Father of Public Administration

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

USA
Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Introduction

Thomas Woodrow Wilson is a father of Public Administration. The

intellectual roots of “Public Administration as a Discipline” in1880’s.
Wilson, through his well-known essay, “The Study of Administration”,
stimulated interest in and stressed the need for a scientific study of
administration. His essay was epochal in delineating the conduct of
government as a field for analytical study and generalization, and the
commencing of Public Administration as a subject of enquiry. Woodrow
Wilson provided the rationale for public administration to be an
academic discipline and professional specialty. Though Wilson asserted
that the aim of his work was to produce a ’semi-popular introduction to
administrative studies’ the essay is regarded as the beginning of public
administration as a specified study.
Early life
• He was born on December 28th, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia in USA.
• He was the third child of four.
• His parents were Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Jessica Janel
Woodrow.
• Heritage was Scottish and Scots-Irish.
• His earliest memory was hearing the Abraham Lincoln has been
elected President and that War was coming.
• Family owned slaves and defended slavery.
• Family sided with the confederacy.
 Continued…

• His father was a founding member of Southern Presbyterian

Church.
• Wilson was 10 years old before he learned to read or write.
• He was dyslexic.
• Thought himself shorthand to compensate.
• Achieve academic success through determination and self-
discipline.
• He studied at home under his father’s guidance and took classes in
a small School in Augusta, Georgia.
• He died on February 3, 1924 (aged 67) Washington, D.C, USA.
University of Virginia, USA Davidson College

John Hopkins University

Wilson wrote these books
Marriages

• He married Ellen Louise Axson on June 24th, 1885.

• She died in 1914.
• He married Edith Bolling Galton on December 18th, 1915.
• He had three children.
President of Princeton

• He started out teaching at Bryn Maur and Wesleyan.

• He started teaching at Princeton in 1890.
• He was appointed President of Princeton in 1902.
• He pioneered many changes to Princeton including core
requirements, and separated the University into a mixture
of colleges.
• He gained fame while President of the University, but also
made a lot of people made.
• He asked to resigned from his post in 1910.
Governor

• He elected Governor of New Jersey in 1910.

• He pushed through many reforms such as Direct Primary
Law, and Creation of Public Utilities Commission.
• He gained National fame during Governorship.
• He ran for President post in 1912.
Election of 1912

• Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican vote.

• Taft was Republican nominee.
• Roosevelt was a third party candidate of Bull Moose Party.
• Woodrow Wilson was the Democratic candidate.
• Wilson won the election because of the split vote between
Traft and Roosevelt.
• He was an American politician and academic who served as
the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921.
 President First Term

• Underwood Act lowered tariffs that business interests had

keep high.
• He imposed the nation’s first graduated income tax.
• Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
• He established the Federal Trade Commission.
• Clayton Anti-Trust Acts which recognized Trade Unions and
strikes as legal.
• Landmark Adamson Act which mandated railroad workers an
eight hour work a day and paved the way to extension of the
right to all labour.
 Continued…

• In 1914 World War-I breaks out in Europe.

• In 1915 Germany sinks the Lusitania, Wilson remained neutral,
but gave a Stern warning.
• In 1916 Pancho Villa raided New Mexico.
• He sent General Pershing chasing after him in Mexico.
• Mexico threatened war.
• Wilson called off General Pershing at the last minutes to avoid
a war with Mexico.
Reelection in 1916

• He ran on the Slogan “He kept us out of the war.”

• He was reelected in November, 1916
• The election was very close one.
• The outcome was in question for many days.
 Second Term
• Early in 1917 Germany declared that she would conduct
unrestricted submarine warfare by attacking American Ships.
• He entered World War-I on April 6th 1917.
• Americas task was to make America safe for democracy.
• He passed through the Selective Service Act.
• He took control of the railroads and appointed Bernard M. Baruch
head of the Ward Industries Board.
Fourteen Points

• On January 8th 1918 Proclaimed his Fourteen Points.

• Open democracy.
• Freedom of the Seas.
• Removal of economic barriers.
• Reduction of armaments.
• Adjustment of colonial claims.
• Conquered territories in Russia.
• Preservation of Belgian sovereignty.
 Continued…

• Restoration of French territory.

• Redrawing of Italian.
• Division of Austria-Hungary.
• Redrawing of Balkan boundaries.
• Limitations on Turkey.
• Establishment of an independent Poland.
• Association of Nations.

Intended the Fourteen Points as a mean towards ending the War and
achieving peace for all nation’s.
The Study- Three Drafts

• Wilson started serious work on comparative systems of

administration soon after he started teaching at Bryn Mawr
in 1885. Before his seminal essay was published in the
Political Science Quarterly in 1887. Wilson prepared three
drafts of the same topic.
i) Notes on Administration.
ii) The Art of Government.
iii) The Study of Administration.
Continued…

• These three drafts would clearly indicate that there was

considerable change in Wilson’s ideas from draft to draft.

• The paper, before it was published, was presented before the

Historical and Political Science Association in Ithaca, New York at
the invitation of it’s President, Charles K. Adams of Cornell
University and former teacher of Woodrow Wilson.
Continued…

Wilson was ambivalent on following topics:

• Politics-Administration Dichotomy.
• Science of Administration.
• Comparative nature of Public Administration.
• Administration as business.
• Role of bureaucracy.
Continued…

• The participation of unelected bureaucrats in policy-making

poses a problem for democratic legitimacy.

• Wilson should be praised for understanding this dilemma and

straightforwardly confronting it.
Administration and Government

• Growing complexities of society.

