Abstract
Public Administration is reaffirmed as an applied field of practice rather than a traditional academic discipline. Hence, scholarly research in it should not merely expand an extant body of knowledge, but also support, encourage, and refine its linked professional practice out in the nation and world. The author tests this idea on his own books, with mixed results.
Keywords
After 60 years of writing books on public administration, I have thoughts looking back that I would like to share with others doing public administration scholarship. I hope these comments may stimulate thinking among veteran researchers and newcomers, too.
Public administration, like architecture, journalism, and social work, is an applied field of study. This means its purpose is not just the accumulation and transfer of knowledge in its own secured realm. It is also an educator, cultivator, and promoter of its linked profession. This distinguishes it from traditional academic disciplines like mathematics, economics, and political science, whose prime audiences are other specialists in these fields.
Confusion on this point stems from the fact that in the American academy, public administration was first conceived as a subdivision of political science. When political scientists recognized the teaching and research opportunities that governmental actions present, public administration’s separate subdivision status began to vanish. A consequence was loss of a conscious responsibility for its applied responsibilities. Hence, I propose a general re-establishment of our applied role. This would be accomplished most easily via public administration’s teaching and consulting functions. Yet, I urge that our scholarship role be used as well. In this Trumpian era of hatred of government, the public service needs all the support, legitimation, and fresh ideas it can get.
I submit that public administration scholars should think of themselves as being allies and partners of the millions of men and women who do the work of the people under the cloak of law and the public interest. To that end, they might do this naturally or, alternatively, deliberately frame arguments in favorable ways.
Critics in the professorship could well take umbrage at this proposal. The idea could be seen as naive, anti-intellectual, and limiting to the tone of one’s scholarship. As a researcher who himself prizes his independence and freedom, I can fully understand this attitude. In response, I make three points. First, finding fault—the precursor to identifying a problem—is itself a license to criticize and offer an answer. Second, if the change saves taxpayer money, we are automatically on the side of the angels at all points on the political spectrum. Third, keep in mind that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is handing out infrastructure innovation contracts.
The Author’s Personal Research Experience
I must confess that up to the composition of this essay, I have not paid attention to the applied aspect of my own public administration scholarship. This is so, despite the fact that out of my 11 sole-authored volumes, 10 pertain in some way to governmental administration. In the past several months, I have been pondering what these works might possess in terms of supporting administrative practice. On the following pages, I first summarize these works and then analyze them for possible applied conclusions.
Administration of a Revolution
The idea behind my first book, Administration of a Revolution (Goodsell, 1965), was the consequence of a chance encounter at the University of Puerto Rico where I had obtained my first teaching job. One day, I was searching in the Puerto Rican Collection of the university library with the thought of launching a book project of some kind on the island’s history. When scanning through records of the colonial period, Emilio Colón, Director of the Collection, asked what I was looking for. He warned me that the archaic Spanish script would be impossible to understand, and then proceeded to show me an edited volume on the 1941–1946 Rexford Tugwell governorship of the Island. This was a period of historic political and administrative reform that was accomplished by appointed Governor Tugwell in partnership with the future elected governor, Luis Mun̂oz Marín. Colón read with gusto from a page and I said, “Now that’s public administration!” I followed up this lead and spent the next 2 years writing a history of the reforms.
At one point, Lady Luck bestowed another gift when Tugwell himself retired to the island and moved into a house across the street from my apartment. We eventually became friends, although he never agreed to read my manuscript.
The Case for Bureaucracy
In 1966, I joined the political science faculty at Southern Illinois University (Tugwell had spent a year there and recommended me). As the 1970s began unfolding, I had been noticing a number of empirically based academic articles that portrayed government bureaucracy favorably, unlike the standard criticism.
Then, at a political science conference in Tennessee, I noticed one publisher’s book display consisting of a nearly empty table manned by a single person. This was Edward Arminian, a lone publishing entrepreneur that was trying to launch Chatham House in his garage in Chatham, New Jersey. We struck up a conversation, and he asked if per chance I was currently writing a book. I said no, but mentioned I had noticed this recent new trend in public administration research. Without losing a beat, he responded with “you mean the case for bureaucracy.” I said I guess so, although not under that title. He responded with a demand for an outline within 5 days. I complied, and from this incident, four polemic editions of The Case for Bureaucracy plus a later less polemic version came out over the next 30 years (Goodsell, 1983a–2014).
