Handbook of Administrative History

Jos Raadschelders

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351516396
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Public administration is commonly assumed to be a young discipline, rooted in law and political science, with little history of its own. Likewise, teaching and scholarship in this field is often career oriented and geared either toward the search for immediately usable knowledge or guidelines and prescriptions for the future. Although most administrative scientists would acknowledge that their field has a history, their time horizon is limited to the recent past. Raadschelders demonstrates that public administration has in fact a long-standing tradition, both in practice and in writing; administration has been an issue ever since human beings recognized the need to organize themselves in order to organize the environment in which they lived. This history, in turn, underlines the need for administrators to be aware of the importance and contemporary impact of past decisions and old traditions. In seeking to go beyond the usual problem-solving and future-oriented studies of public administration, this volume adds greatly to the cognitive richness of this field of research. Indeed, the search for theoretical generalizations will profit from an approach that unravels long-term trends in the development of administration and government."Raadschelders approaches public administration history from a dual perspective, as trained historian and professor of public administration.... The volume is appropriately called a aehandbook' in view of its methodical listing of the literature on administrative history, together with summaries of numerous authors' principal theories. The second chapter is an essay on sources in the field, including an extended bibliography.... These parts of the book alone make it useful to scholars in the field.... Raadschelders is helpful in other ways as well. The third and fourth chapters offer a highly sophisticated discussion of methodological problems encountered in writing administrative history, including the issue of perceiving 'stage

Part One

Scope and Methods
of Administrative History

1

The Study of Administrative History

Administrative history is indispensable to administrative science research as well as the training of (future) civil servants and politicians. Given the contemporary challenges governments face it is all the more important to acquire an understanding of how government developed and what limits that development places upon reform. Administrative history is an exciting venture in itself, but gains meaning when we realize how “path-dependent” reform proposals can be. In this chapter I discuss the development of administrative history (section 1.1), what it is (section 1.2), why it is scientifically interesting (section 1.3), and how it has practical applications (section 1.4).

1.1 The Development of Administrative History in Brief

Administration is of all times, but it did not receive separate attention until the early modern era (1600s). The relationship between ruler and people had received more attention. With Kautilya (third century B.C.) a tradition of advisory literature started. The common denominator in Kautilya’s Artha-sāstra (Shamasastry 1961), the medieval Fürstenspiegel, and Machiavelli’s The Prince is that they all present the ruler whom they served with guidelines on how to rule. Old too is the tradition of reflecting upon “administrative man,” upon the ideal society, upon the interaction between citizens and their government. Authors in this tradition were political theorists, and names such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Dante, Montesquieu, Mill, and Marx come to mind. Up to this day, political theory is a practiced field of thought.

Attention for the position of the ruler came to an end in the seventeenth century, when it was no longer the person of the ruler but the abstraction of the state and the organization of government that required thought. A different group of authors emerged such as Ludwig Von Seckendorf (seventeenth century), M. de la Mare (eighteenth century), and Lorenz Von Stein (nineteenth century). These and others established administrative science. At first, attention was focused on understanding contemporary administrative structures and processes in order to improve them. Once administrative science acquired an independent place in the specter of disciplines (eighteenth century), the interest for a historical and comparative approach increased. This development came to an end when administrative science was incorporated in administrative law (early-nineteenth century onward) under the influence of the constitutionalism inspired by the Atlantic Revolutions. Administrative history then fell under the guise of constitutional history/legal history, and political history. Indeed, administrative and legal history are still often intertwined, especially in German literature.

While in earlier approaches to (administrative) history the past was searched for lessons (Tocqueville 1955), researchers in the late-nineteenth century sought to produce complete and factual descriptions of the past. It was under the aegis of a more sociological approach that historic-comparative research began again with Max Weber and, in Weber’s slipstream, Otto Hintze—its most illustrious representatives (Weber 1980–86; Page 1990). At the same time, various scholars in the now mature national states began research on administrative history of their own countries. Recent bibliographic articles on, for example, Australia (Caiden 1963), Czechoslovakia (Maly 1993), Denmark (Dübeck and Tamm 1991), England (Pellew 1991), Finland (Tiihonen 1995), France (Church 1974), Germany and Austria (Schulze 1985), Italy (Melis 1989), the Netherlands (Van der Meer and Raadschelders 1992), Poland (Izdebski 1990), and Spain (García Madaría 1980) testify to the advent of administrative history in the first half of the twentieth century. It is characteristic of this period (1880–1940) that the historical and often legalistic research is conducted without addressing the question of whether it is useful. Meanwhile, enthusiasm resulted in impressive output, sometimes comparative in nature (Barker 1944). In the Yearbook of European Administrative History one can get an idea of the number of publications available in various Western European countries. France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy clearly took the initiative.