• Need for efficiency.
• Staff and sound principle, (no confusion and
experimentation).
• “How” the laws should be administered.
Administrative Science

• There should be science of administration to straighten the

paths of government, make its business less unbusinesslike, to
strengthen and purify its organization and to crown its duties
with dutifulness.
• Wilson believed that administration was “Eminently Practical
Science”
• Need for science of administration:
• Not much scientific method was to be discerned in American
administrative process.
 Continued…

• Excessive emphasis on the political aspects such as

constitution, nature of state and who should make the law and
what the law should be.
• Lack of emphasis on the how the law must be administered.
• Administrative Science 1st developed in Europe by French &
Government academic.
Reason for this:
• Government in European countries were independent of
popular assent. So, there was more government.
 Continued…

• Desire to keep Govt. a monopoly, thus greater interest in

discovering least irritating means of governing.

• Consequently, administration developed to meet the needs of

highly compact & centralized forms of European Govt.

•Need for Americanized science of administration to suit American

constitutional and political set-up.
Politics and Administration and Dichotomy
• Principles of government in operation (inter-dependence).
• Administrative questions separated from Political questions
(Dichotomy).

• Administration lies outside the sphere of politics.

• Administrative questions are not political questions. Although
politics sets the task for administration, it should not be
suffered to manipulate its offices.
 Continued…
The field of administration is the field of business. It is removed from
hurry and strife of politics.

Arguments for Separation:

Defended on the basis of work of German writer Bluntschli:

“Politics deals in things which are great, universal and general in

nature, while administration deals with things which are small and
particular in nature. Politics is thus special province of statesman,
administration of technical official.”
Pub Ad is detailed and systematic execution of public law. The broad
plans of govt. action is not administration, but detailed execution of
such plans is administration.
 Continued…

“Administration is business, & like business, it does not involve itself

in questions of politics.” Partisan political patronage

Dichotomy, not Divorce:

The field of administration is part of political life just as machinery is

part of manufactured product. The administration must mirror the
principles of government in operation.
Administration cannot be divorced from its connections with other
branches of public law without being distorted and robbed of its true
significance.
Administration and Business

• “There should be science of administration to straighten the paths

of government, make its business less unbusinesslike…”
• “The field of administration is the field of business removed from
hurry and strife of politics.”
• Wilson believes that concerns of Economy, Efficiency and
Effectiveness common to both.
• Administration is like business but not business. It is the organic
life.
Administration and Public Opinion

• Authoritative critical.
• Public opinion (policy control), but no interference in
administration.

• Role of Public Opinion:

• Administration has to be continuously responsive to the
‘multitudinous monarch called public opinion.’
• Wilson believed that public opinion hinders administrative
reforms.
Continued…

• Government in European countries were free from popular assent

(public opinion), and hence had better governments.

• Public opinion takes the place of an authoritative critic.

•Though it is a clumsy nuisance, it is not only beneficial but also

altogether indispensable.
 Continued…

Way to mould public opinion:

• Emphasize on political education of citizens.

• Persuade them to demand a particular change.

• Technically schooled civil service.

The Civil Service

Role of B’cracy & Civil Servants.

• Wilson’s views:
• Policy will have no taint of officialdom. It will not be creation of
permanent officials but of political leaders whose responsibility
to public opinion will be direct and inevitable.
• Keep bureaucracy out of political life of people.
• Technically schooled civil service is indispensable.
• A civil service based on merit was necessary to organize
democracy.
Continued…
Wilson advocated concentration of powers for civil servants & also
favoured large discretionary powers to civil servants.

“The ideal for us is a civil service cultured and self-sufficient enough

to act with sense and vigor and yet intimately connected with the
political thought by means of election and public counsel.”

Wilson was strongly opposed to the creation of bureaucratic elite not

subject to democratic control.
Comparative Method

• Wilson believes that, “Without comparative studies in

government, we cannot rid ourselves of the misconception that
administration stands on a different basis in democratic & other
states.”
• “Structural likeness & functional sameness” in government all
across the world.
• Wilson believed that one can never learn the weaknesses or
virtues or peculiarities of any system without comparing it with
other systems.
 Continued…
Wilson also agreed that this would lead to “import of foreign systems”.
For this, he says:

Filtering the government through the cultural & constitutional lens of

the borrower.

American “how to do it” must get priority over “what to do”.

Our own politics must be touchstone for all the theories.
“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 with it.”
The Government- New Meaning

• Consent of governed.
• Participation of all classes and interests.
• Free from Private and Narrow control.
• Intelligent and fearless implementation of laws.
 Evolution

• Birth of Public Administration.

• Distribution of Constitutional Authority.
• Raised question, but not answers.
• Scientific study on Administration.
• Stable sound principles.
• Emphasized on Public Opinion.
• The conduct of as a field for analytical study of generalization.
Wilson’s Essay Raises more Questions than Providing
Answer

• Woodrow Wilson himself noted: “The study of

administration is too general, too broad and too vague.”
• Wilson was ambivalent on many issues.
• He failed to amplify:
• What the study of administration actually entailed
• What the proper relationship should be between
administrative & political realms
• Whether or not administrative study could ever become a
science akin to the natural sciences.
Brian Cook’s Analysis

Wilson saw “the need for expertise in governing a complex

modern society”; but he also recognized the “limits of expert
knowledge & dangers of a domineering illiberal officialism.”
• If politics & administration are separate, then the
reconciliation of democracy & administration is
straightforward.
• Administrators are & should be involved in policy-making
because their day-to-day experiences with implementing
laws provides the best vantage point for learning how to
improve them.
Bibliography

• www.wikipedia.com
• www.notablebiographies.com
• www.ducksters.com
• www.history.com
• www.northgeoria.com
• www.biographies.com
• Administrative Thinkers by Ravindra Prasad et al.