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Administrative Literature and the Second Hoover Commission Reports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

James W. Fesler
James W. Fesler
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The appearance of the second Hoover Commission reports is an invitation to attempt to place them in the context of official and unofficial efforts over the past quarter century to give order and meaning to the study of public administration and of its leading example, our national administration. The object here is more than bibliographical, and if it seems ambitious it can hardly be more so than the Commission's own work. No previous study has been so amply financed, or has employed so many people, or has enjoyed such official and public relations support, in and out of government, as this one. What do the reports have to contribute, to knowledge and to policy about organization?

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1957 , pp. 135 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

1 The principal reviews of recent trends in the literature of public administration are the following. Graham, George A., “Trends in Teaching of Public Administration,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 10, pp. 69–77 (Spring 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gaus, John M., “Trends in the Theory of Public Administration,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 10, pp. 161–168; (Summer 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ascher, Charles S., “Trends of a Decade in Administrative Practices,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 10, pp. 229–235 (Autumn 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sayre, Wallace S., “Trends of a Decade in Administrative Values,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 11, pp. 1–9 (Winter 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bernstein, Marver H., “Research in Public Administration in the United States,” in Contemporary Political Science (Paris, 1950: UNESCO Publication No. 426), pp. 430–445Google Scholar; Martin, Roscoe C., “Political Science and Public Administration,” in this Review, Vol. 46, pp. 660–676 (Sept. 1952)Google Scholar; Waldo, Dwight, “Administrative Theory in the United States. A Survey and Prospect,” Political Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 70–86 (Feb. 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; his The Study of Public Administration (New York, 1955)Google Scholar, and his Political Science in the United States (Paris, 1956. UNESCO)Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert A., “Recent Advances in Organization Theory,” in Research Frontiers in Politics and Government (Washington, 1955) pp. 23–44Google Scholar; Mosher, Frederick C., “Research in Public Administration. Some Notes and Suggestions,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 16 pp. 169–178 (Summer 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 In June 1955, reporting at the same time that the second Hoover Commission completed its work, the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, headed by Meyer Kestnbaum, declared, “There is a growing knowledge and understanding of the means available to strengthen State and local governments” (Report, p. 37), and “While there is no unanimous agreement on a precise pattern of administrative organization applicable to all States, there is substantial agreement on certain arrangements which, if generally applied, would greatly strengthen State administration.” (p. 45). It went on to cite an itemization of “strengthening the office of the governor; reducing the independent agencies and administrative boards and commissions and grouping them into major departments; extending the gubernatorial power over appointment and removal of department heads; and strengthening executive controls over budgeting, accounting, purchasing, state property, etc.” See also the American Assembly, The Forty-eight States: Their Tasks as Policy Makers and Administrators (New York, 1955)Google Scholar.

3 In the President's Committee on Administrative Management, which reported in 1937, Chairman Louis Brownlow had as colleagues Luther Gulick and Charles E. Merriam, and the research staff (listed at p. viii of the Committee's Report with Special Studies) consisted almost entirely of political scientists. In the first Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, Chairman Herbert Hoover had as a colleague James K. Pollock, and political scientists, though by no means a major part of the assisting personnel, were often to be found in strategic places; the full list of 29 assisting political scientists is given in this Review, Vol. 43. p. 352 (April 1949) The details on the Little Hoover Commissions of the States are presumably not available in one place, but the Connecticut Commission on State Government Organization had the services of at least 18 political scientists. Local studies not infrequently are performed by consulting organizations whose staffs either include no political scientists or include some men with political science training who have chosen careers in the applied management field rather than in scholarship and teaching. However, recent studies of New York City government have drawn on the services of such men as Luther Gulick, Herbert Kaufman, John D. Millett, and Wallace S. Sayre.

Of course, individual staff members must not be assumed to support all the conclusions reached by the commissions that employ them, and some staff members may disagree with the central propositions that the commissions endorse.