After the Second World War a meaningful shift occurred. Administrative scientists felt the need to prove that public administration was able to analyze administrative structures and processes and suggest improvements in terms of efficiency and efficacy. Furthermore, they attempted to advocate public administration as a body of knowledge requiring independent study in addition to, not as part of, administrative law and/or political science. As a result of this renewed attention for current issues, administrative-historical research disappeared into the background. This shift is clearly visible in E.N. Gladden’s career. In the beginning he published a historical article. He then moved toward general public administration, and finally at the end of his career he returned to administrative history (Gladden 1937, 1949, 1972a, 1976). According to Mansfield, the list of publications of Leonard B. White (who wrote an administrative history of the United States covering the 1776–1901 period) in four volumes (1948–1958) reveals the same pattern (Mansfield 1959). Attempts to generate interest did not immediately increase research in this field. An exception must be made for Nash’s Perspectives on Administration: The Vistas of History (1969), a monograph commissioned by Waldo. This publication inspired Gladden to write his two-volume A History of Public Administration (1972a) (Waldo 1984: ix, 13).

Continued empirical research on national developments is characteristic of postwar administrative history in Europe and the United States. Cross-national comparisons between some countries are also published (Armstrong 1973; Mosher 1968; Rose 1987, 2d ed.). Since this historical research effort does not interlock with the mainstream of administrative science research, it has hardly been noticed. On both sides of the ocean, administrative scientists regard administrative history as the necessary start, if that, for the analysis of a contemporary issue. Ashford thinks that administrative histories are regaining legitimacy after having been cast aside in the 1950s, and he says that “studies of this kind are common in Europe, which has a less hostile environment…” (Ashford 1992: 31). The bibliography shows that this is not entirely true; U.S. scholars have produced many historical-administrative studies.

Even though hundreds of historical-administrative articles and books have been published in the last forty years, they are but a drop in a bucket when compared to the total output of administrative science. In addition to empirical studies, some articles have been published in the United States and Europe regarding the contents, meaning and usefulness of administrative history as part of the field of public administration (In the United States: Mansfield 1951; Fesler 1982; Karl 1976; Nash 1969. In Latin America: Cárdenas 1983; Dana Montaño 1975. In Europe: Gladden 1972b; Jeserich 1978; Molitor 1983; Tiihonen 1989. In Australia: Hume 1980; Wettenhall 1968, 1984). This, however, has not led to systematic research efforts. It is most likely that the endeavor to write a truly comparative administrative history is beyond what any individual researcher can do. In Europe the nationally oriented administrative history research dominates, based on detailed and intimate knowledge of a country. It has now been complemented with a (modest) systematic-comparative dimension. Molitor took the initiative for a working group on administrative history within the International Institute of Administrative Sciences. This working group regularly reports on its activities (for example, Wright 1991; Wunder 1995). In addition, the yearbooks already mentioned specifically provide a comparative perspective. In the United States the interest for administrative history has found a forum in the Public Administration Theory Network (annual meetings since 1987) which is coordinated by the Department of Public Administration of California State University in Hayward. Researchers in this network also aspire to a comparative perspective (Argyle 1994; Chandler 1994).

1.2 Definition of Administrative History

In the literature regarding administrative history as a research topic, definitions are rarely given. Caldwell provided one such definition in a somewhat older but still relevant article. He describes the focus of administrative history as the study of the origins or evolution of administrative ideas, institutions and practices (1955: 455). This definition contains both descriptive as well as normative issues, but it is incomplete and not entirely clear. What exactly is the focus of administrative history? Most authors provide a short historical overview of the developments in the topic they have researched. This hardly provides us with an idea of the focus of administrative history. Several authors categorized themes in this field. Gladden presented the following six topics: leadership and top management, functions and organizations, personnel, administrative techniques, biography, and theory (1972a: viii–x). Some years later Molitor presented the same type of list: doctrine, structure, functionaries, services, methods and techniques, and process of decision making (1983: 2). Yet other lists can be found in García Madaría (1980: 36–38; law, institutions, organizations, ideas, practices, customs, and relations with society) and Tiihonen (1989: 132, 148; structure, officials, activities, tasks, expenditures, process, ideology, and type of domination).

