,” sometimes followed by periods of “consolidation, in
which innovations in the previous period are absorbed and legitimized” (28). Then, a longer
period of private interest settles in, with people turning to personal gratification, economic
advancement, and other private concerns. As it matures, this period of private interest generates
“dissatisfaction, criticism, ferment, protest” (28), because neglected problems create a desire for
public solutions. In this way, the stage is set again for a major public problem or challenge to
trigger a period of national action.
Naturally enough, people tend to think they are living through a unique time in which
things are changing like never before. People in earlier times, it is easy to assume, experienced a
more stable set of institutions, technologies, and political and economic circumstances than
people do today. This seems especially true in the twenty-first century, with rapid developments
in electronic technology, the globalization of corporations and manufacturing, and the threat of
international terrorism. Surely, these must be times of uniquely large-scale and disorienting
change. . .or are they?
Economist Robert Gordon (2016) has argued “there was virtually no economic growth
for millennia until 1770, only slow growth in the transition century before 1870, remarkably
rapid growth in the century ending in 1970, and slower growth since then” (2). Until the late
nineteenth century, people lived in dark houses lit by candles and lanterns and the speed of travel
was that of horses and sailing ships. In the period 1820-1870, the railroad, steamship, and
telegraph created the conditions for the rapid growth and development that occurred in the
century beginning in 1870.
According to Gordon, it was the transmission of electricity, the internal combustion
engine and automobile and air travel, and advancements such as central heating and air
conditioning, freezing of foods, public water systems, and health-related inventions such as
anesthetics, antiseptic surgery, and antibiotics, that revolutionized daily life beginning in the late
1800s and through the middle of the twentieth century. Since then, “progress after 1970
continued but focused more narrowly on entertainment, communication, and information
technology, in which areas progress did not arrive with a great and sudden burst as had the by-
products of the Great Inventions. Instead, changes have been evolutionary and continuous”
(2016, 7). Gordon’s interpretation of economic growth suggests that the changes in daily life
people experienced in the period 1870-1970 were more significant than anything that had
occurred earlier, and that the pace of fundamental, life-altering change is slower today. Whether
or not this interpretation is accurate, it helps put current events in perspective.
The events experienced during eras of public purpose dramatically changed the role of
government in society and along with it the roles of public service professionals. Essential
History focuses on four such periods—the Founding Era, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and
the Great Society. Three of these eras occurred during the century of rapid economic growth
described by Gordon and the scope and character of changes in the public sector were equally
transformational.
The book’s chapters set the four eras of change within the broader sweep of important
historical trends and events, showing how pressing societal problems led to periods of political
activism, legislation, and programmatic innovation, followed by periods of implementation and
acceptance of the new status quo. Following the chapters on the four eras of change, the chapter
that describes the present period (Chapter 6, “From Past to Present: The Current Era”) uses the
lessons of history to analyze current challenges and opportunities in public management.

Using Essential History

Essential History for Public Administration is designed as a concise supplemental text for use in
public affairs courses. It offers faculty and students a brief introduction to crucial elements of
American history and creates a foundation for stronger discussion and understanding of current
conditions in public sector governance and management. The chapters on four eras of change
and the chapter on the current era are each divided into three sections: social and political
conditions; key features of the era; and important ideas for public administration. The narrative
of the book is written to be experienced more like a class discussion than an academic text, and
most of the concepts covered consist of generally available knowledge that readers can explore
 for themselves in online searches. The unique contribution of Essential History is in the
emphasis on, and interpretation of, specific periods that shaped the role of the public sector in
society.
Readers are encouraged to watch for the common themes presented above—public versus
private interest, concentrated wealth and power, the size and cost of government, and insiders
and outsiders—as they appear in the narrative of each chapter. These themes are powerful tools
for understanding the contemporary environment of professional public service. With this
introduction, we can begin our exploration of some of the transformational changes in society
that have shaped the present working environment of the public sector.

References

Betsworth, Roger G. 1990. Social Ethics: An Examination of American Moral Traditions.

Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.

Box, Richard C. 2015. Public Service Values. New York: M.E. Sharpe/Routledge.

Cooper, Terry. L. 2012. The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the
Administrative Role. 6th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fitz, Caitlin. 2016. “The Accidental Patriots.” The Atlantic, December, 36-8.

Frederickson, H. George. 1980. New Public Administration. University: The University of

Alabama Press.

Gooden, Susan T. 2014. Race and Social Equity: A Nervous Area of Government. Armonk, NY:
M. E. Sharpe/Routledge.

Goodsell, Charles T. 2015. The New Case for Bureaucracy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage/CQ
Press.

Gordon, Robert J. 2016. The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living
Since the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Pew Research Center. 2016. “Among Developed Nations, Americans’ Tax Bills are Below
Average.” Accessed September 28, 2016. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2016/04/11/among-developed-nations-americans-tax-bills-are-below-average.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. 1986. The Cycles of American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Stillman, Richard J., II. 1991. Preface to Public Administration: A Search for Themes and
Direction. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Tax Policy Center. 2016. “How Do U.S. Taxes Compare Internationally?” Accessed September
28, 2016. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-
internationally.

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