Social Meanings of Government Buildings
In 1982, after publishing a book on Peru that did not deal with public administration (Goodsell, 1974), I was at a conference in Dallas. During a rest from meetings on Saturday, another conferee, Edward Loucks, and I were strolling around the downtown. We passed the city’s imposing modernistic city hall, and Edward urged me to go in with him and see the council chamber. Its dramatic size, curved walls, amphitheater seating, and electronic podium impressed me with hidden but strident messages about the nature of political power.
I decided almost immediately afterward to write a book on such spaces. After studying 75 city halls around the country, it was published as The Social Meaning of Civic Space (Goodsell, 1988). After it came out, Professor James Mayo of the School of Architecture and Urban Design of the University of Kansas recommended I do a similar analysis of state capitols. After personally studying the buildings of 49 states (with Alaska added later), I produced another volume on the social meanings of statehouse public architecture, The American Statehouse (Goodsell, 2001).
Several years later, I sought support to write a third “social meaning” volume on the U.S. Capitol in Washington. I approached my senior Senator for endorsement and a pass to the building, but he refused. My luck in this research direction had seemingly run out. In view of the long drawn-out construction of the underground visitor center (and later the Trump-inspired insurrection on January 6, 2021), it is actually fortunate I had not begun such an arduous task.
Mission Mystique
Meanwhile, on October 27, 2003, Lady Luck took me in yet another direction. James Ortiz, a former student and senior executive in the U.S. Department of Interior, arranged a tour for me of the several bureaus in the agency. On it, I made inquiries on which bureau was considered the best one among them.
The result was a unanimous vote for the National Park Service (NPS). I was not expecting such a decide verdict. While driving home to Blacksburg that afternoon, I began asking myself why. To find out, I conducted a study of the NPS in comparison with other federal agencies. The outcome was a complex set of nine criteria that I eventually translated into a 3 × 3 matrix called “mission mystique.” A book that spelled out the degree of possessing the factors led to Mission Mystique: Belief Systems in Public Agencies (Goodsell, 2011).
The criteria were tested against six agencies, four at the federal level, and one each at the state and county levels. All reflected a significant degree of mystique, but I also uncovered serious shortcomings in each that were fully explained to readers.
The first agency tackled was the one that inspired the book, the NPS. It was at the time of writing laboring under the influence of a hyper-conservative Secretary of the Interior, and her appointed director demanded policies in that vein. They included overturning a ban on religious signboards visible on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and insisting on placement of a book on Creationism in its bookstore. More generally, the NPS had to fight to keep the mission’s promise of conserving the parks for future generations from being suspended if violations could be reversed. In learning about this organization, luck visited once again. I was given years of real-time access to the employee hotline and able to talk personally with famed former director George Hartzog at his home prior to his passing in 2008.
My second Mission Mystique agency was the National Weather Service (NWS). Here, I had an opportunity to interview its Director several times (including after he retired) as well as the administrator of my local weather station. Two main impressions emerged: one was the technical brilliance of modern weather forecasting and the other a major bureaucratic battle NWS was in against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), its holding organization in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
NOAA’s Administrator was at the time a retired Vice Admiral whose ego was matched only by that of the retired Air Force General heading the NWS. The Admiral, anxious to make NOAA—formed in 1970 as a mere reorganization device—as famous as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), lost no opportunity to minimize the Weather Service, dating from 1870, which dominated his portfolio. Its official name was changed to “NOAA’s National Weather Service” and the General’s official title became “Assistant Administrator for Weather Services.” To run his shop, the General had to navigate a bevy of control hoops, including a complex program, planning, and integration process in which he had to defend his budget before an NOAA executive committee rather than a congressional appropriations committee. The General was forbidden to testify on the Hill unless accompanied by an NOAA escort to make sure no end runs were tried.
Next were the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This organization was difficult to penetrate from the outside except on a superficial level. Its Director at the time disliked criticism of any kind and created an office whose duty was to minimize unflattering public comment. Eventually, I overcame this barrier by gaining access to its employee hotline and making contact with a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who had the CDC beat. I talked to her on the phone and she subsequently made it possible to download all her relevant articles.