4 Coker, Francis W., “Dogmas of Administrative Reform,” in this Review, Vol. 16, pp. 399–411 (Aug. 1922)Google Scholar; Hyneman, Charles S., “Administrative Reorganization: An Adventure into Science and Theology,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 1, pp. 62–75 (Feb. 1939)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Latham, Earl H., “Hierarchy and Hieratics,” first published in Employment Forum, Vol. 2, pp. 1–6 (April 1947)Google Scholar, but more conveniently available to political scientists in Waldo, Dwight (ed.), Ideas and Issues in Public Administration (New York, 1953), pp. 105–114Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert A., “Proverbs of Administration,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 6, pp. 53–67 (Winter 1946)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which appears substantially without change as “Some Problems of Administrative Theory” in his Administrative Behavior (New York, 1947), pp. 20–44Google Scholar. In his doctoral dissertation, Lawrence J. R. Herson returns to the scene of one of the most famous efforts to develop and apply “principles” of administrative organization, and subjects it to a skeptical retrospective appraisal: “Administrative Reorganization and the 1917 Reform in Illinois: A Study in Scientific Demonstration” (Ms. dissertation, Yale University, 1955)Google Scholar.

5 Stemming from this same concern are a number of other speculations—e.g. expansion of political staffing of the bureaucracy, assurance of a “representative bureaucracy” through broadening the range of recruitment particularly by social and economic classes, exclusion of potential abusers of bureaucratic power such as individuals committed to subversion. Out of this same ground springs an awareness that “democratic values” may qualify the possibility of achievement of a “science” of public administration. See Dahl, Robert A., “The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 7, pp. 1–11 (Winter 1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Simon, Herbert A., “A Comment on ‘The Science of Public Administration,’” Public Administration Review, Vol. 7 pp. 200–203 (Summer 1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waldo, Dwight, “Development of Theory and Democratic Administration,” this Review, Vol 46, pp. 81–103 (March 1952)Google Scholar, and replies and comments by Herbert A. Simon, Peter F. Drucker, and Mr. Waldo in this Review, Vol. 46, pp. 494–503 (June 1952).

6 Illustrative is Marx, Fritz Morstein (ed.), Elements of Public Administration (New York, 1946)Google Scholar, to which 14 political scientists with Washington wartime experience contributed. At about the same time, Appleby's, Paul H.Big Democracy (New York, 1945)Google Scholar struck a responsive chord by its effective linkage of general statements with the realities of administrative life.

7 Shils, Edward A. has discriminatingly reviewed the small-group literature in “The Study of the Primary Group” in Lerner, Daniel and Lasswell, Harold D. (eds.), The Policy Sciences (Stanford, 1951), pp. 44–69Google Scholar; for a broader treatment of the area referred to in the text, see Brown, J. A. C., The Social Psychology of Industry, published in the Penguin paperback series (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1954)Google Scholar.

8 Merton, Robert K. et al. , (eds.), Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe, Illinois, 1952)Google Scholar.

9 The dividing line seems to be not between “scientific” and “unscientific” approaches to the analysis of political and administrative phenomena, but between such terms as scientific attitude, approach, spirit, and even method on the one side, and rigorous scientific method on the other. Presumably no scholar chooses to be unrigorous any more than he chooses to be unscientific. The term “rigorous,” however, has acquired a special meaning with the curious result that it calls upon empiricists to so reduce, isolate, manipulate, and measure variables that the artificial situation of the laboratory comes to be treated as more real than the complex, multi-variable situation of real-life administration. Some of the most useful comments on this range of problems will be found in Waldo, Dwight, Political Science in the United States of America (Paris, 1956; UNESCO), pp. 18–36Google Scholar; Research Frontiers in Politics and Government (Washington, 1955)Google Scholar; and a number of the writings of Simon, Herbert A., including his “What Is an Administrative Science” in his Administrative Behavior (New York, 1947), pp. 248–253Google Scholar, and articles cited above in footnote 5.

10 The capacity of our tools for “rigorous scientific study” may not extend to such an agenda. If this should prove true, then the rigorously scientific school may duplicate the earlier sin of public administration research—parodied as the “counting of manhole covers.” I am trying to say in the text that it would be an error to say that there are only two kinds of study: the rigorously scientific study of the unimportant and the “anything goes” value-impregnated study of the important. The second category identified in the text seems to me both inevitable and serviceable.

10a The political scientists named, it should be noted, are not closet philosophers, but men with experience as public administrators or consultants and with a background of direct observation of the phenomena which they seek to order for purposes of analysis.

11 MacNeil, Neil and Metz, Harold W., The Hoover Report, 1953–1955 (New York, 1956), p. 310Google Scholar. The estimates of words are from Herbert Hoover's introduction, p. v.

