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4. A Civic Machinery for Democratic Expression: Jane Addams on Public Administration
- University of Illinois Press
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4 A Civic Machinery for Democratic Expression Jane Addams on Public Administration camilla stivers Among Jane Addams’s many gifts to American civic philosophy and institution building, her philosophy of public administration is probably one of the least known. Yet her thinking on administration was both unique and profound: unique among Progressive reformers in seeing that what public agencies do and the way they are run have significant implications for democracy ; profound in its lasting contribution to a theory of administration that is political in the deepest sense. In order to convey the importance of Addams’s ideas on public administration, I begin by filling in some necessary historical and theoretical background, against which Addams’s ideas will stand in bold relief. At the turn of the twentieth century in America, administrative governance wasrudimentary.Privatecorporationsfaroutweighedgovernmentatalllevels. For example, the amount of money raised to organize the billion-dollar steel trust in 1901 was nearly enough to fund two years’ worth of federal government operations. One large railroad company employed eighteen thousand people, while the commonwealth of Massachusetts had only six thousand employees. Large changes were, however, rapidly making urgent the question of government’s capacity to stabilize and steer society: cities swollen by massive influxes of immigrants, economic cycles of boom and bust, and new mechanisms of communication and transportation that linked once isolated communities. In this context, the issue of government capacity became pressing . This pressure was particularly acute in cities, controlled by political party organizations (“machines”) that rewarded immigrants’ and other workers’ party loyalty with government jobs. Fischer_Addams_text.indd 87 10/29/08 10:26:05 AM Throughout the nineteenth century, political parties had fostered public activity. They linked together the national government with local areas, and brought a measure of cohesion to the nation. Parties also provided a mechanism for poor and working-class white men to participate in politics. The vacuum created by the absence of all but an embryonic administrative capacity was filled by the courts. In 1883, patrician reformers, their political influence impeded by the machines , succeeded in getting a merit-based civil service established at the federal level. At the start, the civil service only covered about one-tenth of federal employees, and for many years the service grew a little at a time by extending its reach to certain political appointees. But the idea of merit gained strength. Over time, state and local governments followed the federal government ’s lead. Today, except for politically appointed top executives, who now constitute only about one-tenth of the federal workforce, employees in public agencies have to meet standardized qualifications regarding education, training , and relevant experience. Because the roots of the idea of merit lie in an ideology of nonpartisanship and neutrality, it has become common to think of the civil service as a nonpolitical institution. Municipal reform followed on the heels of the civil service. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, concern grew among the upper middle class over the power of the working class in city councils and party organizations. Groups of reformers, the majority of them businessmen, launched efforts to wrest control of city governments away from the machines. Their initial strategy, which was to get business-oriented candidates elected mayor, met with little lasting success. The reform mayors generally failed to master the art of quid pro quo politics and thus could not get reelected. Reformers began to wonder whether another strategy might be more effective. Their new tack was to start from the bottom rather than the top: to offer city agencies technical expertise provided by municipal research bureaus established for the purpose. The businessmen aimed to reshape city government and its day-to-day activities, and to change administrators’ understanding of their work. The bureaus provided advice to city agencies on such matters as the most efficient way to organize personnel, keep records, develop budgets, and track revenues and expenditures. A good many mayors and appointed agency heads liked the prospect of being able to cut costs and/or do more with less, and the reformers’ idea of a stronger role for the executive in city governance had irresistible appeal. What became known as the “bureau movement” spread rapidly from its beginnings in New York City in 1905. More and more, running government agencies came to be seen as a matter of “management.”1 88 . camilla stivers Fischer_Addams_text.indd 88 10/29/08 10:26:06 AM [3.232.108.171] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:04 GMT...