The principal problem to surface was that the Director, in her desire to make the CDC the most prominent public health center in the world, took steps so ambitious that they alienated the disease scientists that had already made it an invaluable asset. This was set off by a “futures initiative” of importance she compared with the moon landing in importance. The idea would make America into a “Healthiest Nation” that would lead the way for every nation to follow. To move in this direction, she created, on top of the Nine existing National Centers implicit in the agency’s name that housed the working laboratories, four “Coordinating Centers.” These served as budget and management staff units to which the scientists—used to running their own programs—would now report. Soon scores of world-class disease professionals had quit or were planning to do so. Only the election of Barack Obama and the appointment of a new director saved the CDC from self-destruction.
The remaining three Mission Mystique agencies experienced parallel problems. The Virginia State Police, considered one of the best such forces in the eastern United States for its political independence, suffered a stain on its reputation when an irresponsible governor demanded that a police helicopter transport him to Virginia’s horse country for a gala social at a private estate. Mission values were questioned from attempts to compromise the Park Service’s “future generations” commitment.
Similarly, just as NOAA threatened the organizational status of the Weather Service, the very existence of the Peace Corps was threatened for 10 years by ACTION, created by President Richard Nixon to overshadow the famous Kennedy administration creation. The problem of unsuitable leadership at the CDC is mirrored by appointment of an inexperienced and suspicious outsider as head of the Mecklenburg County, North Carolina Department of Social Services, previously run by a highly creative Californian. After a few bad years, a competent professional replaced her, too.
Outstanding Public Servants
My most recent book is Public Servants Studied in Essay and Image (Goodsell, 2019). It was written after I discovered all existing books on the careers of public administrators deal with prominent, well-known individuals. I thought it only just to do one on the bureaucrats that actually do the daily work of government. I tried something novel and used two media: a 10-page text and a 15- to 20-min video. Seven were men and five were women. Two are people of color. On the level of the federal system where they work, two are at the national level, four at the state level, three at the county level, and three at city level.
Unlike the previous book’s use for this article, what stood out here were not problems to be solved but initiatives taken to improve results. In the law enforcement area, Adam Price, an ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) special agent, has become such an expert on southern border gunrunning that he became involved in top intelligence briefings and diplomacy with Mexico. Michael Bender, a captain in the Richmond, Virginia police department, established a new Crisis Intervention program. Stephanie Pechura, an operations administrator of a rehab prison for ex-sex offenders, introduced reforms that provided recreation, education, handicrafts, food handling, and mural painting. A county juvenile probation officer, Keith Grupposo, spearheaded a policy of diverting many arrested young men away from the court system and into a program focused on conditional releases for community service.
In the area of natural resource management, Cindy Berndt, originally hired as a secretary, became the key expert on regulation rules for all Virginia environmental programs, hence indispensable to political appointees and career professionals alike. Karen Wilson, a policy adviser in the Kentucky governor’s office, is responsible for developing energy ideas for a state that is dependent on cheap power to retain its automobile industry. A man who first worked for the City of Richmond mowing its park grass, Howard Glenn, now keeps the capital inhabitable by maintaining the vast sanitary and storm water systems and four miles of floodwall along the James River. Meanwhile, the Park Ranger for the Eastern District of the Jefferson National Forest, Daniel McKeague, is applying Forest Service policies to the tree covered mountains and meadows of Appalachia. This requires balancing decisions for and against timber harvesters, pipeline builders, environmental activists, community leaders, and hikers on the Appalachian Trail.
Finally in the realm of community well-being, I drew attention to Daniel Riccio, co-founder of a distinctive code enforcement program in Charleston, South Carolina. This involves a “livability” bureau and court, which assures the community’s magnificent homes and streets remain in the finest condition. Kathy Robertson administers Virginia’s statewide homeless activities. Accepting the challenge of a governor to reduce this problem by a third in 4 years, she met the goal by applying the national “Housing First” doctrine to a decentralized system of hundreds of local and regional Continuum of Care organizations. Carla Holloman is a social worker in the Mecklenburg County, North Carolina Department of Social Services, where she is an expert in foster care placement and adoption arrangements for children who need these services. At present, she supervises the department’s crucial 24/7 domestic abuse staff who can be dispatched at a moment’s notice.