12 U. S. Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, Final Report (Washington, June 1955), pp. 23, 7–9Google Scholar. The calculation of averages is somewhat misleading, as the studies varied considerably in cost. Commissioner Hollifield reports that the study of water resources and power by the task force cost $430,000. See his dissent in U. S. Commission …, Water Resources and Power (Washington, June 1955), vol. II, p. 10Google Scholar.

13 Neil MacNeil and Harold W. Metz, op. cit., p. 299. The authors were members of the central staff of the Commission, Mr. MacNeil as Editorial Director, and Mr. Metz as Director of Research.

14 Ibid., pp. 299f. Mr. Hoover made the same distinction at a press conference on June 30, 1955.

15 U. S. Commission …, Final Report, p. 20Google Scholar.

16 “Interview with Herbert Hoover: Government is Too Big,” U. S. News and World Report, Aug. 5, 1955, pp. 48–52et seq.Google Scholar, at p. 50. James A. Farley, a member of the Commission, has said that “full adoption of the report would yield savings of over $5 billion a year.” Address on April 30, 1956, to annual meeting of Chamber of Commerce of the United States, reprinted in 84th Cong., 2nd Sess., Congressional Record (daily edition), May 7, 1956, p. A3590.

17 The Reorganization Plans are printed in the United States Statutes at Large and in the United States Code (1952 ed.), Title 5, sec. 133, and its Supplement II. Thirty-seven Reorganization Plans went into effect between 1939 and 1952 inclusive. Of these, 28 fell in the 1949–52 period. As noted in the text, 10 more Plans went into effect in the first half of 1953. Under the Reorganization Act of 1949, a Presidential Reorganization Plan becomes effective if, within 60 days of its submission to Congress (during a period of continuous session), neither House votes to disapprove the Plan by the affirmative vote of a majority of its total membership.

18 The Budget of the United States Government for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1956 (Washington, 1955), p. 51Google Scholar. Unfortunately, the presentation of Bureau estimates in the budget document does not permit a breakdown showing expenditures on organization and management activities. Percival F. Brundage, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, pleaded in 1956 for additional staff resources, particularly for the Bureau's management functions which have felt most acutely the “steady reduction in the staff of the Bureau for the past 7 or 8 years in the face of a very great increase in work.” 84th Cong., 2nd Sess., Congressional Record (daily edition), May 7, 1956, pp. 6741–6744Google Scholar, and U. S. Bureau of the Budget, Improvement of Financial Management in the Federal Government (Washington, Oct. 1956), p. 28Google Scholar.

19 The Report was republished in Public Administration Review, Vol. 13, pp. 38–49 (Winter 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Koenig, Louis (ed.), “The Hoover Commission: A Symposium,” in this Review, Vol. 43 pp. 933–1000 (Oct. 1949)Google Scholar; Redford, E. S., “The Value of the Hoover Commission Reports to the Educator,” in this Review, Vol. 44, pp. 283–298 (June 1950)Google Scholar.

21 Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report, Status of the Hoover Report, 1949–1953 (Washington, Sept. 1953), vol. 2, p. 3Google Scholar. The estimate of savings is from James A. Farley, op. cit. Mr. Hoover has said that a reliable estimate of savings is impossible because of the heavy budgetary impact of the Korean and “cold” wars; in U. S. News and World Report, loc. cit.

22 Executive Order No. 10132, January 27, 1953; reproduced in United States Code (1952 ed.), Title 5, sec. 133z. The members are, and were, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Milton S. Eisenhower, and Arthur S. Flemming.

23 The Budget of the United States Government for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1957 (Washington, 1956), pp. 1164fGoogle Scholar. Federal civilian employment moved from 2.1 to 2.5 million between mid-1949 and mid-1953. U. S. Civil Service Commission, 66th and 70th Annual Reports.

24 The essential parts of the two statutes are quoted in U. S. Commission …, General Management of the Executive Branch (Washington, Feb. 1949), pp. viifGoogle Scholar, and Final Report to the Congress (Washington, June 1955), pp. 1–4Google Scholar. Italics added.

25 Heady, Ferrel, “The Operation of a Mixed Commission,” in this Review, Vol. 43, pp. 940–952 (Oct. 1949), at p. 942Google Scholar.

