Democracy and Administration

Woodrow Wilson's Ideas and the Challenges of Public Management

Brian J. Cook

Publication Year: 2007

Though his term in the White House ended nearly a century ago, Woodrow Wilson anticipated the need for new ideas to address the effects of modern economic and social forces on the United States, including increased involvement in international affairs. Democracy and Administration synthesizes the former world leader's thought on government administration, laying out Wilson's concepts of how best to manage government bureaucracies and balance policy leadership with popular rule. Linking the full gamut of Wilson’s ideas and actions covering nearly four decades, Brian J. Cook finds success, folly, and fresh thinking with relevance in the twenty-first century. Building on his interpretive synthesis, Cook links Wilson’s tenets to current efforts to improve public management, showing how some of his most prominent ideas and initiatives presaged major developments in theory and practice. Democracy and Administration calls on scholars and practitioners to take Wilson’s institutional design and regime-level orientation into account as part of the ambitious enterprise to develop a new science of democratic governance.

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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pp. vii-

Preface

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pp. ix-xiv

Attorney David Burman stood before the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2005,representing petitioners whose real names he did not know, and about whose background and current place of residence he had only the sketchiest of facts. John and Jane Doe, a former Soviet-bloc diplomat and his wife turned reluctant spies for the Central Intelligence Agency, had sued their former employer, alleging that the...

Introduction: Power and Public Management

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pp. 1-17

Sheldon Wolin begins his rich and stimulating account of Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought with an assessment of the emergence of modernity and the ties between modern political theory and modern power. The proliferation of the volume and forms of power was one distinctive milestone in the birth of modern society. In classical and medieval worldviews, power was finite...

PART I: WILSON'S IDEAS

1 Remaking the Public Executive

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pp. 21-37

As his junior year at Princeton was drawing to a close, Woodrow Wilson read ‘‘The American Republic’’ in the International Review. Published to coincide with the nation’s centennial celebration, the article prompted a biting entry in Wilson’s shorthand diary for June 19, 1876...

2 The Character of Modern Democracy

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pp. 38-62

Congressional Government was largely the product of an intellectual agenda that predated Wilson’s graduate training. Before he had even met Herbert Baxter Adams and Richard T. Ely, his principal instructors at Johns Hopkins, Wilson had already begun to focus his intellectual attention on..

3 Situating Administration in the Modern Democratic State

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pp. 63-104

As the cabinet government analysis turned Wilson’s attention directly to administration, he almost immediately confronted a complex dilemma. Could he reconcile his realization that administrative politics and administrative power were the defining features of modern governance with a system predicated on a written constitution that separated the main functions...

4 Enhancing Democracy through Administrative Design and Organizational Practice

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pp. 105-133

What principles of good administrative organization and managerial practice are appropriate for a modern democratic state? In Congressional Government, Wilson answered that competent, responsible administration responsive to but not under the direct control of public opinion would be realized with the proper structure of political leadership and public authority...

PART II: WILSON'S PRACTICES

5 Administrative Reform and Expansion

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pp. 137-168

In his compact, illuminating biography, John A. Thompson contends that there are two contrasting views that must be taken into account in considering Woodrow Wilson’s governing practices. One view is that Wilson was a ‘‘conviction politician,’’ that is, ‘‘Wilson’s actions and utterances...

6 Legal Structure, Cabinet Government, and Interpretive Leadership

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pp. 169-200

Upon taking the oath of office to become governor of New Jersey in 1911, and president of the United States two years later, Woodrow Wilson set about following the guidance for governing he had laid out in books, articles, lectures, and public addresses over the previous quarter century...

PART III: A WILSONIAN PERSPECTIVE ON GOVERNANCE

7 The Continuing Relevance of Wilson’s Ideas

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pp. 203-225

In his influential treatise Creating Public Value, Mark H. Moore recounts the emergence of a ‘‘strategic management’’ orientation toward understanding and improving modern government. He points to a ‘‘natural synthesis’’ combining the traditional public administration focus on...

8 Public Management, Representative Government, and the Continuation of Wilson’s Quest

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pp. 226-262

My reference at the conclusion of the previous chapter to ‘‘the full benefits of modern administrative power’’ may strike many readers as particularly odd. Can it be that innovations in administration and management, especially with respect to organizational designs, managerial practices, and information...

References

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pp. 263-269

Index

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pp. 271-279

E-ISBN-13: 9780801891779
E-ISBN-10: 0801891779
Print-ISBN-13: 9780801885228
Print-ISBN-10: 0801885221

Page Count: 296
Illustrations: 1 halftone
Publication Year: 2007

Series Title: Johns Hopkins Studies in Governance and Public Management
Series Editor Byline: Kenneth J. Meier and Laurence J. O'Toole Jr., Series Editors