At the time of writing, Jeffrey Richardson was County Manager of Cleveland County, North Carolina. In that position, he sparked construction of a new municipal campus devoted to health and human services and cultural activities. An economic development partnership was launched that offers utility-connected building shells and pads, postperformance tax grants, and high school and community college technology skill certificates. In 2017, Richardson was hired away from Cleveland by Albemarle County, Virginia.
Testing the Applied Contributions
The volume on Puerto Rico was a history. Hence, its impact is in the form of retaining lessons from the past that seem germane for the present. I would include the value of strong political backing for administrative reform by Mun̂oz Marín. and the importance of being able to recognize administrative talent, a talent possessed by Tugwell. Also illustrated is the need to have strong staff units, in this case a policy budget replaced a repressive audit office, a powerful planning body was created, and a school of public administration was established (where I taught). The book’s translation in Spanish and Arabic widened its audience.
The Case for Bureaucracy series constitutes outright cheerleading for the American public service. In the four editions, I was deliberately cherry-picked from the empirical literature. This openly polemic style was meant to break introductory students away from the chronic distrust of government agencies then prevailing. The last “new” edition was meant to add balanced evidence to retain the interest of sophisticated readers. The insistence of publishers on churning out multiple editions amplified readership; the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services placed it, too, in American libraries abroad.
The social meaning of city hall chambers volume was my first serious entry into this specialized topic. Its literature search was a vast undertaking, aided by being a summer visiting fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. My empirical discovery of three successive periods of Traditional, Midcentury, and Contemporary designs laid the basis for endorsing the third seemingly most democratic model. In an extension of this implicit applied gesture, I subsequently published a lengthy monograph for the International City Management Association that laid out explicit design instructions (Goodsell, 1983b).
The second architecture volume on state capitols supplies statehouse public relations officials an applied instructional aid when it comes time to go beyond the obvious topics of history, footprint, facade, and style of the building. This opportunity springs from the hundreds of artifacts displayed in public spaces. Several statehouses boast parlor-style “rooms of state” that contain period furniture, precious rugs, pieces of fine art, and battleship silver service sets. Less elitist and more creative are objects like oilrigs, racecars, shoeshine stands, and fragments from the Oklahoma City bombing. These infinite ways of projecting a state’s culture are described in detail and pictured in photographs, offering a national inventory of possibilities.
Turning now to the Mission Mystique cases, in each, I had many positive things to say, and these favorable reports could count as useful if not ringing endorsements of bureaucracy. At the same time, in each instance, at least one serious problem had reared its head. Thus, the most obvious type of applied support could be sound advice. However, that would be ridiculous for a transient scholar. I would not begin to have the background or status for such aid. A researcher who had years of interaction with individual agencies could possibly consult informally on issues like political interference, domination by a ranking agency, or takeover by an inept leader. Nevertheless, as I look back, in each of the six organizations, I found myself talking informally at length with one or more persons. These included current or former heads of all agencies save the Peace Corps, many mid-level professionals, and sometimes backbenchers or lobbyists.
One individual I remember particularly was Randolph Adams of the Peace Corps. Despite 3-year service limits for volunteers and 5 years for professional staff in that organization, he had made it the centerpiece of his career by “retreading” from intervening outside employment several times. He was a fountain of inside stories and insights, and at the same time seemed to appreciate an empathetic ear. Perhaps that should count some as applied, although mostly in my direction—I got just as much support as he.
The same is largely true with the Public Servants book. The subjects seemed pleased they had been asked to participate in the project. The honor could have solidified their stature with their respective employers, but I doubt they gained any tangible new insight or knowledge.
A Final Word
Summing up, some applied contributions were made to the field by my books, but they were varied and unplanned. Perhaps whatever credit I might claim in this area refers more to my bringing up this subject than contributing to it. To be specific, the Puerto Rico volume provided retrospective insight. The Case for Bureaucracy helped foster a general revaluation of that institution. The city hall book supplied a physical floor plan for more democracy. The statehouse project created a tool for incorporating state culture. Mission Mystique set forth a model for agency-inspired governance.
The Public Servants volume was different. My final work made me realize that the better we know a cause, the better we can serve it—what we call public administration can be seen in a different and unaccustomed light—not as a personal interest, not as a field of study, not a public sector, not as bureaucracy, not as an executive branch, not even as a set of organizations, but rather a magnificent tapestry of individual human beings working to earn a living while lending part of their souls to serve others in behalf of all or us.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