26 Aikin, Charles, “The Story of the Hoover Commission,” in California Monthly (June 1949)Google Scholar.

27 Commissioner Holifield's argument is in the Final Report to the Congress, p. 28Google Scholar, and, more fully, in the report on Water Resources and Power, vol. 2, pp. 15–18Google Scholar.

28 U. S. Commission …, Final Report to the Congress, p. 5Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. vi. Cf. “The value of the Commission is nullified if its scope of inquiry is not carefully defined and if the attribute of bipartisanship is absent.” Commissioner Holifield, in ibid., p. 27. For the first Commission, see Ferrel Heady, op. cit., pp. 941 f.

30 Members of the first Commission who served on the second were Representative Clarence J. Brown, Arthur S. Flemming, Herbert Hoover, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Senator John L. McClellan. Sidney A. Mitchell, banker and long-time personal friend of Hoover's, was executive director of the first Commission and a member of the second. The remaining members of the second Commission were Senator Styles Bridges, Herbert Brownell, Jr., James A. Farley, Senator Homer Ferguson, Representative Chet Holifield, Solomon C. Hollister, and Robert G. Storey. Senator Bridges succeeded Senator Ferguson as a Commission member in April 1955.

31 The classification is the writer's and presents the usual difficulties. Because this article does not deal with the important policy positions taken in the government-as-policy reports, the reader needs to be advised that a review of those positions would be essential to a rounded view of the Commission's work. The same advice applies with respect to the Task Force reports, none of which is dealt with here.

32 U. S. Commission …, Final Report to the Congress, p. 22Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., p. 19.

34 The picture is perhaps more confused than the text indicates. Six commissioners signed the separate statement quoted. Two of them, though, had been absent from the meeting at which the report was adopted. Commissioner Farley did not join the six, but he did file a separate statement of his own saying, “With some reservations, I voted in favor of adopting the recommendations … so that by Commission action these recommendations would be transmitted to the Congress for its consideration …. they will require careful analysis and study by the Congress.” U. S. Commission …, Legal Services and Procedure (Washington, March 1955), p. 96Google Scholar. Commissioner Holifield, who did not join the six, filed a dissent and separate statement which indicates he agreed that the chapter on legal procedure “should be included in the report submitted to Congress,” but indicates too that he has objections to basic tendencies of the recommendations, pp: 98 and 110 f.

35 U. S. Commission …, Paperwork Management: Part II, The Nation's Paperwork for the Government—An Experiment (Washington, June 1955), p. 6Google Scholar. To assure continuance of the undertaking, the Task Force recommended “that the Congress establish a three-member, nonsalaried commission, advisory to the President, on Paperwork Required by Offices and Departments, which we will refer to hereafter as PROD.” U. S. Commission …, Task Force Report on Paperwork Management: Part II … (Washington, June 1955), p. 53Google Scholar. Happily, the Commission rejected this recommendation.

36 U. S. Commission …, Water Resources and Power, vol. 1 (Washington, June 1955), p. 38Google Scholar. The Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report has reprinted this volume, deleting from the cover and title page the indication that it is volume 1, though noting the fact in 6-point type on its last page; volume 2 of the official report carries 94 pages of dissenting remarks by Commissioners Brownell, Flemming, Farley, and Holifield.

37 U. S. Commission …, Legal Services and Procedure (Washington, March 1955), pp. 87f, 90Google Scholar.

38 U. S. Commission …, Personnel and Civil Service (Washington, Feb. 1955), pp. 31–34, 44Google Scholar.

39 The provisions regarding the General Services Administration are scattered among a number of reports, whose citation seems unnecessary; the titles are suggested by the text.

40 U. S. Commission …, Business Organization of the Department of Defense (Washington, June 1955)Google Scholar. This is one of the most lucid and broad-gauged of the Commission's reports and the only one that concerns itself with a single, whole department.

41 The phrase was used by the Hoover Commission to characterize the watchdog commission it suggested should be established to survey and report on the work of agencies concerned with foreign intelligence operations; “it would be patterned after the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (Hoover Commission).” U. S. Commission …, Intelligence Activities (Washington, June 1955), p. 71Google Scholar.

42 Neil MacNeil and Harold W. Metz, op. cit., note 11 above.

43 Id., p. 310.

44 “Constitutional Metaphors,” New Republic, Vol. 41, pp. 314 f, at p. 315 (February 11, 1925)Google Scholar.

45 Neil MacNeil and Harold W. Metz, loc. cit.

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