García Madaría, Gladden, Molitor, and Tiihonen present a useful but eclectic list of topics, which neither constitute nor define a field. And yet, administrative history is not a discipline, but a topic within a range of disciplines as Jeserich (1978: 361) and Tiihonen (1989: 149) correctly remark. Thus, a definition of administrative history should emphasize the locus (public administration) and not the focus (the approach) of the field (the multidisciplinary approach of administrative science, or the more monodisciplinary approaches of inter alia history and legal history).

A definition of administrative history can be constructed from the basic concepts of public administration: structure (particularly organization), functioning (particularly processes) and functionaries (Van Braam 1986: 4). With these three concepts one can analyze developments in any organization or policy field. They result in descriptive questions, but normative questions are also possible. What was regarded as the ideal organization in a certain period? The ideal civil servant? The ideal decision-making process? In addition to the ideas, institutions, and practices mentioned by Caldwell, public functionaries are an important topic of research. The historian Strayer once wrote that most attention is reared to the glamorous institutions (such as sovereignty, kingship, nation-state, judiciary, high councils of state) while too little attention is paid to the details of the recruitment, training, career patterns and financial rewards of the people who make the institutions work (1975: 504). Dwight Waldo would agree with that observation as he remarked that a genuine administrative history (proper, as defined below) has yet to be written (1987: 111; see also García Madaría 1980: 35; Gladden, 1976: 338; Jeserich, 1978: 361), and that the history of government as such-its functions, institutions, and operations-is a nonsubject (Waldo, 1990: 80). Waldo states that Gladden came closest to such an administrative history (1987: 111; 1990: 80). In this respect I consider Webber and Wildavsky’s history of public finance to be very much an administrative history proper as well as in the broader sense (1986).

The aspects of structure, functioning, and functionaries concern government: the administration and management of and by public institutions (Van der Meer and Raadschelders 1992). This is administrative history proper, and is understood as such by, for instance, Gladden, Molitor, and Waldo. I define administrative history proper as the study of structures and processes in and ideas about government as they have existed or have been desired in the past and the actual and ideal place of public functionaries therein. In this type of administrative history national studies dominate. Sometimes a comparative inquiry is presented: the theme of bureaucracy and bureaucratization, for instance. Heady states that bureaucracy is a key concept since it is one of the most dominant types of large-scale organizations in the contemporary world. Bureaucracy is crucial in every type of empire or state (1991: 150–155; Eisenstadt 1958; Kamenka 1989). Occasionally “administrative history” is used to refer to bureaucratic procedure as is clear in the following:

As a state commission, the Gates have an administrative history which is much more thoroughly documented than their aesthetic evolution, since every financial and bureaucratic transaction was duly recorded by the scribes of the Subsecretariat of Fine Arts. (Grunfeld 1987: 176)

In this sense, however, administrative history encompasses only part of what I have labeled administrative history proper.

Administrative history should also have an eye for the legitimacy of government, the societal context in which it is embedded, as well as the balance between public and private institutions. Many authors would agree with the idea that the development of administration can not be understood without attention for the society in which it is embedded. Indeed “if administrative history is to mean anything at all, it must always be related to the society from which it springs” (Cromwell 1966: 254–255). The same is true of course for the context in which theories have been developed. Weber’s theory on bureaucratization makes more sense when presented in relation to his theory of the rationalization process (Weber 1980). Therefore questions about the function of administration/government and politics in society in various ages are important, as are questions about the relationship and interaction between government and citizen and between public and private actors in its consequences for the structure and functioning of government. This relationship between society and citizen relates more to public administration, which is a more encompassing concept referring to all public (including politics), semi-public and private actors involved in the provision of public services (education, health care, etc.). This is administrative history in a broader sense: the interplay between government and society at large. Research on the development of political systems, of the state and of the welfare state are examples. The number of comparative studies in this approach is much larger (e.g., Bruce 1961; Eisenstadt, 1958; Flora and Heidenheimer 1984; Jacoby 1973; Mommsen 1981; De Swaan 1988; Tilly 1990).

1.3 Meaning of Administrative History

Most authors would describe the meaning of administrative history in terms of (a) enhancing insight in the meaning of human behavior in relation to (b) the contextuality of human action to circumstances of space and time (Mansfield 1951: 152; Nash 1969: 60; Castles 1989: 12). For a proper understanding of contemporary structures and relations in public administration, a geographical and historical setting is of great importance. Such a context does not only provide identity to individuals but also to institutions (understood both in terms of values and norms as well as in terms of organizations). Without knowledge of the geographical and historical context, we are not able to assess the uniqueness nor the comparability of societal phenomena.

Knowledge of the past enlarges and sharpens our insights in the how and why of contemporary administrative structures and processes and their origin. Thus Strayer displayed astonishment about the number of people that assumed ...